Mahler's Symphony No. 1 D Major

[Teresa]

Kubelik/BRSO on Audite.  Accept no substitutes!

I've only heard the Deutsche Grammophon LP, is this a different performance or was it licensed?   

My favorite Mahler Symphony No. 1's are 

Horenstein, London Symphony Orchestra
a Unicorn recording reissued on an Advent process CR/70 chromium dioxide prerecorded cassette back in the 1970's.  Killer performance with excellent sound in the audiophile cassette version.  This one sounds the most Jewish to me, it was my favotire until I got the Leonard Slatkin LP in 1980. 

Leonard Slatkin. Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra
A Telarc 50kHz Soundstream LP, gorgeous smooth beautiful sound and my very favorite performance of all time. 

Benjamin Zander, Philharmonia Orchestra
A Telarc DSD recorded SACD, fantastic realistic sound and an excellent performance.

[Verena]

I've only heard the Deutsche Grammophon LP, is this a different performance or was it licensed?   

The DG is a different recording (studio). The audite is live.

[Teresa]

The DG is a different recording (studio). The audite is live.

Thanks very much!    How are they different?  I didn't like the performance or the sound of the Deutsche Grammophon LP.  How does it compare with my favorites: Horenstein, Slatkin and Zander?

[Verena]

Horenstein, London Symphony Orchestra
a Unicorn recording reissued on an Advent process CR/70 chromium dioxide prerecorded cassette back in the 1970's.  Killer performance with excellent sound in the audiophile cassette version.  This one sounds the most Jewish to me, it was my favotire until I got the Leonard Slatkin LP in 1980. 

Now you made me curious. I have the Horenstein and - along with many others - consider it among the very best recordings. If Slatkin is even better, it must be great indeed. BTW, I think the Slatkin is from 1981 (I just checked the discography at http://gustavmahler.net.free.fr/symph1.html , since I might buy this recording)

[Verena]

Thanks very much!     How are they different?  I didn't like the performance or the sound of the Deutsche Grammophon LP.  How does it compare with my favorites: Horenstein, Slatkin and Zander?

Sorry, I can't help you here. I don't remember much about the audite recording other than I was not as overwhelmed as I should according to the raves the recording has received. Hope others can say something about the differences.

[MichaelRabin]

The Audite is better because of better sound and playing. The wide vibrato on the woodwinds and brass is a bit painful to listen to on the DG - whilst the Audite has the interpretation more settled over the years and the felicities of the version is so much superior. My favourite versions are the Kubelik Audite & Gary Bertini EMI - which are both live.

[Teresa]

The Audite is better because of better sound and playing. The wide vibrato on the woodwinds and brass is a bit painful to listen to on the DG - whilst the Audite has the interpretation more settled over the years and the felicities of the version is so much superior. My favourite versions are the Kubelik Audite & Gary Bertini EMI - which are both live.

Thanks I've added it to my audition list. 

[Mirror Image]

There are many great Mahler 1 recordings. I would say my favorites (right now) are these:

[Philoctetes]

Maazel with Wiener was the first disc I ever purchased, and it still remains my favorite recording of this work.

[jlaurson]

Thanks very much!    How are they different?  I didn't like the performance or the sound of the Deutsche Grammophon LP.  How does it compare with my favorites: Horenstein, Slatkin and Zander?

If you didn't like the DG Kubelik (why you don't like it is a little beyond me, admittedly), I wouldn't pin too high hopes on liking the Audite. It's the same, just better... not anything radically different. While some of the Audite recordings are essentially the same as the DG, recorded just a few days apart, live in concert, rather than under 'studio' conditions in the Munich Herkulessaal, others are from a few years later... this one comers in about 12 years after the DG recording; the 5th another six years later (and there, I find the swift no-nonsense DG version much preferable to the flabby Audite performance; otherwise it's usually about equal with the sound always better (a lot, sometimes a little) on Audite than DG.

In Symphony No.1, the "Titan", the choice for a first recording is fairly uncontroversial and surprisingly easy: Rafael Kubelik's unfussy, energetic style suits this early symphony—in some ways very far from the modern sound world of later Mahler—extremely well while at the same time inoculating it against excess. Kubelik was the first conductor to mount a complete Mahler cycle (with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra) and his studio recording of the 9 + Adagio, the first such to be conceived and finished as a cycle, still holds up well. His first is available separately on DG Originals, and rightly so. If there is anything to be objected to, it's that he skips the first repeat of the Scherzo and that the sound is a tad shallow, minimally brittle. I have heard (very few) people complain about woodwind vibrato... it's a complaint I don't quite follow or share.


