Youtube link to "von der Jungened" (DLvdE) with Kauffman/Nott/Vienna Phil.

[barry guerrero]

Sounds pretty good, but it's just one movement. The real test is "der Abschied", of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKNAC5LI24Q

Lo and behold, here's "der Abschied". I'm pretty sure that the conductor is J. Nott, but that's clearly not the Musikverein. Maybe this was done in Bamberg (?).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMjDmQOmtw8

[GL]

This one was recorded at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, on June 23, 2016. The Vienna Philharmonic was conducted by Jonathan Nott because Daniele Gatti was sick. On Youtube you can find other movements from the same concert (for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVXe7Cpdyj8).

Bye,
GL

[barry guerrero]

Thank you for clarifying. I don't know why I thought Bamberg - looks nothing like the hall in Bamberg. The percentage of women in the V.P.O. is still pretty low.

[GL]

The Vienna Philharmonic policy concerning women is rather shameful. You can see a certain number of them only when they appear on TV (for example, for the New Year's Concert).

Despite being considered a "Mahler's Orchestra", the VPO is not so committed to its past conductor as it is believed by its fans (as I happen often to read on Amazon's amateurish reviews according to which just the presence of VPO is sufficient to ensure a great Mahler performance - read just one comment in particular to your review to the VPO/Abbado Mahler's Third).

Note that, for example, while between 1921 and 1931 the VPO performed Mahler's compositions for 153 times, between 2001 and 2010 it performed Mahler's works for 53 times only (information provided by the orchestra's archivist, Ulrike Grandke to Sybille Werner. S. Werner is the author of the essay "The popularity of Mahler's Music in Vienna between 1911 and 1938"). Moreover, note that it is the only orchestra that during the 2010-2011 celebrations did not organize a complete cycle or special recordings as they did orchestras in, among others, Amsterdam, New York and even London. They did not even introduced a gentle Mahler's landler in the program of the New Year's concerts of 2010 and 2011, while for Haydn's bicentenary celebrations, for example, they played the last movement of his Abschiedssinfonie.

Today, I think that the true great Mahler's orchestras, among the ones Mahler himself conducted, and the ones that are really committed when they play his music, are the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic.

[barry guerrero]

well   .    .    .  I think on any given day, any professional orchestra in the world could be the greatest Mahler orchestra - for that day, that is. In other words, Mahler has truly become ubiquitous. That fact, more than anything else, has probably forced the Vienna Phil. to take Mahler more seriously in the past few decades. Times change, and people change to some extent. I think they've improved a lot since that Abbado M3 recording from 1980 (or '81). I saw Robertson and St. Louis give an outstanding M5 - as good as any I've ever heard. Mahler is played very well all over the world now. Let's be thankful for that.

Later on:

I see now that you were commenting on the orchestras that Mahler himself had conducted. Yes, point taken. I think they also perform Mahler quite well in Munich and Cologne - two cities where Mahler did conduct his own works. The odd man out seems to be the Dresden Staatskapelle, although Ernst von Schuch did more than his fair share of Mahler in Dresden.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_von_Schuch

[GL]

well   .    .    .  I think on any given day, any professional orchestra in the world could be the greatest Mahler orchestra - for that day, that is. In other words, Mahler has truly become ubiquitous. That fact, more than anything else, has probably forced the Vienna Phil. to take Mahler more seriously in the past few decades. Times change, and people change to some extent. I think they've improved a lot since that Abbado M3 recording from 1980 (or '81). I saw Robertson and St. Louis give an outstanding M5 - as good as any I've ever heard. Mahler is played very well all over the world now. Let's be thankful for that.

Later on:

I see now that you were commenting on the orchestras that Mahler himself had conducted. Yes, point taken. I think they also perform Mahler quite well in Munich and Cologne - two cities where Mahler did conduct his own works. The odd man out seems to be the Dresden Staatskapelle, although Ernst von Schuch did more than his fair share of Mahler in Dresden.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_von_Schuch

Mahler is indeed played very well all over the world now and I am thankful for that. This is surely good but it can be also not so good. I mean, it is good because nowadays it is difficult risking to stumble in an awful performance of the Fifth like the one conducted by Maderna in Milan in the early 70s. On the other hand, Mahler risks being played in a run-of-the-mill fashion and this could kill a music that was thought to be thought provoking and even shocking.

(Still, you can have successful interpretations with no particular technical deficiencies like Tchaikovsky's Symphonies with Utah/Abravanel and RCO/Haitink and feel that the Concertgwbouw Orchestra's playing has something more)

That said, in my book, technical deficiencies in orchestral playing has never been a great obstacle in the way of great performances: for example, think about the recordings of M7 and M8 with Kubelik (of course the live ones released by Audite) or about the stunning M5 with the Koelner Rundfunk Sinfonie-Orchester conducted by Rosbaud (ICA Classics, this is an exciting performance that highlights all the modernistic/avanguardistic aspects of this Symphony as very few do - I love it!).

