I'm piecing together what is - for me - a near perfect M7. This has made me sample movements from different recordings that I already own. In choosing, I wanted to make the 7th a gradual transition from darkness to daylight, with the central scherzo being the pivotal point. For me, the whole symphony needs to be a sort of gradual accellerando. Here's what I came up with:
I - Boulez/Clevelend (DG - 23+ minutes).
I feel that the first movement is often times performed way too fast, not paying attention to Mahler's moderate allegro marking. But it also seems that conductors who are conscious of this problem, often times go too far in the other extreme; dragging the first movement out to 24 or 25 minutes. For me, Boulez gets it just right at 23-something minutes.
II - Abbado/BPO (DG - 16 minutes)
Abbado makes the first Nachtmusik nice and dark. He nails two very important passages. The first one being that strange passage with the three horns playing signals back and forth to each other (the second and third horns sounding in the distance), while the cowbells tinkle softly away. The second passage being the one that sounds something like a cross between slow klezmer music (woodwinds and stopped horns) and an Argentinian tango. With the Berlin strings, how can you go wrong in that passage?
III - Boulez/Cleveland (DG - 9:15)
There are faster performances of the scherzo out there; namely Abbado and Barenboim. But again, I wanted to heed Mahler's warning not to go too fast in this movement. It doesn't get any more controlled and precisely played than it does here, under Boulez. He also nails the climax of the movement: the loud pizzicato "snap" in the low strings.
IV - Barenboim/Staatskapelle Berlin (Teldec - 11:15)
I love the flow to Barenboim's fourth movement. The mandolin and guitar are very forward sounding too. In this case, romantic doesn't mean slow; it means to have life and movement to the flow of the music. The faster overall tempo makes for a better transition into the daylight of the finale.
V - Gary Bertini/Tokyo Met. S. O. (Fontec - 17:00)
This may seem like an odd choice to somebody who's not familiar with this recording. But Bertini is a full minute faster here than in his earlier Cologne recording. In addition, the all important bass drum is very full sounding (lots of big bass drum rolls in the finale; just as in the finale of M5). And on top of that, Bertini positively nails the final peroration of the symphony - really stretching the spot where the cowbells and deepbells go bonkers, just before the very end.
Obviously, the drawback in piecing something together like this, is that the sound will be quite different from one source to the next. Yes, that's true. But my main criteria here is tempi and tempo relationships, as well as pegging certain highlights and climaxes along the way. It doesn't mean that I'll be getting rid of any of my recordings either. Thanks for reading.
Barry Guerrero
Topic: midsummer project: burning my near perfect, "dream" M7 (Read 7395 times)