F. Charles Adler M3 and M10 Available from Music & Arts

[James Meckley]

From the Music & Arts website:

"CD-1249 (2) F. CHARLES ADLER CONDUCTS MAHLER: Symphony No. 10 (Premiere of definitive version, ed. Dr. Otto Jokl, previously unreleased live performance April 8, 1952) and Symphony No. 3 (SPA Recording, March 27, 1952). Vienna Symphony Orchestra, F. Charles Adler, with Hildegard Rössel-Majdan, contralto & Wiener Sängerknaben [in Symphony No. 3, Part 2]. (Restorations by A. Z. Snyder, 2010). A co-production with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. CD 1 TT = 66:00; CD 2 TT = 67:05; UPC# 0 17685 12492 1."

"Regularly $29.90, now through January 10, 2011 only $24.90"

"BUZZ: British-born conductor Adler was a student of Mahler. His concert performance of the Adagio and Purgatorio from the 10th Symphony, issued here for the first time, displays the conductor's feeling for the Mahler idiom. Adler's 1952 studio recording of the 3d Symphony for SPA, reissued here, served as introduction to the score for many music lovers, even other conductors. Leonard Bernstein came up to Hannah Adler at an embassy function to tell her how much he learned from Charles's Mahler recordings. Today we can appreciate Adler's recording as something more than merely an earnest effort. In particular the breadth of the first and final movements, in which the conductor gives himself enough elbow room for all sorts of phrasing felicities, and the ineffable Viennese charm of the inner movements have not quite been duplicated in dozens of later recordings."

James

[waderice]

I finally broke down and bought this particular set from Amazon.com.  The M10 Adagio and Purgatorio are entirely new ground for the orchestra playing these movements, and the playing shows it, though they cannot be faulted for that.

But the M3 is an entirely different matter.  While the first movement was a bit rough-going for the orchestra (and what orchestra can play this monster perfectly?), the remaining movements are excellent.  Hilde Rossl-Majdan, though likely a newbie to Mahler at this stage in her career, sings with considerably more vibrato here than in her subsequent Mahler recordings.  The choruses are OK.  The final Adagio, though slower in tempo than most recordings, is entirely heartfelt and convincing in Adler's account, one of the best I've ever heard.  Up there with Horenstein and Martinon's Chicago account.

I recommend everyone get this recording for the M3, as it is a well-done pioneering account of what at that time (1952) was definitely an unfamiliar Mahler symphony.

Wade