Sorry for the delay and here's what the BBC reviewer said. Incidentally,the remit is to choose a performance for a record library. Many reviewers virtually pick up to half-a-dozen by means of runners-up,best choices at full-, mid-, and bargain price plus DVDs now.
And I've noticed that several posters here have picked their no.1 too.
Ist movement.
Karajan.About one passage,the violins are playing too loud. With K.,everything is smoothed over.
bernstein - occasionally,they're not playing what's written.
Giulini. it's "the slowest on record (pause) and it feels like it." tho' if you want M. as tho' it were Bruckner,elegaically,then he's very good.
Bertini,Ozawa,Levine and Tennstedt are conceptions rather like Giulini.
Horenstein '66/BBBSO. The bass clarinet goes missing completely "and his earlier recording is no better."
Barbirolli. trumpet misses one bar,and sounds unsafe in the next. The violins sound like "they're skating on thin ice"
Then he said,"This is how it goes",and played
Kondrashin whose orchestra plays with force and "the height of virtuosity",then
Barshai, good if not reach the level of Kondrashin's orchestra.
He did a riff about orchestra for a long time objecting to having to play "this rubbish" and the attitude showing up in their plating. So,
Walter late 30s . The VPO "sound like they're sight-reading"
Mitropoulos,Klemperer,Rattle and Maazel don't sound much better, in terms of accuracy
MTThomas and SFSO don't dig deep. For a passage of scariness,the performance "wouldn't scare the skin off a rice pudding."
Kubelik brings more of the sense of the sinister.
maderna has fine playing from "exuberant BBC horns"
Abbado and GMYouthO really "lays into the march".
2nd Movement
Mahler insists on the movement should sound like a rough and peasant dance.
Boulez sounds "far too artful"
Walter early 60s "shows he hadn't lost his sense of humour - authentic in the best sense." the playing of the CSO not too secure.
Sinopoli goes in for "self-conscious galumphing"
At the end,Kubelik finds the right sense of dissolution.
3rd Movement
Barenboim is "literal and small-scale" as tho' he'd rather it was more like a 2-part invention.
Ancerl His "skill is simply to let the contradictions (in the musical argument) speak for themselves."
Few conductors give the impression of looking like they are losing control at the movement's end.
Abbado and Bernstein/conzertgebouw do,by contrast.
4th Movement
Abbado/BPO "nobody matches the BPO strings"
Bernstein/VPO "nobody matches Bernstein's magnetism, and this is the DVD choice.
Ancerl's players play "with noble purity that I find more durable than on more overtly exquisite alternatives,
so Ancerl is the mid-price choice.
"The greatest performances bed their tempo to our receptive inclinations,allowing us to understand the work in different lights according to our own states,whether they seek catharsis or consolation. Abbado's recording (the live one from '99) does this.
"More than any other conductor,Abbado does what mahler asks for on every page,yet is able to carvs something unique out of this careful attendance."
There you go.
I think it's a useful programme if you use it right. The reviewers are usually very sharp about deficiencies,and listen very closely,a good teaching-one-to-listen aid. There are good examples above.
my biggest beef is that the qualities and insights of the dismissed performances are barely pointed to,and i think that's a different prog.
My second-biggest (I have two !) is that performance is the thing almost more than the music (tho' that's again a poiint of the prog !!)
