Search - Gustav Mahler, Pierre Boulez, Anne Sofie von Otter :: Mahler: Symphonie No. 3 - Anne Sofie von Otter / Wiener Philharmoniker / Pierre Boulez

Mahler on Prozac

J. C. Woods | Malden, MA USA | 03/14/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Actually, I am not clear what treatment Dr. Boulez has submitted our favorite neurotic, angst-ridden composer to, but it seems to have worked. All the convulsions in the usually turbulent first movement seem to have disappeared. Even the flugelhorn solo in the 3rd movement sounds cheerful. I have never heard this symphony played this way before, so comparatively serene. This is not a normal Mahler 3rd by any means. If you want the usual stuff, go with Bernstein or Litton, both of them interpretations of the 3rd with no surprises and much merit. This one I suspect will become very controversial with modernists singing "huzzah" and romantics looking for chez Boulez so they can burn it down. What a shame, especially since Anne Sofie von Otter sings her little swedish socks of in the fourth and fifth movements. If you have heard this Symphony any number of times or have several versions of it, you might like to have this one also. But if you can afford only one CD of this symphony, this is not the one to have."

Works suprisingly well

brainowner | NYC, USA | 07/25/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This performance of Mahler 3 is indeed strangely serene. And I must say, after listening to it for a month or so, that it works incredibly well. I find the music even more convincing played in this way than in the more 'emotional' style that one normally associates with Mahler. If you know for sure that you want that, go with Bernstein. I think, however, that you would be missing something. In Boulez' treatment the music sounds so much more 'objective' and 'inevitable' that I at least am more swept away in believing that we are really hearing 'the mountains', 'the flowers', 'the animals in the forest', 'man', 'the angels', and 'love'.
On top of that, the sound is fantastic, and so is Anne Sofie von Otter's singing."

An alternative 'aesthetics only' third, please.

THE BLUEMAHLER | 01/31/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"James Leonard in the All Music Guide wrote that the Great God Pan of the opening movement (in this recording) is just a bombastic tune for eight trombones, that the Flowers of the Meadow in the Tempo di Menuetto are just arabesques for the woodwinds, and so on.



Well, that's the whole point with the Boulez Mahler cycle in general.

We have countless recordings of Mahler, the arch romantic, so why would one even desire to hear a new performance that takes a previously trodden path?



Boulez, as usual, re-thinks the work and there's no doubt that Boulez's vision of Mahler is an earnestly committed one.



His Mahler 3rd stems singularly from the Mahler who fathered the expressionism of Schoenberg, Berg, Webern and so on.

This is quite a valid a viewpoint and a long overdue one.



Boulez's third, minus a raging libido,is now a cool,late Kandinsky composition; epic and complex, but filled to the brim with color and form, so much so, one can repeatedly lose oneself with it for hours on end.



Absolutely essential for anyone wanting a well rounded view."