There are some very fine moments in this Mahler Fifth, surprisingly because conductor François-Xavier Roth is one of those guys who has been making “historically informed” recordings of late romantic and early twentieth-century music, with wildly varying success. Granted, and Adagietto could use more warmth of tone from the strings, but it has exquisite moments, and a welcome contrast in tempo between the main body of the movement and its central section.
But let’s start at the beginning. The opening Funeral March is a genuine march, taken at a relatively swift tempo, strictly maintained. It works beautifully As a result, the second movement also hangs together particularly well, and it gets blown to bits with a gratifyingly audible tam-tam smash. Here, however, we begin to notice that the horns and trumpets could be more forwardly placed in the mix. Aside from a very slow first trio, the scherzo too goes swimmingly. Roth takes particular care to bring out Mahler’s bass lines, enriching the music’s polyphonic textures in a way you probably have not heard before.
And so, after the Adagietto, we come to the finale: light, perhaps a bit slow, but also miraculously clear texturally, with more of those wonderfully sculpted bass lines. Mahler’s Fifth is very taxing for the strings, but their playing truly represents the glory of this performance. The concluding chorale could do with more weight, a touch more rhetorical emphasis, and as I said, more prominent horns and trumpets, but the trombones have plenty of presence. The album notes claim a certain proprietary connection to the symphony because this orchestra gave the premiere under Mahler about 110 years ago, and if you buy that I have some swampland in New Jersey to sell you.
Never mind. This is a successful performance of Mahler’s most interpretively difficult symphony, and you’ll hear plenty of details impossible to find anywhere else. For some reason the booklet is in French and German only. I suppose Harmonia Mundi has given up on the English speaking world.
