Susan Juhl wrote:

>I don't know what you've heard before, but this recording had been playing
>here, as I was prepping for the San Francisco Symphony's concert with MTT
>conducting.  It seems to me to be a gutsy, gorgously recorded version.
>
>The concert was electrifying, BTW.
>
>I wonder, though, about the fourth movement, the adagietto: it's
>beautiful, very moving and all that (for strings and harp), but if it were
>played at a more lively tempo, wouldn't the parts fit together better? I
>felt like I heard the funeral march/gloomy point of view of life, then took
>a breather to fall in love, then heard the comic view point of existence.
>If the adagietto were faster, the sequeway would be smoother.  Anyone?

Dead right.  The fact is Mahler himself conducted it in around seven
minutes, as did Walter and Mengelberg, both of whom heard him and must have
taken the hint.  The way the piece gets dragged out to absurd lengths (just
under fourteen minutes by Haitink) spoils its delicacy something rotten.
It also makes more sense of its recapitulation in the last movement thus
linking the two together far better.

Donald Mitchell points out that the piece is "an orchestral song" and that
no singer could manage some of the absurd tempos that some conductors
indulge in.

Tony Duggan
Staffordshire,
United Kingdom.