Having enjoyed David Zinman’s Mahler cycle to date, I came to this release with high expectations. What a disappointment! This is a lame, undercharacterized performance. It has one thing going for it: a nice clarity to the string counterpoint (and this work has lots of it), but this is a purely technical issue since emotional expression seems not to be high on Zinman’s list of priorities. The opening funeral march is about as flat-footed as they come. Its two big outbursts don’t so much climax as simply fizzle. This “wet noodle” approach positively kills the second movement. Could anyone call the opening “vehement”, as Mahler demands, or is it simply neat as a pin? At nearly 19 minutes the scherzo sags badly well before its quiet central section. The adagietto is pretty (when is it not?), and the finale has the most string counterpoint and so bounces along reasonably well; but the final chorale has the weakest brass playing on disc combined with a tempo that starts off too fast but winds up too slow. The ample acoustic further blunts the music’s impact. The most dangerous thing about this whole production is the cover (possibly the first full-frontal male nude to grace a Mahler symphony album).
