![Mahler - Symphonies 7, 8 / Leonard Bernstein, Edda Moser, Judith Blegen, Gerti Zeumer, Ingrid Mayr, Agnes Baltsa, Kenneth Riegel, Hermann Prey, Jose van Dam, Wiener Philharmoniker [DVD]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51rmJeTKbjL._SX300_SY300_QL70_FMwebp_.jpg)
Leonard Bernstein made these recordings during his wonderfully productive collaboration with the Wiener Philharmoniker in the mid-1970s when he was at the peak of his career. Humphrey Burton's direction is, as always, very fine, giving the viewer/listener both the larger picture and highlighting individual soloists, players or groups of musicians and, of course, the maestro. The video and audio tracks show their age, but are quite acceptable even for today's standards. Bernstein's Seventh is everything one could desire: dark and spooky, highly sensual, but also structurally strong and assertive where needed. Bernstein's reading does not gloss over breakdowns in tonality and the foreshadowing of later musical developments. There is also a subtext of desperation in the score which is brought out quite movingly. As to the colossal Eighth, I have yet to encounter an interpretation that fully convinces me. This may be the music (Mahler's hybrid mélange of the medieval Pentecostal hymn and excerpts from Goethe's "Faust II," all culminating in a jubilant apotheosis that can ring hollow and bombastic), or it may well be my own (still) limited understanding of the work. Not as if I didn't try my utmost through the decades: I remember a horribly congested old mono first recording by Eduard Flipse and the Rotterdam Philharmonic, an exciting live performance by the Utah Symphony Orchestra under Maurice Abravanel in the 1970s, noteworthy recordings by Solti and Neumann, Tennstedt, Gielen and Gary Bertini (all still available and impressive in their respective ways), more recently Boulez (yet to appear on DVD) and, of course, Bernstein himself. This DVD may be the next best thing to a live performance (in some ways even better, as you can go back), and it shows the conductor, the distinguished soloists as well as the assembled choral and orchestral forces at their absolute best. Bernstein (this is one of the many facets of his amazing musical intelligence) subtly and carefully pinpoints recurring motifs, thus guiding the listener through the symphony-oratorio's convoluted development. It is obvious that he unequivocally believes in the music, and the grand total is both inspiring and overwhelming.
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- Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2009
- Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2015
- Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2008
- Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2012
- Reviewed in the United States on November 23, 2015
Top reviews from other countries
- J. C. MareschalReviewed in Canada on May 22, 2018
Spectacular and profound interpretation.
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