Don Satz writes:

>Maazel has been lauded from some sources for his Mahler cycle on Sony.
>Would list members provide some feedback on those Mahler symphonies?

I heard it and my reaction to it is my usual Maazel reaction:  big league
competence, but that's all.  Recently though, doing a Bruckner cycle here
in Munich with the radio orchestra I think he fell short of even that mark.
The early symphonies seem to be notoriously hard to elaborate.  I know that
Celibidache, who considered himself/was widely considered something of a
Bruckner specialist, avoided them.  Thus Bruckner's symphonies seemed to
have begun for him at #4.  Maazel doughtily plowed through the whole kit,
and the result was ho-hum.  By contrast, Perahia who played Mozart's late
concertos mano a mano with every (?) Bruckner performed, did very well
indeed.  If those performances ever attain the sound of recording, then I
suspect they'll make an excellent addition to the avid collector's trove (I
can't imagine that in this day the quality of sound could be poor enough to
disqualify them).  The best Mahler I ever heard here was Kubelik's, driving
the Bavarian Radio Symphony.  Oh, and agree with Peter Lundin that the
Berlin Philharmonic is likely to go for a German/Austrian conductor to
replace Abbado.  Among the reasons, if not necessaarily the most important
one, is that the city is now not only the de jure but also the de facto
capital of Germany, and that foreign talent is already amply represented
there in the persons of Barenboim and Nagano.

Denis Fodor                     Internet:[log in to unmask]