Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. 1. Kräftig. Entschieden
2. 1. - Immer das gleiche Tempo
3. 1. - Tempo I
4. 1. - Zeit lassen
5. 1. - Zeit lassen
6. 1. - Immer dasselbe Tempo. (Marsch.) Nicht eilen
7. 1. - Im alten Marschtempo (Allegro Moderato)
8. 1. - Tempo I

Disc 2:

1. 2. Tempo di Menuetto. Sehr mässig
2. 2. - L'istesso tempo
3. 2. - A tempo. (Wie im Anfang)
4. 2. - Ganz ploetzlich gemaechlich. Tempo di Menuetto
5. 3. Comodo. Scherzando. Ohne Hast (Senza fretta)
6. 3.- Wieder sehr gemaechlich, wie zu Anfang
7. 3.- Etwas zurueckhaltend
8. 3.- Schnell und schmetternd wie eine Fanfare - Tempo I. Mit geheimnisvoller Hast
9. 3.- Wieder sehr gemaechlich, beinahe langsam
10. 4. Sehr langsam. Misterioso ppp - "O Mensch! Gib acht" - Anna Larsson, Berliner Philharmoniker, Claudio Abbado
11. 4.- Più mosso subito
12. 5. Lustig im Tempo und keck im Ausdruck: "Bimm Bamm. Es sungen drei Engel" - Anna Larsson, Berliner Philharmoniker, Claudio Abbado, London Symphony Chorus, Stephen Westrop, City of Birmingham Symphony Youth Chorus, Simon Halsey
13. 6. Langsam. Ruhevoll. Empfunden (Lento. Tranquillo. Sentito)
14. 6.- Nicht mehr so breit
15. 6.- Tempo I. Ruhevoll
16. 6.- Nicht mehr so breit
17. 6.- Tempo I
18. 6.- Langsam. Tempo I
19. Applause - Unknown

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6058 in Music
• Released on: 2002-05-06
• Number of discs: 2
• Format: Box set
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 98 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
This Mahler Three (his "creation" symphony, if you like) is an outstanding advert for the benefits of live recording--a stunning, utterly assured performance enhanced by fine recorded sound. Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic especially have the Mahlerian idiom in their blood--something demonstrated as much by the many fine solo contributions as anything else. Abbado's control of the diverse material, of moods ranging from mystical to martial, is exceptional, as is his ear for colour. When balance is as acute as this (and ensemble so uncanny) an orchestra simply "sings". And yet there's never a sense of Abbado intruding on a performance which unfolds in a natural, inevitable way towards the work's summation, that final great Langsam. Has a recording of this movement ever sounded more touching, more intense, more noble? (We hardly need a 3'20" track of Royal Festival Hall applause to tell us this was a memorable denouement.) Anna Larsson (moonlighting from Sony Classical) is the fresh-voiced contralto soloist, while the singers of the City of Birmingham Youth Chorus do the business impressively in their fifth movement bimm-bamms.--Andrew Green

Customer Reviews

Abbado at his best
Abbado's first recording of Mahler 3 (with the VPO) is superb in every way but this live recording with the Berliners is just as indispensable.

It takes a few minutes to get used to the odd acoustic but the opening horns signal something pretty special. In the first movement the timpani are more prominent than usual, giving the music a darker hue. As a so-called Wunderhorn symphony one might expect it to be sunnier here but then Abbado finds new things throughout.

Anna Larsson is fine in her solo (not a match for the more noble, creamier Jessye Norman on the VPO set) and as the last movement begins one is completely seduced by the music. As a movement it can so easily sag but here it unfolds unerringly, beautifully paced. The climax may not expand quite so gloriously as before but the frisson is there. I doubt whether there was a dry eye in the Festival Hall at the end and the prolonged applause speaks for itself.

This is a work that has been lucky on record and CD; I would certainly place this performance alongside the pioneering Horenstein and Abbado's VPO recordings as the ones to have. And, of course, it is a tribute to Abbado, a champion of Mahler's music throughout his career and surely one of the finest Mahlerians about today.

The Unforgettable London Concert
Now we can all share the magic of a very, very special evening in the Royal Festival Hall in 1999. The Berlin Philharmonic's performance that night defies description, defies superlatives for me. Mahler's magnificent depiction of the evolution of life on Earth could surely never receive a more resounding or moving performance. The playing is peerless, and I just can't see how it can ever be bettered.
Personally I find this one of the very greatest of Mahler's symphonies. From the thrilling intensity of the first movement, through to the beautiful, angelic voices in the fifth, this is uplifting, life-enhacing music par excellence. Then there is the magnificently romantic sixth movement, the crowning glory of the whole piece.
At the end, the audience goes wild. Who can blame them?

