The complete survey of the M6 is in my hands and I will send you in the direction of one very dark horse recording. It's Fabio Luisi and the Orchestre de Suisse Romande. The CD is extremely expensive, but the download is affordable. Otherwise, the Haitink '68 M6 is a good choice (probably his best attempt at this symphony). Mahler 8 used to be done so infrequently; not so today, the discography is large. My feeling is that a lot of conductors who don't otherwise conduct Mahler (like Thielemann) conduct M8 - as did Colin Davis - and treat it as if Mahler never composed the work. Those performances one should avoid (add Abbado to that list, too). Sinopoli is still as recommendable today as he was when his recording appeared back in the 1980s.
Like everyone else here, I’ve been enthralled and fascinated by Lee Denham’s book-length (50,000 words!) survey of Mahler Seventh recordings. Still haven’t taken it all in.
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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