General Category > Gustav Mahler and Related Discussions

Very brief report on Paavo Jarvi/NHK Tokyo (RCA) M6 recording

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shawn:
I very much agree on the subject of Düsseldorf. They are very musical, dark hued, much clarity. And they have a very big advantage over the other German orchestras:  nobody saw them coming! They took us by surprise, and what a surprise it turned out to be. Mahler wasn't exactly a standard on the menu there... (certainly not on disc). Fischer's most acclaimed recordings to that date were probably his Haydn symphonies. Mostly very thrilling, though even Adam Fischer couldn't resist the trend to fiddle with dynamics (in a very arbitrary manner). I don't hear that at all in his Mahler. Everything is very natural, but never ever boring.

I really feel that Paavo is a better conductor than his father.

No argument here. The Residentie M7 was weird. The first and last movements were what we might call 'normal' in duration, but they sounded much slower when compared to the hurry of the middle movements. 13 minutes for the first Nachtmusik, and not even 10 minutes for the second Nachtmusik. It can be very interesting to be on the fast side in M7 (Kondrashin in Amsterdam, for example), but without due consideration for structure and proportions, Järvi's recording simply sounds incapable.

erikwilson7:
I checked this recording out on Spotify per your recommendation, Barry. This is outstanding, just about as good as a single-disc M6 can be (and by that I mean a M6 that runs at 80 minutes or less). Järvi really “gets” the structure, and you already mentioned just about every important aspect of that. I loved the several triangles at the coda of the first movement. I didn’t hear any deep bells at all in the finale, but that could be an interpretive choice. I can’t really fault for that. I’d rather not hear them at all than hear them done poorly.

Whenever I hear a recording missing a “Mahler effect” detail I always think back to what David Hurwitz said in his review of Fischer’s M2: “But the fact is that in a work this complex, with such detailed instructions to the players in virtually every bar, no one gets everything. What matters is that the conductor and orchestra realize so much of what is there that they make the music wholly their own, to the point that what isn't heard can be accepted and credited as a personal interpretive choice rather than a lapse.”

barryguerrero:
Thumbs up!

erikwilson7:
Do you know if this is the 2017 Berlin performance that can be found on YouTube?

Roland Flessner:
>>No matter how you slice and dice it, it's going to run $40 or more!

Presto Music currently sells this recording for $13, either CD or FLAC.

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