I'm fudging a tad by giving this five stars - it's really more a 4.5 for me. But hey, I'm thankful that any major label is still recording the Mahler 8th at this point! For DG, this is a huge improvement over their Abbado M8 recording, but not fully superior to their Sinopoli one. Sinopoli has the stronger female cast, but Boulez has the stronger men; especially the tenor (Johan Botha for Boulez; Keith Lewis for Sinopoli). For anyone who is familiar with Boulez's middle '70s Mahler 8th from the Royal Albert Hall with the BBC Symphony Orch. (it's been floating around on various Italian pirates for years), not much will come as a big surprise here. On the whole, Boulez opts for slower tempi throughout most of Part II. In Part I, Boulez is pretty much up to normal speed, but he takes the ending to Part I at a tempo that's so stately that it's almost beyond belief. I like it very much, but it has the odd effect of making the end of Part 1 seem more grand and important that the ending to Part II (which should be the grand summary of the entire symphony, if not all of western music up to that point!). This is especially true in light of the fact that the series of simultaneous cymbal and tam-tam smashes near the end of the symphony, barely register through the dense sounding Eb Major chord (offstage brass are perfectly audible, however). Still, there's much attention to small detail, as well balances throughout Part II - so much so that the entire symphony comes off as being thoroughly musical, and not just a sequence of pretty filler material that's mostly there to bide one's time between important climaxes.
While Part II was a bit slow to take flight under Boulez (he's like Kent Nagano in that regard), I found the entire passage from the tenor's first big solo - "Hochste Herrscherin der Welt" - up to Una Poentitetium's (Gretchen - same gal) magical appearance some eight minutes later, to be practically spellbinding. That said, the almost Wagnerian sounding orchestal passages near the start of Part II have far more intensity here than they do under Nagano. That in itself is a testament to the fine and idiomatic playing of the Staatskapelle Berlin. After that excellent middle section, I found the passage work for the three penitant women to be a tad droopy under Boulez, if also well detailed. And speaking of details, one that I really appreciate is that Boulez used a true harmonium (chamber organ) wherever Mahler called for one, thus making a strong contrast to the big concert organ. Anyway, following those penitant women, things hit their stride again with an outstanding "blicket auf" passage, with Botha sounding even better here than he did previously. The slower than normal tempo for the symphony's ending might not be to everyone's taste either, but I prefer it to being too fast (Solti, Bernstein, and Tennstedt - I hate to say!)
I also very much like the very start of the symphony here. The tempo is just right - not too fast; not too slow. The amount of organ is also just right - not too little, but not too much either. A previous reviewer complained of excessive bass eminating from the organ. On my system, it didn't overbalance everything else. Since this is the first Mahler recording to have been made in the excellent acoustics of Berlin's Jesus Christus Kirche since the much celebrated Karajan Mahler 5th came out in the early 1970s, I suspect that an electronic organ was being employed - at least for the lower end of the organ's spectrum. Perhaps it's just a matter of taste, but I didn't find it excessive. In fact, I'm very pleasantly surprised by just how good DG's sound is here - for once.
So, with this fine finale to Boulez's decade long Mahler cycle (over a decade, really), can we finally bury the much celebrated Solti Mahler 8th once and for all? Well, not really, as they're nearly polar opposites. Even if I find it more technically polished than moving, the Solti still has an excellent cast throughout (Kubelik has an even stronger cast). But Boulez certainly has the more interesting details, and he takes his time to smell those roses along the way as well.
