Release Date: 01 January 2001
Label: Naxos - Historical / Naxos Historical
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 2
Barcode: 636943115220
Genres: Classical
Composer/Series: MAHLER
Description
Gustav Mahler (1860 - 1911)Symphony No.2 'Resurrection'CD 1, Track 13: CD 2, Tracks 1-4) Born in Berlin on 1st August 1871,Oskar Fried exemplified the practical approach to music-making that hadsustained the pre-eminence of the art-form in German-speaking countries over theprevious century. Serving as a horn-player in Frankfurt's Palmgarten Orchestra from 1889,he soon moved to the Opernhaus and began composition lessons with Wagner's protegeEngelbert Humperdinck. A period as a freelance musician ended with his returnto Berlin in 1898, to promote hisown music, including, in 1901, a vocal setting of the Richard Dehemel poem VerklarteNacht that had inspired Schoenberg two years before. In 1904 the cautiouslypost-Wagnerian tonal language of his cantata Das trunkene Lied foundimmediate favour. His career as a conductor received a similar boost when, a yearlater, he conducted Mahler's Second Symphony, the composer commentingthat he could not have bettered the Scherzo in particular. Conducting Berlin's Gesellschaft derMusikfreunde from 1907, and the Bluthner-Orchester from 1908, Fried introducedfurther works of Mahler, as well as music by such contemporary composers asSchoenberg, Delius and Busoni. After 1913 he concentrated exclusively on conducting,where his combination of discipline and technical knowledge of the orchestralapparatus won wide admiration. His socialist and humanitarian convictions cameto the fore when, in 1934, he left Germany for Tbilisi, taking over direction at the opera house there, andtouring widely in the Soviet Union. He became a Soviet citizen in 1941, shortly before hisdeath. To have recorded Mahler in 1924, before the acoustic process had beensuperseded by that of electrical recording, was a tough challenge for any recordingteam, but the Deutsche Grammophon company took the plunge with what, apart fromthe massive choral Eighth Symphony, was the most lavish of thesymphonies. To what, if any, extent the limitations of the process inhibitedFried's approach to the Second Symphony is now impossible to judge, butthe expressive freedom with which he controls the music, at the level of localiseddetail, between movements and across the work's almost 85-minute span, suggeststhat the personal conception that clearly impressed Mahler almost two decadesbefore is substantially intact in the present recording. Fried sets a fast, incisive initial tempo for the opening Allegromaestoso, though an expressive use of rubato is soon in evidence, and heslackens skilfully for the second subject, opening up its idyllic vista with effortlesspoise. Some might consider Fried's marked ritardandos at climactic points toointerventionist, though the explosive central development is potently handled,an object lesson in controlled spontaneity, despite the inevitable degree ofoverload in the recorded sound. While the string portarnenti at the reprise ofthe second subject may be a little mawkish for modem tastes, the funerealrecessional that cons
Tracklisting
Various Artists
Various
Various
Various
Tullio Serafin
Soloists
Soloists
Soloists
