Orchestral
Bayan Northcott marvels at the attention to dynamic detail in this recording of the First
Mahler
Symphony No. 1 in D Minnesota Orchestra/osmo Vänskä BIS BIS-2346 56:45 mins This must be about the most accurate reading of Mahler’s First Symphony to have appeared in years, in the sense that every dynamic marking, every nuance of rubato is scrupulously adhered to. The mysterious opening sevenoctave A in the strings is so quiet in BIS’S slightly recessed recording that one has to bump up the volume to hear that the music has begun. The ensuing woodwind figures are genuinely pianissimo, the trumpet fanfares sound as though coming from miles away, while much of the vernal ensuing body of the movement, taken relatively gently by Osmo Vänskä and exquisitely nuanced by the Minnesota Orchestra’s wind and strings, seems as if heard through a veil until the climactic fanfares bring the orchestra – and the deep resonances of Minneapolis’s Orchestra Hall – fully to life towards the end.
The country-dance second movement is more robust, with fine work from the Minnesota horns, but the mock-funereal slow movement is more sensitive to its passages of sad nostalgia than to its more vulgar touches of satirical bitterness. The finale is launched passionately enough, with wonderfully unanimous détaché playing from the Minnesota strings in its frantic tirades. But Vänskä lingers so solicitously over the second subject and the many transitions during which ideas from the first movement return to the argument, that the movement holds together less well than many a rougher reading.
Did Mahler really expect the often resistant orchestras of his time to fully realise his more extreme dynamic markings and nuances, or did he reckon that, in half observing them, players would deliver more or less what he actually wanted? Whatever else, in fulfilling his indications to the letter this remarkable new version demands to be heard. PERFORMANCE ★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★
Hear extracts from this recording and the rest of this month’s choices on the BBC Music Magazine website at www.classical-music.com
Whatever else, this remarkable new version demands to be heard