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Abbado has a special connection with the Mahler symphonies and has been acclaimed for his performances of them. He has also set new standards with his Lucerne Festival Orchestra, for which he hand-picked first-rate soloists from orchestras all over Europe. We reviewed the aggregation’s DVD of the Mahler Seventh, which was videotaped back in 2005.
This time we have the Mahler Third in exceptional Blu-ray imagery plus uncompressed 5.1 PCM surround sound. (The value of having the Third in surround was established by Vanguard’s original 4-channel Mahler recordings on tape with the Utah Symphony, which started with the Mahler Third.) The Lucerne concert hall is gorgeous and and conducive to the best presentation of the work, especially with the women’s and children’s choirs arraying up and behind the orchestra. This videotaping was made during the Summer of 2007 Festival, and the shots and cutting are exemplary.
This was the fifth time the various top musicians were meeting to perform in Lucerne. They included such familiar names as clarinetist Sabine Meyer and cellist Natalia Gutman. Abbado gives his players the freedom to do their utmost and to listen closely to one another. His Mahler is precisely calculated but also intuitively felt. He isn’t as ecstaticallly emotional as Bernstein’s followers, but neither is he as dry as, say, Boulez. The final movement of the work is even more dramatic than that of the fine San Francisco Symphony SACD conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, and the sonics a bit more focused. The “O Mensch!” and her other vocal parts are beautifully delivered by contralto Larsson, and the choruses are thrilling in their portions. The dynamic range is extreme - as good as the best SACD. Be careful in selection of the on-screen audio options - it appears at first the Blu-ray is only 2.0 PCM, but if you select “PCM2” you get the uncompressed 5.1 PCM audio. (It is correctly identified on the box but I failed to see that.)
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