Opinions on conductor
Osma Vänskä
's cycle of
Mahler
symphonies with the
Minnesota Orchestra
have varied, but with this grand finale, taken from his valedictory appearance with the orchestra, he seems to have let his hair down a bit, with satisfying effect.
's
Symphony No. 8 in E flat major ("Symphony of a Thousand")
is itself a work that divides listeners, with some sympathetic to the composer's grand ambitions and others finding it over the top, with its four choirs, 24 brass, its Christian first half from the Jewish composer, and its Faustian paean to the eternal feminine for a finale. A lot can go wrong in performing it, and here, in this 2022 recording, a lot did. Minneapolis was still under COVID mask restrictions when the performances were given, and the choral singers (not quite a thousand, but numerous enough) wore them and were exhorted to enunciate to the maximum. The originally booked first soprano contracted the disease and was replaced at the last minute by
Carolyn Sampson
, taking both soprano parts (which is, it is true, done often enough).
Vänskä
rises above the problems with a performance that even skeptics will find exciting. He balances the tremendously diverse forces beautifully, and each of the two sections builds, in
's fast but not rushed tempos that bring the symphony in at five minutes quicker than average, to convincing conclusions. The final sections are ecstatic, and all the soloists hold their complex interactions together.
Sampson
emerges as the star of the show; she is one of the most versatile sopranos on the scene, and she is not known much in music of this heft, but she sounds great.
, as elsewhere in this series, gets fabulous support from
BIS
engineers; one hears everything, and one often has the sensation of being right in the middle of the vast, churning music. The audio product is an unusual one, assembled from live performances at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis and later ones in the studio, but the
staff sweats these details, and it is a challenge to hear any joints or manipulations. This is indeed a landmark
recording and one that leaves the group well-positioned for whatever comes next. It landed on classical best-seller charts at the end of 2023. ~ James Manheim