Mark Shanks wrote:
>Segerstam on Chandos is the only recording that I know of where the
>performance and recording live up to the potential of this work.
It's better than most, but I can't quite get to love it.
>Many will vote for the Solti - that one should now be labelled "strictly
>for nostalgia". (After all these years, I still don't know what the fuss
>was about when this was released.....)
I always used to go for Solti, believing that despite its many faults it
got most of the important things right (intense thunderbolt energy in Part
1, good soloists (almost) throughout, a good recording of a brute of a
piece to get to sound convincing, and a magnificent finale). In the last
few months, I've come to realise that the main reason why I loved the Solti
was the way it reminded me more than any other recording of the first time
I ever heard Mahler 8 live - conducted by Colin Davis in the Albert Hall
during an early '70s Prom season - rather than any intrinsic virtues of
that particular recording. Recently I've become a total convert to the
Horenstein performance on "BBC Legends". Tony Duggan, who knows his Mahler
inside out and sideways, rates this very highly indeed and as usual he's
right. It is certainly the best M8 available, and it's got to be in the
top two or three Mahler recordings of anything, ever.
>Avoid the later Bernstein on DG - it was released only because of
>Bernstein's death before the DG cycle was completed, and it was taken from
>tapes of a live performance and frankly, I don't think it was a good idea
>to palm this one off on an unsuspecting public. (And I'm not very fond of
>his earlier CBS recording, either.)
Very good advice. Bernstein's conducting of Mahler polarises most
Mahlerians into two diametrically opposed camps, and I'm slightly unusual
in liking a few of his recordings and being unable to stand the others.
IMO, he didn't have a clue about the 8th.
Avoid Tennstedt, Morris and Shaw. Mitropoulos is unusual (a very slow Part
1) but interesting, and most other recordings that I know have good points
to balance out the bad so any of them would be worth buying. But in the
end, Mahler 8 needs live performance!
Ian Crisp
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