SUMMER IS ICUMIN IN
This live performance dates from 1999 and preserves for us a visit of the Berlin Phil under Abbado to London. They did not bring their own chorus with them, and the choirs taking part are the LSO Chorus and the CBSO Youth Chorus. The contralto soloist in the 4th and 5th movements is Anna Larsson, and we are also told the names of the violinist and posthorn player who are given certain prominent parts. The first disc is given over to the multi-part first movement only, with the remaining hour or so of music on the second. Division into tracks is sensibly aligned with the rehearsal-breaks in the composer's score, and there is a final track consisting of applause lasting three minutes and 20 seconds. Mahler himself was at pains to stress the non-traditional elements that the score incorporates, and it occurred to me to wonder whether he thought of extending this spirit of inclusiveness to take in audience clapping as an integral part of the composition.

I would call the performance excellent without reservation. The great and unique Mahler sound is presented in all its splendour by the orchestra. The two choruses perform admirably in the very different roles assigned to them, and Anna Larsson is completely superb, beautiful in tone and soulful in expression. Tempi throughout are broad and unhurried, which is how I like them, and the great exalted conclusion is magnificent, well deserving the rapturous reception it got from the London audience. The recording suits me very well too, but you will certainly have to use a high volume-setting or some of the distant pianissimo effects will be verging on inaudible. This gives me no problems in a sitting-room of very average size while my neighbours are out. There is no trace of strain or distortion in the loudest sequences, and the drum reverberating through the floor thrilled me absolutely. Above all, this account captures for me the true tone and expression of Mahler as I imagine it, part transfigured, part anxious and even neurotic. This symphony is one of the most lyrical in the Mahler series, and Abbado has been rightly and successfully concerned to convey the sheer beauty of this score as well as intense personal expression that any of Mahler's music majors in.

Very properly where Mahler is concerned, there is a thoughtful liner note that tries to interpret the composer's own voluble comments on the `meaning' (if that is the right word) of the music. The eight sections of the first movement carry Mahler's own captions, some sort of image of summer `marching in' followed by what various agencies - flowers, animals, night, morning bells, love and a child - tell him. Even at this brief level of explanation angels double for the morning bells, and we have the distinguished expertise of Mr Donald Mitchell to help us integrate all this with what the composer had to say about it at greater length elsewhere. The marching has a sinister sound to it for one thing, and we could tell that from the music without any commentary. It is not my own usual idea of summer, and it is reinforced by military-sounding bugle-calls later in the work. Mr Mitchell takes us like Virgil through higher and higher circles of imagery. Evolution is apparently symbolised, by summer and by the innocent-sounding suggestions of summer, birds, animals and whatnot, at one level. However Nietzsche is here too in the fourth movement with his familiar aspiration to escape the bondage of meaning and the intellect, and in the fifth movement there is another setting from Mahler's beloved Knaben Wunderhorn, expressive of innocence obviously, whatever the further import of innocence might be in this context.

By 1999 Mr Mitchell had been at this kind of hermeneutics for a good 45 years to my certain recollection. What he doesn't try to do, no doubt wisely, is suggest what order the composer's thoughts came in - did the extraneous ideas suggest the music, was it the other way round, or is there no way of telling, as I myself suspect is the case? If one may say so without unintended disrespect, Mahler's chatter was of a familiar aesthete's kind in his time. There is no way that I can see of making anything completely coherent out of his statements, and Mr Mitchell has more sense than to try to. It is all more suggestive of a painting with different levels of images overlaid on one another, and I like to think that tact and discretion would debar any of us from asking such a Maler with naïve incomprehension `what it means'. Anyway, there is also an alternative liner note not much more than half the length in German. This I have not attempted to read from reasons of faintheartedness, but French-speaking listeners have the opportunity of reading Mr Mitchell's musings in their own tongue, presumably in an accurate and idiomatic translation.

At the end of the day, music is music. Any ideas and concepts it may be connected with do not have to be coherent, but the music itself does. I love Mahler, I felt a duty to struggle through the familiar process of wrestling with the background concepts that he himself expounded with such enthusiasm, but as usual I was happy to forget all that before long. This music coheres magnificently to my own ears, this performance coheres magnificently, the execution is superlative and the recording seems to me to do them all justice if you set your controls right. It is perhaps my own outright favourite among the Mahler symphonies, I have no good explanation for why it has been absent from my collection for so long, and whatever other fine versions may be available I would say with confidence that you ought not feel you could go wrong with this one.