This is the penultimate installment of Pierre Boulez’s Mahler symphony cycle–only the Eighth remains to be issued–and the most recent single-disc version, clocking in at more than two minutes faster than his pirated in-concert version of 1973. But the timing is deceptive, as more than 20 recorded accounts are faster–including those by Mahler disciples Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer–and the one that’s closest, by Leopold Stokowski (on BBC), is the furthest away in conception, dramatic on an epic scale where Boulez is intimate, detailed and refinedly musical. The poetry here comes from the sheer quality of the playing, singing and recording–among the most beautiful of any Mahler symphony on disc–rather than the composer’s Technicolor program.
Once heard, you may be forever spoiled, as almost everybody who serves the drama first sounds primitive by comparison.
