I never did follow up about that Vanska/Minnesota Mahler 3
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| Posted on July 11, 2024 at 13:46:13 | ||
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Posts: 27471
Location: SF Bay Area Joined: February 17, 2004 Contributor Since: February 6, 2012 |
When I posted about it before, Apple had screwed up and only had movements 1, 2, 3 and 6 available on the release date. I eventually did listen to the "missing" movements ("O Mensch!" and "Bimm Bamm") once Apple corrected their mistake. In the "O Mensch" movement, mezzo Jennifer Johnston is excellent, even if my own personal preference is for just a tad less vibrato at times. I also found the microphoning of the soloist just a bit close, so that consonants were slightly too prominent. (Quite often, soloists will over enunciate their consonants, so that these sounds will still be heard way in the back of the hall. When you're sitting fairly close to them though, it can sound a bit exaggerated. What's a recording engineer to do?) In the "Bimm Bamm" movement, both the boys' chorus and the women's chorus (and Johnston once again) sound fine. And throughout the whole performance, there's a lot of detail which Vanska mines, without interrupting the longer lines. When I did a spot check comparison with the Jansons/Concertgebouw recording, the details were more integrated into the overall texture on that recording. So are we hearing too much detail on this new BIS recording? This difference, it seems to me, results from the personal tastes of the conductors and engineers on the respective recordings. And, certainly, the detail we hear never has the artificiality to be heard in the bad old days of primitive multi-microphoning of the Andrew Kazdin variety. Having said that though, I've been amazed at how good some of the recent remasters of some of these recordings have sounded, recordings which I used to consider impossibly overmiked - especially the DG MCh and Atmos remasters, and the Dutton-Epoch quad SACD remasters of the CBS/Columbia recordings. I read one review which claims that Vanska doesn't evoke the various emotions enough, but, to me, that kind of claim should always be regarded with some skepticism. It's very subjective, and, speaking for myself, I thought that Vanska did convey the kind of drama I want to hear in this work, without overdoing it. In addition, I thought the string playing throughout was very impressive - really, on par with the best in the world (at least as heard on recording). Overall, I'd say that this recording is a successful conclusion to Vanska's generally successful Mahler cycle on BIS. Strangely enough, very soon after this Vanska recording came out, Esa-Pekka and the SF Symphony did the Mahler Third in concert. Ms. CfL attended that performance (Sunday matinee), and she liked it a lot, as did another friend of mine who was there. She did mention that the eight horns occasionally had some difficulties - not clams in the playing itself, but with the ensemble not being perfectly together. Meanwhile, I stayed home with the cat.
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