CSO / Haitink's Continuing Mahler Cycle

Mahler: Symphony No. 6
Chicago Symphony Orchestra / Bernard Haitink
CSO Resound

***

Here's a CD to remind you that Chicago is home to one of the world's truly great orchestras. And this pairing of Bernard Haitink and the CSO seems inspired, especially in this grand repertoire like Mahler or Bruckner or Vaughan Williams.

I was particularly happy with their earlier release of Mahler's Third, and this present CD will likely bubble to the top as my favorite Sixth. Chicago have long been famous for having one of the best brass sections of any orchestra, and this release shows that feather still firmly in their cap. Certain passages here will part your hair, assuming your audio setup is willing. But every section of the orchestra carries their weight and the result is a marvelous thing.

The recording itself is spectacular. There is a distinct soundstage and the recording is quiet enough to hear the corners of the room.

My Kinda Town

Mahler: Symphony No. 3
Chicago Symphony Orchestra / Bernard Haitink
Michelle DeYoung, Mezzo-Soprano; Women of the CSO Chorus; Chicago Children's Choir
CSO-Resound CSOR 901 701

***

I have too many recordings of Mahler's third. It's the first Mahler symphony I learned, and while I've come to love others as well, the Third has an embracing vastness that resonates with me. Because it's my favorite of his symphonies, it's the one I use to employ to evaluate an orchestra or a conductor with which I'm less familiar. And then after a few recordings, this thinking took on a life of its own and I soon found myself with a dozen different versions.

Certainly, nobody who listens to this kind of music could be unfamiliar with either the Chicago Symphony Orchestra or with its current Principal Conductor, Bernard Haitink. This has to rank as one of the great orchestra / conductor pairings. The Haitink cycles I have of Mahler and Vaughan Williams symphonies are all vast, expansive interpretations, and the renowned virtuosity of the Chicago Symphony makes for a good chemistry. (Ironically, I found this recording in a shop in Amsterdam, home of what some have argued is the world's greatest orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw, with which Bernard Haitink made his name over a 30 year period. It seemed a bit odd to come across a recording there of their native son conducting an American orchestra.)

My very first exposure to Mahler was in 1982 by way of the CSO, this time conducted by the great James Levine. By chance, I think, that recording has proven hard to top (by chance, I say, because I don't think my affection is merely a first-exposure thing). The CSO is well up to the mercurial nature of the music, and the Mezzo-Soprano part in that recording is handled in inimitable fashion by Marilyn Horne. I later got a disc of the CSO under Georg Solti's baton, but the orchestra never sounded better than on that Levine recording.

This present CD is compiled from live performances in November of last year and is released on the orchestra's own label. Michelle DeYoung is enlisted for the Mezzo-Soprano part, which she handles deftly, and the orchestra has a mercurial virtuosity like a doped-up racehorse. The CSO's brass section, particularly, is legendary for its unbridled power (some say only approached by the Berlin Philharmonic in the von Karajan era), and at the big climaxes the sound here is almost overwhelming.

The sixth movement of this symphony is something, to my mind, almost unparalleled in music. It's practically a continuous 30-minute single melody, leading from hushed beginnings to an ecstatic and exhaustive sonic ejaculation half an hour later, like an engrossing story told beginning-to-end. A recording in 1998 of Esa-Pekka Salonen and the L.A. Philharmonic gets this final movement exactly, unsurpassably right (with thrilling sound to match--a perfect recording), but Haitink is not far behind here. A few times the orchestra seems not quite in lockstep, but they make up for that in sheer power.

In all, an excellent collection to one's collection or a great introduction to the repertoire for the unfamiliar.