Mahler: Symphony No. 3 in D Minor
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GUSTAV MAHLER
Mahler: Symphony No. 3 in D Minor
Jennifer Johnston (mezzo-soprano), Minnesota Orchestra, Minnesota Boychoir, Minnesota Chorale, Osmo Vänskä
[ BIS SACD / Hybrid SACD ]
Release Date: Sunday 7 July 2024
This item is currently out of stock. It may take 6 or more weeks to obtain from when you place your order as this is a specialist product.
The Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vänskä bring us Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony, an extraordinary work by any standards. Scored for extended Wagnerian woodwind and brass sections, posthorn, a large array of percussion, women's chorus, alto soloist and boys' choir, the symphony has a duration of over 100 minutes and is filled with extreme emotion, revealing what the composer wanted to say about his own connection with nature and humanity's place in it: 'My symphony will be something the world has never heard before! The whole of nature will have a voice in it…' he wrote about this mammoth work.
The recording was made following a concert performance in November 2022. In this musical communion with nature, we hear the beautiful voices of English mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston, the Minnesota Boychoir and women of the Minnesota Chorale. The symphony's finale, a deeply absorbing adagio, might simply be some of the most beautiful music ever written. The last work recorded by the Minnesota Orchestra and its conductor laureate, Osmo Vänskä, Mahler's Third Symphony is a fitting culmination to this complete cycle, which began in 2016.
The playing of the Minnesota Orchestra, here completing their Mahler cycle, is, as we have come to expect, most accomplished.
- Gramophone
The wonderfully refined Minnesota strings don't perhaps have the depth of tone to draw the last degree of expressive beauty from the movement's great paragraphs, but those who have been collecting this cycle as it has emerged shouldn't be disappointed with this final instalment.
- The Guardian
The BIS label's recording of this hymn to nature and the celestial heavens makes the symphony's virtues more than usually obvious by its crystal clarity and wide dynamic range. Every orchestral layer glistens, with individual timbres from contrabassoon to glockenspiel brilliantly defined...Vanska drives the whole forward with the combination of fierce control and tenderness that usually delivers the goods in Mahler.
- The Times
