Cheap Mahler: Symphony No. 2 "Resurrection" (Music) (Gustav Mahler, Gilbert Kaplan, Maureen Forrester) Price

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Customer Reviews of Mahler: Symphony No. 2 "Resurrection"

A Passion For Mahler's Second
Gilbert Kaplan is an investment banker with a singular passion. That passion is Mahler and in particular the 2nd Symphony. At his own expense he hired an orchestra and choir to conduct the work at Carnegie Hall about a decade ago. Rich guy throwing his money away on an ego trip? Well not really. Mr. Kaplan may have a passion for one work but he knows that work intimately and is more than able to communicate that to and lead performers in bringing it out. After the success at Carnegie Hall Mr. Kaplan has been invited by numerous orchestras to conduct the work. As can be heard here his command of the orchestra and Mahler's unique idiom are complete. The passion he brings to the score insures us that he does not, as far too many "professional" conductors do, fall into a routine performance. Kaplan in his lectures on the symphony has said that although the work really needs a choir of about 250 voices the usual in concert and recording is around 150 or less. With about 5 very fine British and Welsh choirs Kaplan gives us a choir of 250+ voices. The recorded sound is quite detailed and open avoiding any hint of congestion. All in all for an amateur a performance of Mahler's Second that puts many of the pros to shame.

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Library choice!
Even if you don't know the first thing about music notation, a quick perusal of a Mahler score will still leave you in no doubt that the man was a control freak. It must be hard for any conductor-composer to entrust the realisation of his works to others, and it must be sheer hell when you're such a perfectionist as Mahler was. He didn't leave anything to coincidence if he could help it; some pages are so dense with footnotes and instructions for the conductor that it's hard to read the music at all. You would expect that this would preclude any such thing as an interpretation of a Mahler symphony; rather, all these detailed instructions should yield fairly similar sounding results no matter who's conducting. We know of course from experience that this is not the case - far from it! Conductors have visions, styles and ego's pervasive enough to overrule even Mahler's most insistent instructions ("nicht zögern!", "KEIN ritenuto!").
That is why this recording by Kaplan is such a godsend. His activities on the rostrum have been greeted with polite interest at best among professional reviewers, but his amateur conducting has also been an easy target for derision. Yet he is an amateur in the true, 18th century meaning of the word: somebody with a passion for this single work so intense that merely listening to it, or worse, listening to what others were doing to it, was no longer enough. So he turned to conducting it himself, taking conducting lessons and hiring an orchestra and chorus for the occasion (something admittedly greatly facilitated by his millionaire status). All this in pursuit of a single goal: attaining a realisation of this score as close as possible to Mahler's intentions.
He has succeeded gloriously, as can be gauged from this disc, onto which he fortunately decided to commit his efforts. I would even go one step further and say that for me this is THE library version of Mahler 2. Here, for once, you get just about exactly what the score says - nothing more (well, sometimes a bit more on the strength of secondary sources), certainly nothing less. That may raise fears of a coolly objective, academic or doggedly analytical reading, but these fears are unfounded. Because being true to the score also implies being true to Mahler's inexhaustible array of expressive markings; you don't need to infuse this music with surplus emotions: it's all there already. Instead of "outmahlering Mahler", something Bernstein was famously good at (and, admittedly, often very effectively so), Kaplan prefers to invest his energy in getting to the core of Mahler's intentions by studying all available documentation on this work: letters, reviews, rehearsal notes. (For good measure he includes many of them in the booklets (yes, there are TWO, at least with the original IMP issue that I own), which must make this one of the most lavishly produced and well documented CDs ever.) What kind of sound did the composer intend for the bells? How large should the chorus be? How should certain pizzicati be executed? Which part of the accompaniment at the choral entry is optional? The result of this eminently sober, scholarly approach is nothing short of intoxicating. Details are moulded with the greatest care, but the big picture is never blurred by them. There are quiet moments full of poetry, but out of them rise climaxes of hair-raising intensity. The more operatic off-stage details are realised to great effect too, truly suggestive of heavenly legions approaching through wide open spaces. From his documentation Kaplan concludes that Mahler, though he didn't indicate this in the score, intended antiphonal horns and trumpets, which greatly enhances the effect. Some conductors refuse to use the possibilities that recording techniques offer and that Mahler surely would have relished; they stick to minimalist solutions and give the listener a bunch of brass players in the foyer rather than the Last Trump (it's only one of the misjudgments that greatly detract from Rattle's consistently over-praised recording).
The singing is excellent. Though it would be nonsense to claim that Urlicht has never been better sung than by Maureen Forrester (unfortunately, like many others, she commits the sin of 'hinaufziehen' so abhorred by Mahler, on the final 'Leben'), her warm, dusky voice suits the music well. The chorus are excellent, and so, throughout, is the orchestra.
The blazing final pages achieve something very rare: not only do they make the spine tingle (not too hard given such forces and these notes), they are also genuinely moving. This symphony only works if it can turn even the most confirmed atheist into a devout Catholic for its duration, and this version definitely does! You may want other recordings for their particular insights, even if these maybe tell you more about the conductor than about Mahler. In the Scherzo, Kaplan's clarinets do not sneer quite as sardonically as those in Bernstein's DG recording; and the dark, Gothic primitivism pervading Haitink's Berlin version is rather special too. However, such interpretations only yield their specific merits more easily when assessed against Kaplan's touchstone recording. And for the sound addicts: this is a sonic spectacular. I would be very surprised if the rich aural spectrum of this work has ever been reproduced more faithfully on disc. The recording is crisp and crystal clear, full of detail, and tremendously ample in its dynamics. The final climax is unlike any rendering you've ever heard before, with a tummy-wobbling organ and bells massive enough to make your neigbours believe it's Sunday morning! Buy this disc and wake them up!

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A Recording of Love
Kaplans recording of Mahler 2 is another great version of a masterpiece. The music is smooth and forceful and extremely well produced Kaplans performance never errs on the side of excessive soppiness or cliches. The andante is especially beautifully played. The choir in the Scherzo is warm and full and well captured balancing well with the orchestra and the sound is brilliantly recorded. Not as lush a performance as Tennstedt, as fiery as Rattle or as majestic as Solti but a great version nonetheless.