Commitment is another matter. For example, consider the Wiener Philharmoniker's recordings of Strauss music (from Salzburg Festival) with Mitropoulos released by Orfeo and the M9, again with Mitropoulos, released by Andante. It looks like they really care about Strauss while Mahler seems still not to be "one of theirs". Still in the 70s, Bernstein had his problems with the Vienna Phlharmonic, as can be seen in the video with him rehearsing the Fifth (of course he was truly great and in the end he got what he wanted). I really do not like this attitude of the VPO and of Austria in general towards Mahler (and let's face it, it stinks of antisemitism).

Vienna's is not an exception in the Austro-German orchestras conducted by Mahler. The example of the Dresden Staatskapelle, maybe the best German Orchestra, is not an isolated one. As far as I know (if I am wrong, please, let me know), M5 was played by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Horenstein, at the end of the 20s or at the very beginning of the 30s. Then the BPO played it again at the Edimburgh Festival in 1961 (https://www.pristineclassical.com/products/pasc416 ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akWajTc1GF8), again under Horenstein's baton. Only when Karajan conducted it in the early 70s, M5 was played again by the BPO in Berlin. They played it 3 times in 40 years, 2 in Berlin and 1 abroad.

Last Autumn I was in Amsterdam for the M7 with RCO/Jansons. I had a chat with a nice Dutch girl seated near me and she proudly stated that that was the 90th time that Mahler's Seventh appeared in a program of the RCO. In 109 years since its Prague premiere, RCO played M7 90 times in Amsterdam. This is the attitude I like and it shows that it is thanks to Mahler's strongholds outside the Austro-German world like Amsterdam (since the beginning of 1900) and New York (after the Second World War) that Mahler's music has been accepted to the point of challenging the popularity of Beethoven's Symphonies.

[barryguerrero]

Again, thanks for you all your detailed input. I was aware that the Concertgebouw went through a period - mostly under Haitink - where they played M7 every year. I was fortunate to see Haitink/Concertgebouw do M7 in S.F.'s Davies Hall about 1982 or so. Edo DeWaart/S.F.S.O. did M7 later in the same season, which was nearly as good - perhaps even better in terms of the percussion. That was a good year!

[GL]

Again, thanks for you all your detailed input. I was aware that the Concertgebouw went through a period - mostly under Haitink - where they played M7 every year. I was fortunate to see Haitink/Concertgebouw do M7 in S.F.'s Davies Hall about 1982 or so. Edo DeWaart/S.F.S.O. did M7 later in the same season, which was nearly as good - perhaps even better in terms of the percussion. That was a good year!

The Seventh is much loved in Holland indeed.

Dutch premiere of M7:

October 2, 1909, at the Gebouw van Kunst en Wetenschappen in The Hague.

Orchestra: Concertgebouw Orchestra.

Conductor: Gustav Mahler.

Second and third Dutch performance:

October 3 & 7, 1909, at the Amsterdam's Concertgebouw.

Orchestra: Concertgebouw Orchestra.

Conductor: Gustav Mahler.
To thank him for organizing the 1920 Mahlerfeest in Amsterdam, Alma Mahler presented W. Mengelberg with the manuscript of the full score of Mahler's Seventh. Since 1995, that full score is available in fac-simile (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gustav-Mahler-Facsimile-Seventh-Symphony/dp/9056210025/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1488311105&sr=1-1&keywords=9789056210021). It is interesting because it shows Mahler's process in scaling down the instrumentation in order to achieve transparency and clarity.

Apropos of percussions, only in Amsterdam you can listen to a M7 with a particular restored timpani , which was built for Willem Mengelberg's performances of the piece to play the climatic low Des roll (Rondo - Finale, bars 506-511). It is at least two times bigger than the normal ones (I took a picture, but I do not knwo how to upload it here).

[barryguerrero]

Yes, that's to sound a low Db, I believe - just off the normally largest timpani.

[GL]

I could definitively hear that low Db very loud and clear, even (speaking in Freudian slang) with the rather percussions-retentive Jansons.

I am not sure, but I think it was recorded for the first time with the M7 of RCO/Chailly (Decca).

[barryguerrero]

Yes, they literally dug around in some underground space and found the 'timpano' just sitting there. Apparently, one of the percussionists knew exactly what it was, and what it had been used for. They mention all this in the notes to the otherwise dull (but pretty) Chailly/RCOA/Decca recording of M7 (the Leipzig one is far more 'exciting').