Amazon.co.uk Review
This is a very fine, marvellously recorded "Resurrection" symphony with bags to commend it, even if it fails quite to match market-leaders such as
Rattle and
Haitink. This massive musical essay on life and death, love and redemption lends itself well to the idea of being recorded in concert, but this performance is a strange phenomenon. Yes, it was recorded live (in Dallas)--but on no fewer than
four successive days and then pieced together into the finished item. The result is in fact more akin to an immaculately prepared studio recording--there is not quite the evidence of the type of risk-taking you would expect in front of a live audience and which can make or break a Mahler performance. There are thrilling, gripping and tenderly touching moments, but many will miss here and there the pointing-up of the manic, melancholic, melodramatic sides to Mahler. At times Litton's control and breadth work well but elsewhere they seem a hindrance. Still, this is a substantial achievement, blessed with spacious and yet detailed sound that is as impressive as the sleeve note on the so-called "virtual reality recording" process suggests. --
Andrew Green
From Amazon.com
One does not have to invest in a home theater system to infer the spatial dimensions of Delos's engineering, which conveys the ambience of Dallas's Myerson Hall more realistically than the 1989 Mata/Dallas
Resurrection, also recorded live. No special miking, for instance, was needed to balance the offstage brass in the last movement with the huge instrumental and choral forces onstage. Similarly, Litton's orchestra has made tremendous strides, as revealed in the fine-grained section work and deliciously characterized solo playing throughout. Litton likens Mahler's explicit performing instructions to having a conducting lesson with the composer, yet he is not averse to taking liberties in order to point up climactic moments, some of which come off better than others. His roller-coaster tempos in the visionary opening movement pull the music apart at the seams, while, conversely, the ebb and flow of the finale's lyrical sections pay haunting dividends in soft choral passages. Heidi Grant Murphy and Petra Lang handle their solos with security and clarity. If the Dallas Symphony does not quite command the sheen of its Saint Louis (Slatkin/Telarc) or San Francisco (Blomstedt/London) counterparts, audiophiles and Mahler-philes alike will garner much pleasure and insight from this fine release, especially at its two-for-one price.
--Jed Distler
See all 20 tracks on this disc
