Zubin Mehta’s Los Angeles Mahler Fifth has never topped the list of available recordings, though it does come close. All of its problems occur at the beginning: the opening of the funeral march first movement seems rushed, and while the second movement features some really exciting playing and wonderfully flexible conducting (especially in its latter half), Mehta again presses forward too quickly for the climactic disintegration to have the necessary impact. After this, however, it’s smooth sailing. The scherzo sounds marvelous, with an excellent solo horn and countless contrapuntal details perfectly balanced in the prevailingly busy textures. At slightly more than nine minutes the Adagietto really sings, and the finale moves along smartly, but unlike the first movement Mehta doesn’t short change the music’s character in the process. On the whole, this version has more excitement than Mehta’s later reading with the New York Philharmonic for Teldec (though that still has the best brass playing of any recording out there), but like that effort it just misses a highest rating. Sonically the performance holds up well. So while you can do better, you can also do worse–a lot worse–and at Eloquence prices, there’s certainly more than enough valuable insight into the work to justify purchase as a second or complementary version to the references listed above.
