Mahler: Symphony No. 2 'Resurrection'

With its unrestrained, highly personal emotionality, Mahler's music reflects all the extremes of his volatile, complex nature and has always evoked extreme reactions in performers and listeners. Indeed, it seems to encourage conductors to express their own rather than the composer's personality, though Mahler, himself a great conductor, filled his scores with copious, detailed performing instructions. No wonder the enormous Mahler discography presents a fascinating variety of interpretations, starting with the many choices of textural emphasis offered by the very richness of the orchestration. Rattle's approach seems oriented toward external effect and innovation. He highlights Mahler's excessive tendencies with extreme contrasts: dynamics go from whispers to crashes; changes of mood and character are highlighted by long pauses; his textural priorities are highly unusual. The first movement (which has a disc to itself) is emphatic, often explosive, the great dissonant climax drawn out to the utmost; the march in the finale is truly infernal, ferocious, theatrical. However, the singers bring warmth and inwardness into the performance: Janet Baker, though her voice has lost some of the bloom of her incomparable 1965 recording under Klemperer, sings with moving simplicity and devout passion; Arleen Auger's voice floats with angelic purity. The choral ending has a broad, sweeping, all-out grandeur. --Edith Eisler