This would be the first choice, too, were it not for a later recording of the same conductor and orchestra. A one-off broadcast recording of the Bavarian Radio from November 2nd 1979 on Audite finds Kubelik in very similar mood and his band in better form yet. The third movement is impossibly intimate and, even with all ritardandos and accelerandos, guided by a gentle, unintrusive pulse. It is, for all practical purposes, a mistake-free performance—not always the case in these unpatched Kubelik live performances. But most importantly, the sound is deeper, richer and altogether better than one might imagine from a live recording. Audience noise—a little rustle between the second and third movement—is negligible. Because DG's inclusion of the Songs of a Wayfarer with Fischer-Dieskau makes for an enticing filler, the choice between the two recordings isn't easy. Their inclusion may not, on its own, justify having both recordings, but should make those feel better who don't have the Audite recording.

New M-1 recordings that are very good include M.Honeck in Pittsburgh...
http://www.weta.org/fmblog/?p=2139

[DavidRoss]

The first Mahler LP I purchased was Bruno Walter's 1st on Columbia's Odyssey budget label, back in '69.  Thanks to Verena's link I may have a chance to hear that one again and see how it holds up. 

Per the link I don't think it's the same recording.  The linked one is on Philips.

[Lethevich]

Has anybody heard Boult's 1st? It might just suit his temperament.

[Verena]

The first Mahler LP I purchased was Bruno Walter's 1st on Columbia's Odyssey budget label, back in '69.  Thanks to Verena's link I may have a chance to hear that one again and see how it holds up. 

Per the link I don't think it's the same recording.  The linked one is on Philips.

No, it's a somewhat earlier recording; I like both actually, though the sound is probably better on the Columbia version

[ririiii]

Thanks for the typo correction Drasko - I just edited the post with the right dates.

I have no way of listening to a "certified" recording of the BW 1954 broadcast. But I did some comparative listening. The Archipel "Mitropoulos NYP 1955" = Bruno Walter NYP 1954 broadcast and the Bruno Walter NYP 1954 studio recording obviously have different sound conditions and some  differences in tempo and dynamics. But the A/B listening does suggest the same orchestra, similar instrument solos and interpretation details.

It is much more difficult to compare the "Mitropoulos NYP 1955" with the other BW or DM recordings because there are various orchestras and years of difference between them. But when we try to compare Dimitri Mitropoulos with the 1930-1950's Bruno Walter not only the global timings tend to be different (particularly in the longer DM 1st and 4th movements) but, for me, Mitropoulos has more freedom in the phrasing, colors and dynamics, creating his usual unexpected "expressive moments". Curiously, in the last Bruno Walter recording (CSO stereo 1961) the timings are much closer to Mitropoulos than in his earlier versions.     
   
For those who care to compare them, here are the timings of these recordings (each movement - without spacing intervals or applause):

Bruno Walter NYP 1954 broadcast - 11:50 / 6:00 / 11:06 / 17:53 ("Mitropoulos NYP 1955" )
Bruno Walter NBC 1939 – 11:54 / 6:09 / 11:16 / 18:03
Bruno Walter CGO 1947 - 12:12 / 6:04 / 11:23 / 18:48
Bruno Walter LPO 1947 – 11:28 / 5:51 / 10:36 / 17:21
Bruno Walter BSO 1950 – 12:01 / 6:13 / 11:17 / 18:39   
Bruno Walter NYP 1954 studio – 12:30 / 6:20 / 11:15 / 18:14
Bruno Walter CSO 1961 studio – 13:17 / 6:48 / 11:18 / 20:19
Mitropoulos MSO 1940 studio – 13:30 / 6:11 / 10:24 / 17:17
Mitropoulos NYP 1951 – 14:12 / 6:18 / 11:08 / 19:22 
Mitropoulos NYP 1960 – 14:14 / 6:25 / 10:41 / 19:48

A recently "discovered" live Mahler 1 with Mitropoulos and the NYP on January 12, 1941 (2 months after the WP recording by him on November 4, 1940) has the following timings:

12:38/06:10/11:10/18:16.

