Mahler: Symphony No. 4 (CD review)

Plus introductory comments. Juliane Banse, soprano; Giuseppe Sinopoli, Dresden Staatskapelle. Profil PH07047.

This doesn't sound like a recording.  It sounds for the most part like real music. Unfortunately, as with any live music, you have to take it warts and all.  The Profil engineers made this disc from a live, 1999 radio broadcast. While the sound has a wonderfully spacious quality, with plenty of dynamic contrast, stage breadth, and orchestral depth, it also has its fair share of audience noises, including the inevitable applause at the end. Still, it might be worth it for the remarkable liveness of the experience.

The late Dr. Sinopoli generally gave his listeners their money's worth, namely length, and it works in Mahler's Fourth. The Fourth Symphony wears its heart on its sleeve, so to speak, and conductors as varied as Klemperer, Haitink, Szell, Abbado, and Reiner have given us their own very special and very different interpretations. Sinopoli offers up every repeat, elongates every phrase, and plays up every pause in the work, yet it never sounds odd or contorted as, say, Klemperer's reading does in part. In fact, Sinopoli's performance is exceptionally moving and always involving.

I was not quite as taken, though, with the integration of soprano Juliane Banse's voice with the orchestra in the final movement. I could never quite locate her exact position on stage, her voice seeming oddly out of place, slightly too big for the occasion. Nor did I find her voice as angelic or childlike as I prefer for the role. Nevertheless, she makes a touching contribution to the work's close.

In addition to the Fourth Symphony, Dr. Sinopoli offers up about seventeen minutes of comments (with musical excerpts) on the Symphony, comments which, according to the booklet note, originally prefaced his performance of the piece. However, the commentary is in German, so unless you speak the language you'll have to read some of the booklet-note translations to know what's going on.

JJP