This first is off topic and I'm aware of it:
...the Abbado has not been received with much enthusiasm that I have seen.
It seems to me you are spreading misinformation again. Or maybe you really don't look around much. In Europe the recording garnered almost every possible praise from all directions; mention only the
Gramophone magazine's 2006 "Record of the Year"
and "Best Orchestral Recording" awards ("The BPO play like gods . . . ":
http://www.gramophone.co.uk/awardstemplate.asp?id=955&award_year=2006). But let's forget for a moment your distaste for things European and your apparent inability to get past the promotional stickers when it comes to Abbado, and look at a few responses this recording received in the U.S.:
"The conductor virtually owns the work, and an adoring band of Berliners gave him their all . . . it shares all the virtues of his Lucerne Fifth: the supreme command of both detail and line, the unsurpassed rhythmic flexibility and expressivity, and the sensitivity to period-appropriate touches such as telling use of portamento. Its growth over those 25 years emerges in both surprising and unsurprising ways. Despite the identifying and savoring of details, there is no stopping to smell the roses in an interpretation unrelentingly urgent yet never driven. Only an orchestra as fine as the Berliners, and as attuned to his ways, could sustain Abbado's brisk tempos. They express the urgency of death that stalks this music. They're the engine of powerful, explicit, and precise feeling."
Bay Area Reporter, July 28 & December 1, 2005
"The excellence of the sound is even more obvious when the whole orchestra makes its presence felt after the enigmatic opening measures of the finale: this orchestra has power to burn . . . this is a very impressive performance, which has grown in my estimation in the short time I've known it . . . one can easily apprehend the intimate knowledge of Mahler's music at work here, and it joins the other recent Abbado recordings (from Berlin and elsewhere) on my short list of Mahler performances that are worth revisiting often."
Fanfare, November 2005
"The excitement of the concert performance can be felt in every minute of this live recording . . . You will be hard pressed to find a Mahler Sixth with more warmth, breadth and dignity."
The New York Times, December 16, 2005
"[This is] a live recording that Mahlerians will want for its forwarding-moving flow . . . Abbado is especially fine in the Andante, here placed before the Scherzo, unlike his first, 1970s recording with the Chicago Symphony . . . one of the best available recordings of this section of the massive work. The Berlin strings shine here, as they do throughout the Symphony . . . the famous hammer blows in the last movement have tremendous impact . . . In fact, that last movement is one of the set's highlights, well-played and abundantly detailed. In sum, one of the better Sixths in the catalogue."
Dan Davis, staff review for
Amazon.com"[Abbado's Sixth] is inexpressibly touching in the same way his Ninth was, not least for the luminous sound the orchestra musters – at its most beautiful almost translucent – without stinting on power or tragic passion in a reading that darkens into “Tragic” as the work progresses. This is Abbado’s third, surely valedictory, recording of the work (first there was Chicago, then Vienna, now Berlin), and it inhabits a spirit world beyond the expressive poignance of the previous two, fine though moments were in both . . . Abbado plays [the 2nd mvt.] with a tenderness that verges on the unearthly, then follows with a scherzo that finds Mahler vacillating emotionally between gruff agony and memories of gentler times. The contrast is almost painful to hear as Mahler’s sense of loss is overcome by outbursts of anger, only to end in quiet despair . . . [In the finale] Abbado builds from sadness verging at moments on madness . . . to levels of agony that include the two famous “hammerblows” (Mahler wisely removed a third). What instrument was employed we’re not told in Donald Mitchell’s otherwise superbly argued program note, but it has the sound of doom no other performances I know come close to . . . Having been so moved by Gielen’s version, I replayed it between auditions of Abbado’s Berlin insights, and was startled to find him altogether heavier – unleavened emotionally, even in the “Alma” Andante – as if Mahler had sequestered himself in a dark room from which he refused to emerge. Now it may be that Gielen has a grasp of the Mahlerian Angst that Abbado tempers with his own survival of rather worse than a faithless wife. Remember, it was not until 1907 that Mahler learned of his heart condition, which he survived for four more years. But the further bonus of the Berlin Philharmonic’s superlative playing – their sheer range of tonal and dynamic expression – makes Abbado’s newest Sixth transcendental in his own canon, and one of the glories in DGG’s pantheon."
Classical CD Review,
classicalcdreview.com, July 2005
"This new Sixth was worth the wait. Abbado's Mahler is objective but not cold. It rests neatly between Boulez's clinical interpretation and the twisted hysteria of Bernstein. . . Abbado builds the symphony's edifice masterfully. The tension ratchets upwards a notch in each successive movement . . . Architecture within movements is handled finely too. Abbado does not bludgeon the listener with one shattering climax after another, but rather leads the listener to each movement's unique crisis. Another glory of this recording is the playing of the Berlin Philharmonic, and the clarity that Abbado achieves within and between its sections. This is gorgeous playing, and exquisitely balanced. At the same time, this is not sound for sound's sake (as one sometimes finds in Karajan), but a successful attempt to realize everything that Mahler imagined an orchestra could do. At the symphony's end, there are a few moments of silence, and then comes the applause – and soon after, cheers. One can appreciate both the audience's initial stillness – in Abbado's hands especially, the end of this symphony is shattering – and their subsequent enthusiasm. DG's engineering team has captured the music and the space that it lives in remarkably."
Classical Net,
www.classical.net 2005
"Abbado maintains a stoic approach to this most death-obsessed of Mahler symphonies, yet every detail registers with extraordinary playing by the Berlin Philharmonic . . . "
South Florida Sun-Sentinel, November 18, 2005
"The man has proved himself a modern master of things Mahlerian, and this performance has certainly the touch of mastery about it. Above all is the sense of forward drive supreme. From beginning to end, the piece seems of a whole, everything in it rushing toward that final culmination of fate, tragedy, and death."
Sensible Sound, December 2005
* * *
So it seems that the more grandiose if also quite contradictory role (in view of your first statement) you have adopted for yourself is more in line with reality, proclaiming as you elsewhere do that, besides you yourself, "there doesn't seem to be anyone out there with the guts to tell him that [this performance] isn't worthy of preserving [and that] the Berlin Philharmonic . . . has no business playing Mahler." Interesting, I guess; first no one likes it and then everyone but you is bowled over by it. Though coming from a source perhaps best known for its fierce promotion of "Joyce Hatto" over the originals copied I take such statements, too, with a grain of salt.
And if I may point out, what you are doing in your post is being a businessman advertising his product (commercial venture) on a non-commercial music site.
* * *
Now, back to the OP's request: I'm not sure I understand what you mean by it -- what we personally feel about, our subjective reactions, or what we think are the justifications of including such an extraordinary sound device in the composition's plan? Could you quickly clarify and then hopefully more. First I thought you were asking about different recordings and how the hammerblows are realized in them (talked about quite a lot in the above quotations by the way) but let me re-read what you said.
Thanks,
-PT
