SACDs - Mahler

Mahler initially had a hard time of it. When Das klagende Lied finally met with his own critical favor, he stated, “My first work in which I have found myself as ‘Mahler’!” Here it is heard in colorful contrast to the fragment from his last symphony and the “Blumine” andante originally intended for the first symphony. The Beethoven Orchestra of Bonn under its resourceful conductor Stefan Blunier is in top form on this fascinatingly detailed look at Mahler’s compositional techniques.

Das Lied is considered the most personal of Mahler’s works. It represents a synthesis of the two great pillars in Mahler’s oeuvre, the symphony and the song. On the face of it, it is cycle of six orchestral songs. But at the same time, it features three protagonists: not just the two solo voices, but the orchestra as well, and its formal structure is symphonic in nature.

The two soloists on this recording are the best known for this work. They sing it all over the world with top orchestras to fabulous reviews and PentaTone is delighted to welcome them to their label. The Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra has a splendid reputation for its Mahler performances mainly under previous Music Director Harmut Haenchen.

Jonathan Nott and the Bamberger Symphoniker have written a special chapter in recording history with this series. Currently nominated in the 2012 BBC Music Magazine Awards, their recording of Mahler Symphony No.3 (TUDOR7170) was a BBC Music Magazine Orchestral Choice; “a recorded spaciousness which lets every ensemble and solo spiritually resound.”

Berio had an abiding fascination with reconciling the past and the present, which can be seen in his orchestral realisations of works by Mahler and Brahms, and most notably, in Rendering (1990), his typically creative completion of unfinished symphonic sketches by Schubert.

In Rendering, Berio – in his own words – sets himself the target of ‘following those modern restoration criteria that aim at reviving the old colours without, however, trying to disguise the damage that time has caused, often leaving inevitable empty patches in the composition’. In the ‘restoration’, Schubert’s sketches have been beautifully orchestrated in period style, and the ‘empty patches’ have been filled with music composed by Berio himself, in his own voice – thereby successfully combining the musical worlds of the early nineteenth and late twentieth centuries into one convincing whole.

The Clarinet Sonata by Brahms embodies the composer’s taut and concentrated compositional style. In transcribing the work, Berio felt that, when experienced in the less intimate surroundings of today’s concert halls, the extreme compression of Brahms’s late chamber music style was in need of some additional support, and his version, recorded here, includes a fourteen-bar orchestral introduction to the first movement, leading into Brahms’s own, much shorter opening phrase, as well as five additional bars at the beginning of the second movement.

Berio completed his orchestration of six early songs by Gustav Mahler in 1987, and conducted the first performance with the Toscanini Orchestra on 7 December that year, with Thomas Hampson the baritone soloist. The six songs in this orchestrated set are ‘Hans und Grete’, ‘Phantasie’, ‘Scheiden und Meiden’, ‘Erinnerung’, ‘Frühlingsmorgen’, and ‘Ich ging mit Lust durch einen grünen Wald’.

The Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra is conducted by Edward Gardner, with Roderick Williams the baritone soloist in the songs by Mahler and Michael Collins the soloist in Brahms’s Clarinet Sonata.

The final release in Valery Gergiev’s acclaimed Mahler cycle features the composer’s Symphony No 9, recorded at the Barbican in March 2011.

Mahler’s wrote his Ninth Symphony during a time of great personal suffering and heartache. This is reflected in the music, at times manic and fierce, at others delicate and serene, as it explores many emotions and ultimately concludes with the heart-stopping coda of the Adagio, seemingly conveying the composer’s acceptance of his own mortality.

In addition to his recordings of Mahler’s symphonies, Gergiev’s other recent releases on LSO Live have included acclaimed recordings of music by Debussy, Ravel and Rachmaninov as well as Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet which recently won Disc of the Year at the BBC Music Magazine Awards.

Forthcoming releases on the Mariinsky label, which is managed on behalf of the Mariinsky Theatre by LSO Live, include Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, conducted by Valery Gergiev and featuring Natalie Dessay in the title role alongside Piotr Beczala and Ilya Bannik. The Mariinsky label also releases its first DVDs and Blu-Ray Discs in October.

CONCERT REVIEWS

“from the rosy vein struck by the strings to the honed gestures of the woodwind, here was an orchestra at one with itself and its Director” The Guardian

“Gergiev’s reading was both valid and deeply moving. Finally all tears were wiped away, all coughing silenced, in a breathless,peerlessly executed coda [Adagio]” Evening Standard

“There’s nothing on the classical circuit that quite compares to the full Valery Gergiev experience. Gergiev’s pacing of the Adagio ... felt absolutely right. And the LSO fiddles played majestically for him” The Times