Pierre Boulez’s excellent Mahler Third clearly sounds better in regular, normal stereo. This SACD edition isn’t bad by any means, but the bass frequencies have dried out somewhat, and as so often happens with multichannel productions, the additional front-to-back depth creates problems of balance. For example, now the opening of the Fourth movement is barely audible (it already was very quiet), while Anne Sofie von Otter’s entrance leaps out of the speakers far too loudly, her placement excessively forward with respect to the orchestra. Similarly, in the following brief choral movement the voices of the boys and women sound unnaturally distant and the orchestral image lacks presence and focus. All of this, I hasten to add, is in direct comparison to the stereo edition of the same performance. So if you already own the original issue of this set, keep it and be happy.
