The best-selling Medici Arts DVD on the label now released on Blu-ray Disc.
1080i 16:9, PCM 2.0; PCM 5.1
Subtitles: German, English, French, Spanish
102 mins
all audiences (FSK 0)
"It’s different having best friends together. Everyone is there to enjoy making music, to take pleasure, to play with enthusiasm, with passion. They are prepared to do any crazy thing I ask them for the sake of the music. To fly, to walk through fire." (Claudio Abbado)
16th August 2008
“One of the greatest Mahlerians alive today, Abbado conducting Mahler's Third Symphony with his own Lucerne Festival Orchestra is not to be missed. Whether you enjoy watching concerts on DVD is a matter largely of personal taste, but those wanting a close-up on Abbado's elegant fingers won't be disappointed. Mahler's Third charts a journey to transcendence from the origins of life - given primordial terror by the LFO brass, every solo amid the immaculate ensemble sound cherished with Abbado's grasp of overarching Mahlerian narrative. Anna Larsson is ethereal in the fourth movement's Nietzschian text, the finale a sublimely convincing interpretation of the transcendence of love.”
September 2008
*****
“Mahler three of peerless concentration and shape. ...Claudio Abbado never forces the expressivity of the superband Lucerne Festival Orchestra; yet every colour and texture shines through. …the filming of the orchestra is faultless.”
“Abbado draws a reading of such commitment, technical polish and interpretative acuity - wondrously linear and yet emotionally true, without a shred of vulgarity - that you can only marvel at Mahler's musical-metaphysical vision and Abbado's sensitive shaping of it.”
“This truly is a genuine archive treasure”
“Abbado's performance of this work at last year's Proms was the highlight of the season: all the reviewers were unanimous. Illness prevented him from then conducting it in New York (Boulez took over) but now we can see the 2007 Lucerne concert performance and marvel at its comprehensiveness and refinement. This really is the world's greatest chamber group, as Abbado intended it to be!”
Click here for alternative recordings of this work.
