Ten Perfect Orchestral Recordings...

The first team of great mahlerians, imo, is: Walter, Klemperer, Horenstein and Bernstein followed closely by the second team: Haitink (his 3rd w/ Forrester & RCO equals Horenstein's and his 7th w/ BPO is outstanding), Barbirolli (there is really something special about his 5th), Neumann (very good 9th on BC), Tennstedt (perhaps the real german conductor underrated), Solti (1st w/ LSO is something and 8th....well is a classic), Gielen ( I got only his 3rd and 7th: very good both), and perhaps Mehta (great 2nd w/ VPO on Decca), Karajan (great 9th and a good 5th) and Inbal.

Certainly I've left many great mahlerians behind (one of them probably is Scherchen often mentioned as a great mahlerian however I don't have any of his recordingsso I will pass) but there is no denying that those guys above are among the best.

Mussessein, if you, like me, loves Horenstein's first w/ LSO (alas, marred buy a poor recording technically speaking) you should listen his 7th live w/ NPO on BBC Classics and mainly his 3rd w/ Procter & Ambrosian Singers: it is as good as it can get (it must be!).

Kempe's song cycles are fine. I haven't heard him in anything else.

I agree on HvK's 9th.

However, it has come in for a bit of comment here or hereabouts recently and i just might dig it out and put it on my 'hit-list.'

I've heard about Horenstein's other Mahler recordings, but I've never been able to find them. I'll look again. I've never heard Klemperer's Mahler; what do you like of his?

Nice comments on Tennstedt's Mahler Naupilus and, yes, how could we forget Kubelik prestigious Mahler's recordings from late 60s on DG? He is not among my favourites mahlerians but certainly he belongs to the team.

You mentioned Goldschmidt and Maderna as great sporadic mahlerians and that brought to mind another case: Reiner recorded a very interesting 4th w/ CSO (RCA - Della Casa) featuring a superb ruhevoll. It's a piy that we don't have more Mahler from him (there is a Das Lied von der Erde recording too but I don't know it).

As no list can be comprehensive enough, one should mention Kondrashine too: he recorded all the symphonies but I think his Mahler is a bit out of the mark: his fifth, for instance, is quite rushed though some see it as a different approach to Mahler's symphonies. Not long before his death he recorded a very interesting 7th w/ RCO (Tahra).

Parla

I think for me the issue with Kubelik has always been twofold - tempos and a certain lack of weight to his Mahler. It is a long time since I listened to his DG recordings but I remember them being fleet and this I suppose helped me form the impression that they lack weight (or heft). Just a personal opinion...

I cannot speak for Zinman but Tilson-Thomas was never my cup of tea. His time at the LSO was full of Mahler performances but not one of them lingers in the memory as anything beyond a well played evening - and great Mahler performances do tend to shock one to the core.

Regarding Hoenck and his current cycle I finally succumbed last month and invested in a copy of the 5th symphony, which I find a good indicator of whether I will like a conductor in this music. Certainly the Pittsburgh Orchestra play well and the Exton recording is very fine, but... again tempos seem a little off. Pushed to describe it further I would attempt to catagorise the issue as being one of indulgent moments - a sort of slow motion effect that just seems always to put illuminating the score ahead of the thrust of the piece. It has its benefits; there are certain passages in the scherzo that do provide new delights.

There is a habit in some russian interpretations of Tchaikovsky where one drops the dynamics just before a climax - Mavrinsky does it to perfection but I alway felt Jansons just went slightly too far into mannerism. That is where I feel Hoenck is in danger of straying. But these are very personal views and had I been in the audience I am sure the performance would have been memorable, just not momentus.

There are two Adler recordings of Maher's 3rd, a studio recording on March 27, 1952 and a live performance on April 20, 1952. Both are with the Vienna Symphony and Hildegard Rossel-Majdan. The studio recording, originally SPA, is now available on Music & Arts, the other is on Tahra. What is interesting is that the live performance final movement is 21:50 minutes, the studio recording 26:00 minutes. I have yet to play the Tahra recording but what I have read the longer version is preferable. The length of the other movements is about the same. I bought the SPA LPs when they were first released over 50 years ago. They still remain my touchstone.

Another cycle of Mahler's symphonies that had good press is the one featuring Boulez w/ american and european orchestras on DG. As the cycle progressed I bought some discs and all of them letf me unimpressed: perhaps a so-so 6th is the best I can say. I think if you are to read those works you somehow have to get involved w/ that river of emotions, ironies, dreams and anger reaching now and then the sea (perhaps not necessarily to the point of a Bernstein.....) Boulez seems too distant and cold for me.

On the other hand, I heard good things about Bertini's cycle on EMI, I don't have it so I can't second them but somebody here can comment a bit about those recordings?

Just one more thing about recordings of Mahler's symphonies: those works benefit indeed from euphony and therefore from a great recording technically speaking: audiophiles love to use them to show their gears. No doubt about it, but this, by itself, does not deliver the message and is not uncommon to see some conductors changing the contents for the container so to speak.