They play in an excellent hall, and hire from the same pool of great and readily available players as most everyone else in the U.S. Notice that on the very last Eb chord of the symphony, the conductor coaxes the second timpanist to make a big crescendo. This was a little bit of a miscalculation on Mahler's part; one that he addressed at the end of the 8th symphony. In M2, only the second timpanist has a crescendo marked on that very last note. It's simply not enough! I can well imagine that Mahler got his second timpanists to just beat the daylights out of their Eb. Anyway, . . . . it sounds really good, and they sure the got the two gongs to be audible at the very end. Frankly, because of the difference in acoustics, Detroit is among my very favorite orchestras, anywhere.
Topic: Mahler 2-Detroit Symphony-Bignamini (Read 9946 times)