Mahler LP cover art

[akiralx]

My favorite LP cover art was the Levine M3 (with Marilyn Horne).
The cover art shows animals of the forest, out in the night, looking into Mahler's composing hut, where a silhouettle of Mahler is at work composing.  An angel is handing Mahler, through the window, a bouquet of flowers.
For me, it has captured the natural spirit of Mahler, with his affinity for nature, animals of the forest, and night.
It was wonderfully done by the famous children's book illustrator, Maurice Sendak.

--John H

Now all I need to do is track down the recording for my ipod!

[Phoenix]

Anyone wanting the Levine M3, it is available from arkivmusic.com (including the wonderful cover art!).

[Prospero]

The Levine Mahler 3 cover is a classic by Maurice Sendak (most famous for "Where the Wild Thing Are").

For a parallel sample of Sendak in music, there was a NYC Opera Janacek "Vixen" and, I believe, a separate book of the Vixen story illustrated by Sendak.

[barry guerrero]

It's my favorite Mahler cover of all, along with the Mehta/Israel Phil. M6 from Teldec.

[Brucknerboyy]

I remember one Mahler LP cover where the cover art was superior to the performance.  That was the early 1970's performance of M2 by Ormandy/Philadelphia on RCA.  The cover art had a great photo from one of the 1960's earth-orbit space flights looking into the sun on an early morning sunrise with the Florida peninsula below.

I just found this LP too!  I've heard some good things about the performance so I'd thought I'd give it a try, and it's never been on CD if I remember correctly.


--Todd

Actually, RCA Japan released this recording on CD a few years ago.  I've got it (and believe John has it as well).  I like this performance a lot and have owned it on LP (US and German pressings), reel-to-reel, and now CD.  The only problem with it was that it had a horrible distortion whenever the music got even moderately loud. It wasn't an LP pressing issue, as the reel-to-reel copy had it as well.  I was shocked that this slipped by the recording engineers back then, and I don't recall the (mostly) ecstatic reviews of the time mentioning it, either.  The Japanese RCA CD transfer mitigates the distortion to some degree, but it's not totally free of it.

Russell

That's correct. The performance is pretty darn good with a natural flow and lots of musicality going for it (as always the case with Ormandy). But the audible distortion is so annoying that I haven't played it after hearing it once. I am surprised that both LPs and reel-to-reel tapes had the same problem. I know that there are serious Ormandy devotees out there wanting to hear this recording, so RCA owes to clean up the sonics and reissue the recording.

John,

I'm new to this forum (though hardly to Mahler's music), so bear with me fellow music lovers.

I like Ormandy’s M2 quite a lot, it’s powerful and convincing virtually throughout and with a finale in particular that is gripping from first bar to last (indeed, one of the few that don’t let me down just a bit at the apocalyptic final chord).

I actually found the distortion to be more of an issue on the Japanese CD I ordered than on the transfer I made from virtually pristine LPs (obtained at a ridiculously low price on Ebay), on low-tech equipment.

[barry guerrero]

Dave Hurwitz (Classics Today) doesn't deal with LPs, but I know he'd completely agree with you on this.