Mahler: Symphony No. 3 (recorded at the Lucerne Festival, 2007)

G - Widescreen - Dobly 5.1 DTS - NTSC - 102 mins

MARBECKS STAFF PICKS 2008 - DVD OF THE YEAR

"To judge from DVDs and CDs coming out of his Switzerland-based summer-festival orchestra, Claudio Abbado is having a glorious Indian summer as a conductor. At age 75, after surgery several years ago for stomach cancer, he looks gaunt, but his conducting radiates life and love. Doubtless he draws energy from his handpicked Lucerne ensemble, which combines principal players from the likes of the Berlin and Vienna philharmonics with hotshot young musicians. It's a kind of orchestral equivalent to the American chamber-music festival at Marlboro, Vt. The Abbado-Lucerne survey of the Mahler symphonies gets better and better. This Mahler Third would be hard to beat in either audio or video format. Mr. Abbado's grasp of structures great and small is unerring, and there's wonderful naturalness to his feeling for phrase and breath. From the faintest hushes to grand apotheosis, the orchestra plays stunningly. And it reminds us on-­e again how much more physically demonstrative European orchestras are than American counterparts. Anna Larsson supplies a firm, finely polished contralto, and the choirs are properly fresh-toned. Both audio and video are first-rate." Scott Cantrell

"The playing here and in other performances I've heard - the Bruckner Seventh and Beethoven Third Piano Concerto, beside the Mahler Seventh - is superb, consistently superb. And Abbado's conducting is spirited, incisive and full of deft touches in the phrasing: from the powerful, slightly sinister trombone statements in the first movement to the scintillating string decrescendos in the third, and on to the adroitly-shaped closing pages of the finale, which in no way sound bombastic or over-the-top. The posthorn soloist, Hannes Laubin, delivers a thoroughly compellingly performance in the third movement as well. Contralto Anna Larsson turns in fine work, too, as do the choirs."
(ClassicalNet)

"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." The Times, 16th August 2008 *****

"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

"…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." BBC Music Magazine, September 2008 *****