Boy, I don't know - maybe it's just me, but I'm not bowled over by the new Haitink M3. Part of the problem, I think, is that there's almost zero hall ambience to the sound. It's very upfront, and that's not always a good thing with Chicago's lethal brass section. To me, this is a little bit of a time reversal; harking back to the good (bad, in my book) old days when each Solti/CSO Mahler release redefined the mean of "blast-a-thon". The brass are very strong, indeed. But combined with Haitink's rather poker face conducting (and I thought Horenstein defined, "one size fits all", when it came to tempo relationships), this is loud without an abundance of tension or excitement. At the first movement's development section, Haitink is stately without Horenstein's nutzoid - and thus, exciting - tambourine and horn trills. In other words, Horenstein finds the more interesting coloristic effects in his balances, even though he's equally slow. With Haitink/CSO, you get the impression of a percussion section that's fighting to keep up with a very powerful brass section - just like the Solti days. But more to the point, there's a dichotomy that just doesn't work for me. On the one hand, we have Haitink, who nearly always makes early Mahler sound overly mature for its years. But on the other hand, we have the famous names of the CSO brass section, putting on a show for the brass playing frat boys at Northwestern and University of Indiana: "dude, let's down some tall brewskis and get down with Chicago!" - just like when I was in music school!
So, by all means, this ain't "bad" in any technical sense of the word. If you're a big brass fan, you won't be disappointed. It's just that at the time of the official announcement, I wasn't convinced that Haitink would be a great match for where the CSO is at today. This recording leaves me thinking that my hunches might still be correct. I'll give a more detailed and objective description of the play-by-play later on.
I might also mention another, "maybe it's just me" issue. I don't know - it just seems that Michelle De Young sounds less good with each new outing. I hear so little of the wonderful, natural voice that graced her "DLvdE" on Reference Recordings, a full decade ago. It seems like she's trying so hard to be a big sounding Wagnerian these days. Again, maybe it's just me (?). Even though she doesn't possess such a beautiful sounding instrument, I prefer Petra Lang. Birgirt Remmert is my current favorite Mahler mezzo.