Claudio Abbado has always kept a special place in his heart for Mahler's 3rd symphony. Whether you, as the listener, share the exact same view of it is another topic. Unfortunately, his two commercial recordings of M3 for DG suffered from exact opposite problems. The 1980 Vienna one was a very early digital recording, and suffered from a very exaggerated dynamic range. In order to hear the softest parts clearly, the loud parts could blow you right out of the room. As if to fix that problem, DG overshot their mark on Abbado's Berlin Phil. remake, recorded live in London. That one is the perfect Mahler 3 if you own a restaurant, since the dynamic range isn't much wider than - ohhh, let's say - Vivaldi's "Four Seasons". Fortunately, this 2007 performance from the Lucerne Festival, captured on an excellent looking and sounding DVD, gets it just right.
Here, the dynamic range is still very wide, but you can discern the softest parts - assuming that nobody is running the vacuum in your house - without getting complaints from your neighbors over the loudest bits (assuming that they're not just on the other side of the nearest wall). And while Abbado still has a tendency to want to "over prettify" things here and there, the performance is mostly outstanding. Both the trombone solo and offstage "posthorn" solo are excellent, with Abbado keeping the proceedings flowing along nicely during the long posthorn solos (3rd movement). The vocal and choral aspects are outstanding as well. Anna Larsson sounds as good here as she ever has in Mahler 3, and the Tolzer Knabenchor can sing circles around the world-famous Wiener Sangerknaben anyday; at least, in Mahler 3, anyway. And what of Abbado? . . .
Well, I've seen Abbado conduct M3 in London, and I've seen him on numerous videos and dvd's. I feel that this was the best conducting job I've ever seen him do. I've often times found Abbado difficult to watch, as I find myself troubling over just exactly where the beat is, as well as what it is that he's wanting when his hands begin trembling, and he has that look of wanting something more - or something different - and not being able to communicate just what it is that he's looking for. I didn't see any of that here.
I felt that Abbado had full command from start to finish, and that anybody could have deciphered just exactly what he was wanting at any particular moment. And by the way, there was no score or stand in front of him. I also noticed something else unusual too - something having to do with these very same players. There was no swaying of torsos all about the room!!! Perhaps it was just a matter of camera placement this time, but I didn't see the entire string section swaying about the room like some kind of giant, collective Mixmaster churning around pastry dough. You might feel that this is a trivial issue, but I seriously found his Mahler 5 DVD hard to watch for this very reason. I was getting seasick! No such problem here.
I'd like to comment about one other aspect: the end of the symphony. Here, Abbado somewhat tones down the two sets of timpani, but not nearly so much as he did in his earlier Vienna recording (which just sounded waaay too mushy). He gets a fairly lovely brass sound as well: saturated; noble sounding, and without detectable strain - just as Mahler prescribes. I also think that he judges the length of the final chord just right: long, but not TOO long (he held it for all eternity in his Vienna recording). By and large, the camera work is excellent here.
John, Todd,
You two will definitely want to add this one to your collection.
Barry
Topic: Medici Arts dvd of Abbado/LFO M3 - very good!!! (Read 17237 times)