Stenz/Gürzenich M4

[Russ Smiley]

http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/Gustav-Mahler-Symphonie-Nr-4/hnum/7558775

(samples sound excellent)

[barry guerrero]

Nice sleighbells! - a tad slow, but nice sounding none-the-less. I like the zippy tempo for the scherzo. Naturally, you can't tell anything about the slow movement when they play you just the start of it. It would be nice if they would let you hear the fast section before the main climax, or the climax itself. Oelze has never been one of my favorites for Mahler 4. For my taste, she sounds a tad too operatic. However, all factors considered, this indeed looks to be promising.

[mahler09]

I have to agree with the tempo- it's a little too safe for my taste- but hearing a full recording would give me a better picture.  Sound quality is superb though. 

[Russ Smiley]

Nice sleighbells! - a tad slow, but nice sounding none-the-less. I like the zippy tempo for the scherzo. Naturally, you can't tell anything about the slow movement when they play you just the start of it. It would be nice if they would let you hear the fast section before the main climax, or the climax itself. Oelze has never been one of my favorites for Mahler 4. For my taste, she sounds a tad too operatic. However, all factors considered, this indeed looks to be promising.

I briefly compared the samples and their timings to the recent Stenz/CSO and Stenz/Hallé broadcasts that I had recorded off the Internet.  All timings are all very similar (I know, they should be with the same conductor), with only the CSO Andante exceeding this Gürzenich performance by a minute.  The Hallé's first movement starts even slower but gets the same tempo after the strings enter.  I don't know how useful that may be to others, but I suspect that if you have or know broadcasts, then you know what to expect on the CD.

[barry guerrero]

This business of starting out slowly, then speeding up when the principal theme enters (strings): there's nothing new about that. As a trend, it pretty much got started with Simon Rattle. He claims that he learned to do that, based on a recollection on how Mahler himself did it from Berthold Goldschmidt - the composer who did much of the orchestrating for Dereck Cooke's performing version of Mahler 10. It's alright by me, I guess.