Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 9, David Bernard, Park Avenue Symphony

Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review Blog · one year ago · 140 views

 Of all the composers I've had the pleasure to listen to and live with over the years, perhaps Gustav Mahler has grown most inside me over time, the Ten Symphonies being the most varied and challenging of the lot. It certainly helped to read most of  the extensive biography by De La Grange, but constant review of performances by conductors who have contributed their key interpretations was instrumental, and my own increasing maturity has helped a good deal. So I came to appreciate the Viennese element, the Jewish, the Romantic, and now something else again.Here today we have a brand new recording of his Ninth Symphony (Recursive Classics rc3691873) by  David Bernard conducting the very capable ensemble Park Avenue Symphony. It has taken me a while to appreciate fully the ninth, in part because it does relate to Mahler's increasing age then, which Bernstein saw as a multiple farewell to everything, ultimately life. But as Bernard succinctly notes it is also a matter of an increasing contrapuntal prowess, and of course a full mastery of the orchestrational palette of the later nineteenth-early twentieth centuries.There is a virtually unmatched lyrical sadness and playfulness to the reading, and a real Modern presence to the poetic side here that is something to appreciate. The performance will get you rehearing the work virtually anew and give you a new understanding of his latter approach in key ways. Do not miss this!