You can, if you wish, find the thuds on Neumanns Canyon Classics recording, which is also superb. Mahler intendedbut its still an extremely exciting performance, very well played. 3 is the one work this orchestra plays better than just about anyone, probably due to the huge amount of wind- and brass-dominated textures (but avoid Neumanns Canyon remake, dating form the very end of his life when his control over the orchestra was slipping). 2 gets a swift, dramatic performance with a particularly fine first movement. Neumanns later recording there is the harrowing Ancerl version, also on Supraphon.

Its rhythmic acuity, tangy winds and brass, precise percussion, and transparency of texture seem made for these symphonies, and listening to the playing is a pleasure in and of itself.Īnd if you want the Czech Philharmonic in No. In any case, this ensemble unquestionably is one of the great Mahler orchestras. Otherwise, these performances find the Czech Philharmonic in excellent form and well recorded (this reissue has not been remastered to any significant degree, and did not need to be). Neumanns Gewandhaus recording of the former, and his Canyon Classics remake of the latter, are clearly preferable in these cases. You find it here in the excruciatingly slow and monotonous second Nachtmusik of the Seventh Symphony and in parts of the first movement of the Ninth. Mahler boom was really getting started in the hands of Bernstein, Solti, Haitink, Kubelik, and Abravanel.Ĭertainly Neumann consistently offered more persuasive recordings of this music than Barbirolli and Horenstein, two conductors who, despite occasional flashes of excellence, receive far more credit than they deserve as Mahler advocates simply because they happened to reside and work in England, the recording center of post-War Europe. He produced noteworthy recordings of some of them as many as three times, beginning with the Gewandhaus recordings of symphonies Nos.

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