Mahler: Symphony No. 1. Sir Charles Mackerras, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. EMI Classics for Pleasure 7243 5 73510 2 7.(Review)

Mahler: Symphony No. 1. Sir Charles Mackerras, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. EMI Classics for Pleasure 7243 5 73510 2 7.

I can't remember listening to a more wholly satisfying Mahler First in quite a while. Indeed, after comparing it to a handful of eminent Firsts in my collection, I am not convinced it isn't the best of the lot in terms of overall control, symphonic structure, intensity, atmosphere, and sound.

When CDs first became popular in the early '80s, it was Mahler whose symphonies were most quickly represented in the catalogue. In spite of a late start (but thank you maestros Walter and Bernstein), Mahler has become the darling of the music-loving set. His works combine good, old-fashioned 19th-century Romantic melodies along with bizarre, often chaotic, experimental 20th-century modernism. No better are these characteristics displayed than in his First Symphony, where the opening movement begins with a mysterious awakening of Day or Spring or whatever, followed by fanfares and then several lush and rhapsodic tunes. The Scherzo is Brucknerian in concept, leading to a Funeral March that only Mahler would have dared, part parody, part wistful musing, and entirely peculiar. The Finale starts with a thunderous series of orchestral crescendos, followed by bits and pieces of the first movement's themes, settling into rich romance, and ending in strong, solid affirmative concluding outbursts.

Mackerras handles all of this with the ease of one who has been conducting Mahler all his life, which he may have been doing but not recording. The opening mists are not projected as eerily as Solti in his LSO ...