Mahler: Symphony No. 2, "Resurrection"

I thoroughly agree with the other commentators of this stunning performance and recording. I was very fortunate to hear Klaus Tennstedt and the LPO and chorus perform Mahler 2 at the Royal Festival Hall during the early 1980's. I was hoping that magnificent performance might make it on to CD. However, this recording is akin to a dream come true! May I say first of all it is very moving and revealing in detail. Mahler 2 has been well served on disc however this has to go to the top of the list. Klaus Tennstedt's studio Mahler 2 is good but this live version far outstrips it in terms of performance and recording. Much praise and gratitude has to go to Tony Faulkner the sound engineer and his associates. The finale is amazing and certainly outstrips the much overhyped reviews by a well known Classical music magazine of Ivan Fischer's rendition on Channel Classics. The soloists and choir are exemplary. At last we are rewarded with a realistic organ sound that many recordings fail to convey. I could go on indefinitely about this jewel of a recording. I will conclude this review by honouring the memory of a great Mahlerian, Klaus Tennstedt, who loved the LPO and Chorus and who in turn played and sang out their hearts for him. If you love the Music of Gustav Mahler then this recording is a must....truly a Ten Star rating and at the asking price a give away!

I second everything that all previous reviewers have said about this recording - it is one of the most powerful performances of any Mahler symphony I have heard. Before buying this recording, I owned the old Klemperer EMI and a rare release of Barbirolli and the Berlin Phil on Testament - both of these recordings are marvelous in their own ways, Klemperer for his driven, stark and unsentimental reading, Barbirolli for that special warmth that only he could bring to Mahler. The LPO and Tennstedt however are in another league. Recorded live in Feb 1989, this recording not only has amazing sound quality (you can really hear the inner details of Mahler's orchestration - more so than in the Klemperer or Rattle recordings), but also sounds 'natural', considering the restrictions of the acoustic from the old Royal Festival Hall.

By looking at the timings of each movement, you may think that it is stretched just a bit too much. All I can say is - IGNORE timings - they tell you nothing whatsoever about how dynamic and colourful a performance can be. I once heard a comment that 'the wrong tempo in the right hands can work', simply because of the genuine conviction that the conductor and players bring to the performance. (By 'wrong', I think the person meant 'unconventional', whatever that is...!) Anyway, that's irrelevant here. The LPO play superbly - creating an amazingly rapt tone in the strings when needed, and tremendous bite and articulation in the wind and brass - it made me think that they really were a world-class orchestra under Tennstedt. Just listen to the closing few minutes of the 1st movement - the amazing portamento in the strings will melt your heart - in fact there are several places in the symphony where Tennstedt gets the strings to play in an 'older' style, employing more portamento and rubato than you usually hear in recordings since the 1960s. Yet the LPO also produces a deliberately rugged sound when needed - sometimes I think many performances of Mahler nowadays are just too polite, as though conductors are afraid to confront the demons in the basement.

For me, Tennstedt's interpretation of the 1st, 2nd and 5th movements are a revelation (the 3rd and 4th are also fantastic, but perhaps a bit more predictable). Unless you know Tennstedt's way with Mahler, you really won't know where the tempo is going, such is his bar-to-bar control over proceedings. Occasionally you might feel that a few places don't work, but hey, that's the risk of live performance and that's what we all live for!

In short - stunning, sublime and revelatory. Need I say more?

There must have been some anxious moments at the British Geological Survey on the night of February 20th 1989 as this cataclysmic account of Mahler's Symphony No.2 unfolded at the Festival Hall in London. Never mind five stars; this performance should be measured on the Richter Scale.

Unlike the other reviewer, I wasn't lucky enough to be there on the night but I have been hoping and praying that a live Tennstedt Resurrection would appear soon on either the LPO's own label or BBC Legends. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it would be as good as this.

I can't remember ever being so startled or moved by a performance of a work I know so well. Through his instrumental phrasing and tempos Tennstedt seems to bring out more of the tragedy, tension and nobility in this music than anyone else I've heard. The second movement Andante Moderato in particular is a real ear-opener with an extraordinary array of string tone but a slight emphasis towards the lower strings. This completely changes the mood of the music from the slightly sentimental interlude we are used to hearing to something altogether more bitter. In fact, it is not until the fourth movement Urlicht that we achieve the first sense of relief and it becomes the true turning point of the symphony that Mahler intended. It's utterly hypnotic and beautifully sung by Jard Van Nes, even if her rich, smoky voice does just run out of puff on the last word due to Tennstedt's broad and taxing tempo.

And so to the mighty finale. At 39 minutes it's even longer than Bernstein's NYPO recording on DG. In fact, timings are pretty similar throughout and this new release is one of the longest on record. The LPO (who play like gods throughout the entire work, by the way) really unleash all hell in the first part of this movement and the power and depth of their sound is both incredibly satisfying and more than a little unnerving. The brass and percussion are superbly caught in rich, weighty sound and in even more detail than EMI managed for Rattle or DG did for Abbado in Lucerne. For all the splendour of sound, however, the hushed pauses are just as rewarding as they really let you feel the tension and expectation of the capacity audience which is stunned to virtual silence throughout the concert. The choral singing on Tennstedt's EMI recording was always a bit woolly and disappointing; here it's sharp and very cleanly focussed, with Yvonne Kenny's regal soprano floating out to find a natural-sounding position just in front of the chorus with Van Nes. Their final duet is amongst the best on record and has both beauty and stature. As Tennstedt sweeps us towards the end on an enormous tidal wave of choral and orchestral sound (and with an unscored cymbal crash, to which I'll turn a deaf ear!), the RFH's organ kicks in to launch us towards heaven. The final bars are truly spectacular and the hall erupts with the kind of cheer that greets an England try at Twickenham.

This really is the best of all possible worlds. The thrill and emotional clout of Tennstedt's live LPO Mahler on a mid-priced, own-label release but with instrumental precision, A-List soloists and quality of sound that would grace a major-label studio recording. Unlike some recent Tennstedt issues on LPO or BBC Legends, this concert was deliberately recorded in digital sound by professional engineers working at the hall on the night; it's not a remastering of somebody's taped radio broadcast. The fascinating booklet insert explains all.

Having had one prayer answered, I now have another one: to see a live performance as good as this one, just once in my lifetime. I suspect I never will.