The presence of liner notes in Japanese leads me to suspect that this disc was specifically released to target the audience in that market, which is rather sad since it means that there is an avid demand for crappy live Mahler performances in the Far East. On evidence here, Roger Norrington has no business conducting this music: everything is light, underplayed, and lacking conviction. The scherzo has none of the rustic character the music requires. Cellos and basses don’t bite. Norrington races through the funeral march at a characterless jog, and the brass playing in the finale is markedly below par. I can’t recall a final peroration so lacking in style, grandeur, or bravura.
At the very end, the cymbals are mostly inaudible, and Norrington decides that timpani and bass drum should start their final roll mezzo-forte and make a crescendo to the end, an effect as obvious as it is gratuitously tasteless. The inclusion of Blumine in its original second position only makes listening one movement duller than it otherwise would have been, and the sonics are nothing special. In short, like so much of Norrington’s work, this is a farce. Why do they put up with him in Stuttgart? And why does Hänssler support his interpretive nonsense when they have a stunning Mahler cycle from Michael Gielen already available? Pity the Japanese.
