I have lived with this for many months and many playings and look forward to doing so for years to come. Here at last is a Mahler Third from the modern era worthy to go with the greats of the past and this is now my top recommendation for performance and sound. Often the most difficult reviews to write are the ones where the performance just seems to work and be right. You just put down your notes and listen as if anew to a work you thought you knew so well. That is the case with Bychkov in Mahler’s Third and I recommend it to you enthusiastically.
The first thing to be said about the Semyon Bychkov’s version on Avie (AV 0019) is the detail of the sound recording that lets you hear every aspect of instrumentation of this great score in excellent proportion and balance to an extent that is still surprisingly rare even in the digital era. Not just a question of the fact that it is digital but also because the balance engineers have done their jobs properly. I suppose some might call it a "close-in" balance. For me the description "no frills" springs better to mind. It is as if you have a seat in the hall near the front of the platform. There are, after all, recordings of this work where a too reverberant balance robs us of hearing just what a revolutionary canvas Mahler presents us with. Highest to lowest frequencies are accommodated with thrilling definition here and the highs and lows in this symphony are very high and very low indeed. Next is the excellence of the principal players of the WDR Sinfonie-Orchester Köln whose contribution is heard to thrilling effect by the sound balance. This is the orchestra that recorded the superb Shostakovich symphony cycle under Barshai and the Mahler cycle under Bertini.
The opening massed horn call is a call to attention, almost like a fanfare here, that sets out the stall from the start with clear intent. "You will listen to us," Bychkov appears to want to say before a refreshingly sharp delivery of the opening slow march follows with rhythms very sharply pointed and the up-rushes of the basses articulated with razor-like precision. Spring may be trapped by Winter but this is a Winter with real bite. I like the lyrical contrast of the second theme that comes next but I like even more the way its fundamental precision seems to be an appropriate counterbalance to the opening. As, for example, in the bracing way in which the important trombone soloist has been instructed to play with a rude health that is so often missing in the more polite interpretations. This spills over into the march which, with the closer recording, the excellence of the players and Bychkov’s sense of the unadorned, puts me in mind of Bernstein and Barbirolli in its proletarian kick and real sense of lift and determination. Notice especially the middle of movement climax, just prior to where the horns come back and blast to the four corners, how the woodwind choir lets out a great sustained high shriek that ushers in the horns with a climax to take your head off. Now there is the shock of the new. Or should that be the "shock and awe" of the new? In the return to the opening material again the deep frequencies are superbly rendered with bass shudders to shiver anyone’s timbers before the march comes back with renewed swaggering, ballsy confidence. The end when it comes is carefully prepared, never rushed and again every detail is heard. With a first movement like this we have in front of us a Mahler Third of rare quality. From the start through to the end you become aware of a conductor who has thought through this movement anew and has the sense that he is telling a story. This is a "live" performance before an audience too, though you would hardly know it.
The instrumental contributions to the second movement maintain the quality of the first. It is a fine contrast to what has gone, just as it should be, and also pays as much attention to the sharp, tart elements as to the warmth. The third movement serves the early Mahler song on which it is based very well seeming to twist it slightly almost as if it is being "sent up" which is quite probably what Mahler intended when he wrote: "This piece really sounds as if all nature were making faces and sticking out its tongue. But there is such horrible, panic-like humour in it that one is overcome with horror rather than with laughter." The posthorn is closer than it often is but this seems well in keeping with the general approach and there is no diminution in nostalgia. The rearing up of fecund nature at the close is as dark and lowering as you could wish for, frightening in its immediacy here. I also like Marjana Lipovšek in the fourth movement’s "Oh Mensch" movement very much. Especially her dark, portentous tone and care for the words. The oboe and cor anglais plays the sliding glissandos now the fashion but the effect does not seem to jar as much as it did. Maybe I’m getting more used to it. Fine and lusty boys usher in a finale that is judged to near perfection with radiant. glowing strings, light and dark perspectives, a beautifully sustained line that is crowned by a truly liberating and life-enhancing coda.
Tony Duggan, musicweb-internationalhttp://www.musicweb-international.com/Mahler/Mahler3.htm
