Although I often think of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No 9 in D Major as the culminating work in the western musical repetoire, for the past 12 years or so my only CD copy of it was the dreary Lenny Bernstein/NY Philharmonic Columbia recording. Packaged in tandem with the Seventh and the one completed movement of the Tenth, so there’s a break between the Landler movement and the Rondo-Burleske where you have to change the goddamn CD.
While nosing around Academy Used Records on West 18th Street teo days ago, I found a still-shrinkwrapped copy of the 2002 live recording by Claudio Abbado and the Berliner Philharmoniker, on Deutsche Grammophon, 81 minutes on one disc, for eight bucks. I added it to my stack of purchases.
Holy Moses! The track listing shows the four movements, plus a fifth cut of two minutes of applause, and that’s barely enough in my opinion…although the audience seems to be rearing out of their seats with enthusiasm. So was I, and I was listening to it over my computer speakers!
The first movement runs smooth like a silk bandanna over your sex parts. The second lurches and thunks like a drunken peasant. The third goes BEYOND the grotesque. And the fourth…the incredible “death movement”…quietly wrenches the heart right up the throat.
This version knocked me out all over again, and so I’m wondering what recordings the other Mahlerites on the SDMB have, and if there are any that might be even more mind-blowing than this one.