Regarding audience's reaction towards Mahler's compositions at least before the end of WWII, let's not underestimate the earthshaking ovations of the audience shouting "bravo" again and again on this 1941 concert, and the fact that the commercial M1 with Mitropoulos was repressed on 78s a lot of times due to the high demand despite Columbia's very negative behavior for this recording - Mitropoulos happily withdrew his compensation so as to made this possible within Columbia's budget.

This live one has to be issued somewhere. Thrilling is the least I can say. A real milestone of Mahler's recordings.

[MDL]

Another vote for Kubelik/BRSO/DG from me. I love the characterful woodwind playing throughout and Kubelik's rustic treatment of the third movement, flexible in tempo and full of vivid orchestral detail, is just wonderful.

My other Mahler 1s, in a vaguely fave-to-not-fave order.

Chailly/RCO/Decca
Bertini/WDR/EMI (My most recent and most recently played M1. It may slip down the list in time.)
Bernstein/NYPO/Sony
Bernstein/RCO/DG (Everybody raved about this one when it came out. I'm still waiting to be blown away by it.)
Solti/CSO/Decca (I must hear his LSO recording. I'm sure it's better than this.)
Mehta/IPO/Decca
Ozawa/BSO/DG (To be fair to Ozawa, I only bought this because it was going cheap and it includes the discarded Blumine movement which I didn't have. I haven't really paid enough attention to this recording and it may be a lot better than I remember from the rather half-arsed listen I've given it so far.)
Haitink/RCO/Philips (His first recording of this symphony isn't much cop at all.)


Edit: Just remembered I've got Kegel's Dresden recording (Berlin Classics) which I picked up for peanuts on a trip to Berlin, but it's so long since I played it, I can't comment on it.

[LKB]

What's this... Mahler's First has a thread of its own which has lain dormant for over a decade???

And l get to ( hopefully ) bump it back to life! 

Since my history with M1 would make for lengthy reading ( and even lengthier posting ), I'll simply list two favorite recordings:

Tennstedt with the CSO

https://youtu.be/qgGuSn1bujw

Bernstein with the VPO

Mahler - Symphonies Nos. 1, 2 & 3 ~ Leonard Bernstein, Sheila Armstrong, Janet Baker, Christa Ludwig, Wiener Philharmoniker, London Symphony Orchestra https://a.co/d/0aVZUV8

[Brian]

I agree with ultralinear that this piece is so good and so fun that it's hard to record a dud. (There are basically only two types of dud: "the conductor imposed a bunch of weird ideas," and "it's not exciting enough.")

some favorites:
Kubelik/Audite
Bernstein/Sony
both Bruno Walters
Ozawa/Boston/DG for best with Blumine (and he has an interesting idea about the final coda, refusing to let it speed up and somehow mining this for excitement)
Ivan Fischer/Budapest (the opposite of Ozawa, in that for the final 30 seconds he doubles the tempo to show just how fast his orchestra can play)
Alsop/Baltimore/Naxos is a surprisingly fine live recording, an example of how good today's standard for live Mahler is

Honeck/Pittsburgh has a lot of excellent detail but is a little bit too slow/stiff in the finale for me.

[aukhawk]

Honeck's 1st movement is peerless.  A real dawning sense of 'the start of ... everything'.  I agree the rest doesn't quite match up to this 1st movement though.

The recent 'period' recording by Roth/Les Siecles is very nearly a match for Honeck in the opening, and is equally good in the rest.  The period sonorities are not really noticeable.  Includes Blumine though I would program it out - insignificant music not worthy of the rest of the symphony.  A clear favourite recording for me.  Horrible cover art !

[Jo498]

Would you say the Kubelik/Audite is worth getting if his DG studio is my favorite?

I only got my first "Blumine" only a few weeks ago, the Ozawa and the Hengelbrock (who uses the older version with titles, not Blumine grafted onto the revised later version) and I agree that the excision of the piece was no great loss.

For me a problem of many more recent recordings is that they do not sound sufficiently grotesque in the 3rd movement (Bernstein/DG is a huge "fail" in that respect, the whole thing sounds equally beautiful in all movements). Lack of energy in the finale is a more general feature that is rather common (but Mahler is to blame to a certain extent).

[Crudblud]

Both Kubelíks are sort of "best in class" type deals.

I'm quite partial to Eschenbach in this symphony, but then I think he's the best living Mahler conductor overall.