Maazel NYPO M8 Live on WFMT Website

[James Meckley]

Lorin Maazel is conducting M8 with the New York Philharmonic this week as a way of closing out his tenure there. WFMT in Chicago is going to broadcast the Thursday night (6/25) performance live over its radio network and as streaming audio on its Website:

http://wfmt.com

The Webcast starts at 7:00 PM EDT (23:00 UTC) to allow for features on outgoing music director Lorin Maazel and retiring principal clarinetist Stanley Drucker (60 years in the orchestra). Downbeat is set for 7:30 PM EDT (23:30 UTC).

James

[Matthew]

I also see from the NYPO site that live recordings of all the symphonies conducted by Maazel are being released for download. Nos. 1-5 are already out and have appeared on eMusic. Here are the links:

http://nyphil.org/buy/eStore/maazelMahler.cfm
http://www.emusic.com/browse/l/b/-dbm/a/0-0/1400268239/0.html

[John Kim]

hey, only for download??

Why not SACD or even regular CD??

John,

[akiralx]

I note the way the longer ones are split into 'disc 1' and 'disc 2' on amazon - even though there are no discs...

[barry guerrero]

If any of these are from Carnegie Hall, they might be worth checking out. But if they're from Avery Fischer Hall, forget it! (for me, anyway).

Barry

[akiralx]

If any of these are from Carnegie Hall, they might be worth checking out. But if they're from Avery Fischer Hall, forget it! (for me, anyway).

Barry

They're all from AF, but I might give one a try.  Is AF very dry?

[sperlsco]

Maazel is on my short-list for least favorite Mahler conductor.  However, I may download a few of these from eMusic anyway -- just because eMusic is such a great deal for purchasing/downloading symphonies in MP3 format.  I've previously downloaded some dreadful Maazel/NYPO ones from Opera Share (M5 and M7 IIRC).  I'll give M2 and M3 a try though. 

[Russell]

So now all of the symphonies except for M8 are available for download.  (And it looks like you can at least listen to all of the M8 now via InstantEncore).  Has anyone tried them out?  Maazel's not my favorite conductor, either (for Mahler or for anything else, for that matter), but I'm still curious.  It looks like HDTracks offers full-quality (uncompressed) downloads, so I might give it a try with one or two of the symphonies.

Russell

[barry guerrero]

Russell,

You can sample pretty every movement from every symphony. Right away, you can tell that his tempi are generally slow - just like with his Vienna cycle. But the sound and the playing both sound a bit better to me, even with just the samples. Make sure you can deal with slow tempi first.

Barry

[James Meckley]

The NYPO Website was offering the entire first movement of Symphony No. 3 as a "free sample," so I downloaded it. Beautifully played, as one would expect (Joe Alessi was in good form, and Phil Smith always seems in good form), and the recording was nicely detailed and surprisingly good for an MP3. Interpretively, I would describe Maazel's approach as "expansive," but without ever generating the intensity and heat required in certain spots to produce a satisfying performance of 3/i. It times out at 36:50 for those who relate to such data.

As to the broadcast of Symphony No. 8, I felt it was much less successful than the above recording. The engineering staff clearly had to deploy many more microphones than normal to accommodate this massive work, and it sounded it. There was no believable soundstage, just a collection of individual, pan-potted sound sources, and overly compressed to boot. Performance wise, Maazel's tempos often sounded too slow, lacking forward drive and intensity in sections where one expects that. Some of the soloists seemed to have trouble following the conductor and, to my ears, were overly prominent in the mix. Pretty good fake organ, though. I'm told that both Friday and Saturday nights were much better - apparently Maazel was "on" for those.

James