Description
Mahler: Symphony No. 4 in G Major – Antoni Wit, Naxos (CD)
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Product Details
- UPC: 4891030505278
- Catalogue Number: 8.550527
- Brand/Label: Naxos
- Composer: Gustav Mahler
- Performer: Lynda Russell, soprano
- Ensemble: Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra
- Conductor: Antoni Wit
- Release Year: 1993 (recorded 26–28 June 1992 and 15 September 1992)
- Genre: Classical – Symphony
- Country of Producing: Germany
Product Features
- Format: Audio CD, DDD (fully digital recording), Stereo
- Total playing time: 56:54
- Recommended in The Penguin Guide (as noted on the case)
- Cover artwork: Consuming Grief – The Hostility of the Enemy Powers, by Gustav Klimt
Overview
Mahler's Fourth is the friendliest entry point into his symphonic output — smaller orchestra, no massive choral finale, and a genuinely sunny surface that makes it the symphony people often recommend to Mahler skeptics first. That surface calm is deceptive, though; underneath it there's real ambiguity, especially in the long, searching third movement, before the finale settles into a soprano-sung vision of childlike heaven drawn from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Lynda Russell's voice in that closing movement carries the right unaffected simplicity — this isn't meant to be operatic, it's meant to sound like a child's account of paradise. Antoni Wit and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra pace the whole work with a clear sense of its shifting moods, never overplaying the darker undercurrents but not glossing over them either. Recorded at the Concert Hall of Polish Radio in Katowice, this recording was recommended in The Penguin Guide, a respected endorsement for a budget-label release. A genuinely accessible way into Mahler's symphonic world, and a strong disc even for listeners who already know the piece well.
Interesting Facts
- Symphony No. 4 is the shortest and most intimately scored of Mahler's symphonies, using a smaller orchestra than his other numbered symphonies.
- The finale sets a text from Des Knaben Wunderhorn describing a child's naive vision of heavenly life, sung by solo soprano rather than full chorus.
- This recording received a recommendation in The Penguin Guide to Classical Music, a notable critical endorsement carried on the case.
- The cover artwork uses a section of Gustav Klimt's Beethoven Frieze, evoking the same Vienna Secession-era artistic world Mahler inhabited.
- Antoni Wit and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra recorded extensively for Naxos, building one of the label's most substantial orchestral discographies of the 1990s.
Track Listing
- Bedächtig, nicht eilen – 16:36
- In gemächlicher Bewegung, ohne Hast – 9:36
- Ruhevoll, poco adagio – 21:04
- Sehr behaglich – 9:26
Publishers
Naxos, part of the Naxos Music Group, recorded at the Concert Hall of Polish Radio, Katowice (producer Beata Jankowska, engineer Otto Nopp, music notes Keith Anderson). Distributed by MVD Music and Video Distribution GmbH, Unterhaching/Munich, Germany.
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