Telarc: Mahler — Symphony No. 3, López-Cobos / Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra 2CD

Brand new! Factory packaged! As pictured! Buy with confidence!

Product Details:

• Product Type: Audio CD (2-disc set)
• Brand / Label: Telarc Digital
• Composer: Gustav Mahler (1860–1911)
• Conductor: Jesús López-Cobos
• Orchestra: Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
• Soloists: Michelle DeYoung (mezzo-soprano); Peter Norton (trombone solo, Mvt. I); Philip Collins (posthorn solo, Mvt. III)
• Chorus: Women of the May Festival Chorus (dir. Robert Porco); Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music Children's Choir (dir. Ann Marie Koukios)
• Release Year: 1998
• Genre: Classical
• Style: Symphonic, Late Romantic
• Catalog Number: 2CD-80481
• UPC: 089408048128
• Condition: Factory Sealed

Product Features

• Format: 2 × CD
• Discs: 2
• Total Runtime: 1 hour, 35 min., 57 sec.
• Audio: 20-Bit Digital (Telarc Proprietary 20-Bit System), Surround Sound encoded
• Printed in USA
• Packaging: Standard double jewel case, factory shrink-wrapped

Overview

Mahler's Third Symphony is the longest symphony in the standard repertoire — nearly 100 minutes of music in six movements — and it demands an orchestra, a conductor, a mezzo-soprano, a women's chorus, and a children's choir to pull off. López-Cobos and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra meet that demand with a performance that is carefully balanced and admirably clear in its architecture.

The opening movement alone runs over 32 minutes. It's a massive, march-driven slab of sound that builds from nothing to overwhelming, and López-Cobos paces it with patience rather than spectacle. The middle movements are lighter — the minuet, the scherzo with Philip Collins's offstage posthorn solo — before the symphony turns inward in its final three movements. Michelle DeYoung is the right voice for this music: dark, full, and steady through Mahler's long vocal lines in the fourth movement setting of Nietzsche's "O Mensch! Gib acht!" The fifth movement brings the children's choir in the "Bimm bamm" bell imitation, and the symphony closes with one of the most sustained and emotionally serious adagios Mahler ever wrote.

Telarc's 20-Bit Digital recording system was considered state-of-the-art in 1998, and the results hold up: the dynamic range is wide, the orchestral detail is clean, and the surround encoding gives the chorus placement and depth. For collectors of Mahler symphonies on disc, the López-Cobos Cincinnati reading is a considered and technically excellent account worth having.

Interesting Facts

• Mahler's Symphony No. 3 in D minor was completed in 1896 and is the longest symphony in the standard orchestral repertoire, regularly clocking in at 90–105 minutes depending on the conductor.
• The symphony was originally conceived with programmatic movement titles drawn from nature — "What the flowers of the meadow tell me," "What love tells me" — though Mahler eventually withdrew them before publication.
• The fourth movement sets Friedrich Nietzsche's midnight song from Also sprach Zarathustra ("O Mensch! Gib acht!"), making it one of the rare Mahler symphonies to set philosophical rather than folk or religious text.
• Jesús López-Cobos (1939–2018) served as Music Director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra from 1986 to 2001; this recording represents one of the major documents of that tenure.
• Telarc's proprietary 20-Bit recording technology — developed in the 1990s — was a benchmark for audiophile-quality classical recordings, capturing dynamic extremes that standard 16-bit systems of the era struggled to reproduce cleanly.
• The posthorn solo in the third movement is traditionally performed offstage — here by Philip Collins — creating the effect of distant sound drifting in from outside the concert hall.

Track Listing

Disc One — Total: approx. 59 min.

1. I. Kräftig; Entschieden — 32:15 (Peter Norton, trombone solo)
2. II. Tempo di Menuetto; sehr mäßig — 9:16
3. III. Comodo; scherzando; ohne hast — 17:53 (Philip Collins, posthorn solo)

Disc Two — Total: approx. 36 min.

1. IV. Sehr langsam; misterioso — 8:58 (Michelle DeYoung, mezzo-soprano)
2. V. Lustig im Tempo und keck im Ausdruck — 4:07 (children's choir)
3. VI. Langsam; ruhevoll; empfunden — 23:11

Total: 1 hr. 35 min. 57 sec.

Publishers

© 1998 Telarc International Corporation. Printed in USA. Produced using Telarc's Proprietary 20-Bit Digital System.

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