Sinfonie 5

Description

The fourth release in the critically acclaimed Mahler Symphony cycle by Adam Fischer and the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker.

"Unlike certain other Mahler symphonies, I have no personal story I associate with the Fifth. This doesn't imply that it is not just as close to me as the other ones; it is just more difficult to express the connection in words. In 1905, Mahler recorded his own interpretation of this symphony's first movement on a Welte-Mignon piano roll. We should try to grasp Mahler's intentions, but we should not apply them without using our own discretion. The Welte-Mignon recording is an important document to help us learn how to deal with Mahler's tempo indications. There are those well-known indications of the length of his own orchestral performances: they show, for instance, that the Adagietto, in particular, should be played much more rapidly than we think. Incredibly fast runtimes were clocked in Saint Petersburg and also at the Concertgebouw: when we compare them with the movement runtimes as performed by famous conductors of the 1950s and 1960s, we can tell that "slow", for Mahler, does not mean "dragging". Most of all – this is my fundamental conviction, and here I find it confirmed – slow and fast aren't just metronome values. You can play faster while sounding slower, and vice-versa. It does not just have to do with maintaining a slow tempo, but with managing the accents so that it also sounds slower. Sounding slower is more important than merely being slower. You can hear this in the Welte-Mignon recording: Mahler treats his own music in a thoroughly rhapsodic way." Adam Fischer

Praise for Adam Fischer's Mahler Symphony No.4 (AVI8553378)

Gramophone Editor's Choice, January 2018
"Its Wunderhorn playfulness offsets a knowing old-world charm where phrases turn on a sixpence and all manner of characterful nuance lifts it out of the commonplace. I love that all the Mahlerian exaggerations and heightened contrasts are in almost wilful defiance of the finesse of the reading...I eagerly anticipate the rest of this Mahler cycle." -- Gramophone, Jan 2018

"As Fischer explains in his liner notes, he's paid special attention to how Mahler has notated [glissandi] and the fingerings he's marked – taking a little detour below the starting note before sliding up to the main note. Here they sound by turns slinky, sultry, sharp, sentimental, exaggerated, but above all evocative of the Viennese world in which Mahler was working…The overall effect is magical"" **** -- BBC Music Magazine, Dec 2017

Praise for Adam Fischer's Mahler Symphony No. 1 "Titan" (AVI8553390)

Gramophone Editor's Choice, April 2018
"This is a terrific account of Mahler's fledgling symphony – full of the rashness and impetuosity of youth and the wild imaginings that go hand in hand with it…There is an extraordinary kinship and telepathy between Fischer and his Düsseldorf orchestra…the heart and spirit of the playing sweeps all before it. This is shaping up to be the most idiomatic and exciting cycle of Mahler symphonies since Kubelík and Bernstein." -- Gramophone Magazine, March 2018

Praise for Adam Fischer's Mahler Symphony No. 7 (AVI8553349)

"Adam, with his excellent Düsseldorf Symphony, may well be one up on [his brother] Iván with this compelling account of Mahler's outlandish Seventh" -- Gramophone Magazine, January 2017