Mahler: Symphony No. 9 (recorded live in 2010)

BBC Music Magazine Awards 2012 - DVD Finalist

BBC Music Magazine Awards 2012 DVD Award WINNER

"This, his fourth commercial recording of the work, is even more luminous, elegant and subtly integrated than its predecessors...An interpretation that might seem too cool is in fact superbly gauged to provide maximal catharsis by the close...When the music finally ends and, as in any truly great account of this highly affecting score, one feels that life itself is ebbing away, all present are held in awed silence."
Gramophone Award Finalist 2011 - DVD Performance

Claudio Abbado and his hand-picked players of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra take their acclaimed Mahler cycle to a new level with this performance of the most complex and compelling of the symphonies, the intense, searching Ninth. Abbado brings all his renowned clarity of vision and the experience of a lifetime to this contradictory music - half valedictory, half life-affirming - and his "orchestra of soloists", including some of the leading instrumentalists of our time, revels in the transparent textures and virtuosity of Mahler's last completed symphony.

"One of the greatest musical performances ever recorded on DVD, this concert holds the viewer in its grip from beginning to end. Mahler's last completed work is astonishingly complex in its layered textures, massive dynamic range, sudden changes of tempo and colour and all these are realised almost perfectly in this live recording from August 2010. This performance ranks with the live Berlin Philharmonic recording conducted by Abbado as the most faithful realisation of the score I have encountered. Most performances of this work allow the rhythmically etched, agonisingly dissonant counterpoint of the first movement in particular to degenerate into murky sludge. Not with Abbado and his hand-picked orchestra of the best players in Europe. Everything is clear and focused and played with total confidence by the whole orchestra. Abbado as usual conducts from memory and as always is a delight to watch. I got up at 4am to watch the live internet broadcast of this concert from which this DVD derives and have never forgotten its emotional intensity and beauty of execution. Abbado is without doubt the greatest living conductor for Mahler. A shattering rendition of one of the most profoundly searching musical works of the 20th century."
Keith (Marbecks Classical)

"A rendition ... of astonishing depth and subtlety" (Daily Telegraph).

"The listener is rendered speechless at the thrilling depth and perfection of the symbiosis achieved here between artistic wisdom and undimmed joy in making music at the highest level."
Christian Wildhagen, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 24, 1010

"This is a mind-blowing experience - a Mahler Ninth as great as any I've heard...There are no idiosyncracies in Abbado's approach, but instead there is an unerring sense of musical trajectory...the playing has a richness and expressive depth all the more telling for Abbado's wonderful sense of flexibility - really letting his orchestra play - and the vibrant transparency of the sound..the playing has an eloquence, intensity and utter beauty which is simply overwhelming"
International Record Review, April 2011

"This, his fourth commercial recording of the work, is even more luminous, elegant and subtly integrated than its predecessors...An interpretation that might seem too cool is in fact superbly gauged to provide maximal catharsis by the close...When the music finally ends and, as in any truly great account of this highly affecting score, one feels that life itself is ebbing away, all present are held in awed silence." Gramophone Magazine, June 2011

"This captures much of the peerless tone-colour, shape, drive and above all those hushed dynamics of [the] performance, awarded what feels like an infinite silence at the end...Abbado's pacing is unrivalled...the mixture of close-ups and wide shots in the final rituals is superb as ever from this team. Finest concert DVD ever? I think so."
BBC Music Magazine, June 2011 *****