Lots of interesting ramifications, some of which extend well beyond the bounds of the Seventh.
I’ve been specially interested by Lee’s argument that ‘it is a work that undoubtedly moves from darkness to the sunshine of C Major in its final movement…. For me, it is indeed a journey of the night, from the darkness that the listener is plunged into at the end of the Sixth Symphony when the music topples over into the abyss, to the blazing light of the opening of the Eighth Symphony’s hymn “Veni, Creator Spiritus”.’
This idea intrigues me. My wife & I often listen to Mahler’s Knabenhorn symphonies (2 + 3 + 4) as a set, in matching performances, on 3 successive eveings. Ditto with the Rückert symphonies (5 + 6 + 7).
If I wanted to listen to [?5 +] 6 + 7 + 8 performed as a journey into the light, in a stylistically homogeneous sequence (same conductor, same orchestra) on successive evenings, what would be my best option?
Many of the finest recordings of 7 take the opposite view, and invest its finale with (in Lee’s words) a ‘sense of Shostakovichian irony, of a triumphant final movement that is not really triumphant.’ (Bernstein, for instance, was an outspoken advocate of that view, both in his comments and in his recordings.)
Also, some of the conductors who DO present the finale of 7 as a journey into the light didn’t record 8.
Subtracting all those, what are my best remaining options? Haitink (using his very Christmassy Kerstmatinee 7, and perhaps the vibrant 1968 live 6 in his Q Disc box)? Neumann?? Adam Fischer???
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