Klaus Tennstedt’s EMI Mahler symphony cycle, made during the late 1970s and early ’80s, was the hugely successful project that originally brought this humble and hugely gifted conductor to global attention. Never one of those trendy, jet-setting podium phenoms with maximal marketing appeal, Tennstedt was just an honest, intelligent, accomplished musician, imbued with electric insight and the ability to mould and project performances of epic tensile strength and intellectual ferocity. And perhaps it was just that commitment to putting the music rather than himself first that made Tennstedt’s Mahler so humanly involving.
So there’s never a moment of his visionary reading of Symphony No. 2 in which we’re left in any doubt as to what the music represents, the issues under debate, nor what is at stake. There are, of course, others who take more risks in this music, but to transform Mahler’s tragic first movement rite into mere tournament, as Abbado does, is to travestise it horribly. Nor am I convinced entirely by Rattle’s generally fine traversal, for much the same reasons. Then there’s the astonishing personal testament on the work from Gilbert Kaplan, for which I’ve got considerable sympathy. That leaves my current favorite, Herbert Blomstedt’s even-tempered and thoroughly rational approach, with the San Francisco Symphony on Decca. In general, however, if you’re looking above all for human honesty at mid-price in this symphony (after all, you can take technical perfection pretty much for granted these days), then go for Tennstedt, or better still Bernstein and his New Yorkers on Sony. EMI’s Double Forte reissue also includes Tennstedt’s equally fine recording of Symphony No. 1. No “Blumine”, I’m afraid, but nevertheless, a tremendously authoritative and moving interpretation.
