Haitink’s Amsterdam Mahler at its best – freshly voiced, unostentatiously passionate and superbly played, with a near incomparable lucidity resulting from a keen ear for Mahler’s important component parts and the naturally bright tones of the orchestra. This Ninth Symphony is one of the few whose first movement doesn’t dwarf the remainder, although the 1969 recording’s front-to-back perspective is extreme, occasionally disrupting dynamic relationships. The 1975 sound in Das Lied is better, and Dame Janet Baker brings wonderful musical shape to the meaning of the words (which Philips do not provide in the booklet).
JS