MARBECKS COLLECTABLE: Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C minor 'Resurrection'

MARBECKS COLLECTABLE: Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C minor 'Resurrection' cover $35.00 Low Stock add to cart

GUSTAV MAHLER
MARBECKS COLLECTABLE: Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C minor 'Resurrection'
Benita Valente (soprano) & Maureen Forrester (contralto) / London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Ardwyn Singers, BBC Welsh Chorus, Gilbert Kaplan

[ Conifer The Kaplan Mahler Edition / 2 CD ]

Release Date: Tuesday 20 October 1998

Gilbert Kaplan is a man with a mania and the means to indulge it. A wealthy publisher, he became obsessed with Gustav Mahler's Second Symphony, learned to conduct it, hired an orchestra and choruses, and did a quite respectable job with it...As vanity projects go, this one is several cuts above the rest.--Sarah Bryan Miller

Rec. July 1987, St David's Hall, Cardiff, Wales (bells rec. Harkness Tower & organ rec. Woolsey Hall, Yale University, New Haven, USA)

"First impressions are very good: we may note the delicacy and sensitivity of Kaplan's use of dynamics and pauses but there is no lack of power or impact in the opening tremolo statement and its reprises. Details which might have escaped previous conductors or listeners such as the haunting, underlying col legno figure towards the end of the "Sehr getragen" section of the massive first movement (track 10) are scrupulously brought out. Is it all rather too calculated and careful? Maybe, but it is faithful to the score and permits the music to deliver. I imagine Kaplan's beat and cueing were aided by the professionalism of the LSO but that is no criticism. Despite the drama of its narrative, the prevailing mood of the movement comes across to me as more serene and less frantic than many a reading I know and it is none the worse for that - just different - and the coda is still majestic and monitory - but the final descending figure is decidedly too limp." MusicWeb

NOTE: This double CD also contains:

Adagietto (from Symphony No 5)

The Mahler Album: An interactive CD-ROM pictorial survey of 150 photographs, painting and drawings of Mahler [[playable on most, but not all, Macintosh and Windows computers with CD-ROM drives.

The Mahler Piano Rolls, played by Gustav Mahler

Mahler Remembered. Recorded recollections of musicians who performed with Mahler.