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| Deutsche Harmonia Mundi/EMI digital (Full price) (LP) EX169581-3 (two records, nas) (Cassette) EX169581-5 (CD) CDS7 47568-8. |
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| EMI (Full price) (CD) CDC7 47405-8 (two discs, nas: 98 minutes). From HMV SLS5195 (11/80). |
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| Solti (11/83) D281D2 (4/85) 414 268-2DH2 |
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| Neumann (12/85) C37-7288/9 |
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It seems only the day before yesterday that the announcement of a performance of Mahler's Third Symphony would be the occasion for prayer and fasting in preparation for the rare opportunity of confrontation with this huge and comprehensive masterpiece. Now there seems to be a public performance or a broadcast every week and new recordings stream in for review. Already there are several versions on CD, to which Tennstedt's, first available on two LPs in 1980, is now added. It is an impressive performance, strongly but not excessively driven and played very finely by the LPO. Just what is missing is hard to define—perhaps some of Horenstein's capacity for imaginative spontaneity while keeping a grip on a structure that can all too easily sprawl. I begin to suspect that Tennstedt is a conductor whose live performances—witness a recent memorable Mahler Third Symphony—lose an element when transferred to the recording studio. Nevertheless, this is one of the most successful in his Mahler series, and the bright singing of the Southend Boys' Choir in the fifth movement is among the best on any recording. Wenkel I find rather too wobbly and portentous in "O Mensch". There is no detailed indexing.
Gary Bertini's Cologne performance on two LPs is very fine indeed. He is slower than Tennstedt, marginally too slow in the final Adagio, but there are excitement and rapture in the performance (which is beautifully recorded, with superlative balance) which remind me of Solti's Chicago recording on Decca. It is a more poetic interpretation than Tennstedt's at moments where the poetry is everything. For example, the Cologne posthorn solo is played and recorded with an effect of being in the distance and is magical; then, in the fourth movement, the strings' wonderful ascending phrase at fig. 5 is played with more restraint under Bertini than it is under Tennstedt. Gwendolyn Killebrew's singing in this movement is rivetingly intense, though Ludwig on the neumann recording (Supraphon) has yet to be surpassed, in my opinion.
The symphony's most difficult movement interpretatively is the first, in which the frequent and kaleidoscopic changes of mood require a conductor to be ever on the alert to ensure that diffuseness does not erode the flow of the music. This is where the symphony is truly "a world", in Mahler's words. Solti is at his best here. He revels in the orchestral virtuosity, but his touch, even at tempestuous moments, is reasonably light. Tennstedt shows us the length of Mahler's vision, but not all its breadth. In this respect, too, Bertini has the edge on him.
MK