For Classical WETA's Mahler Month in 2009, I helped put together three complete Mahler cycles to be aired and accompanied it with a series of articles on Mahler's Symphonies (and favorite recordings) on the WETA website. This brings the entire survey (in the process of being migrated to
ionarts) together in one place and condenses the list to my top-two choices of each symphony and my top-choice SACD recording. Each title-graphic features "Mahler" written in a font roughly of Mahler's time. The posts are irregularly but continuously updated. Wherever the title-graphic is properly displayed, the essays have been restored. [
Edit 01/18: All the symphony essays have been restored; all that's missing now is the second part of the introduction.]
Wow, I can't believe how different our tastes are! I have hundreds of Mahler CDs and haven't even listened to half of what you list as the best performances. Our only real overlap is the Zander 6th. I will say I just listened to possibly the best 1st I've heard which is the first recorded..Walter with the NBC Symphony orchestra. If you can get passed the boxy sound it's fantastic.
ReplyDelete"Wow, I can't believe how different our tastes are! I have hundreds of Mahler CDs and haven't even listened to half of what you list..."
ReplyDelete...then how could you possibly know that our tastes are that far apart??? :-)
". . . how could you possibly know that our tastes are that far apart???"
ReplyDeleteThe other half??
Anyway, I share the other anon's reaction. Great that everyone has their own tastes though!
You should do an article about what scares you about the Chicago Symphony. Could be interesting.
What happened to your reviews? The links to WETA no longer work. Can they be found elsewhere?
ReplyDeleteDear commenter from 12 years ago, erhemm... those links have been fixed now. :-)
ReplyDelete