Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 4
Budapest Festival Orchestra
Ivan Fischer, conductor
Channel Classics
There is no better-conducted recording of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony available than this one. Fischer’s achievement is extraordinary and the results he achieves unique, from transcendent tiny details to his larger conception and observance of dynamics, which is as telling as his handling of tempo and transitions. The scherzo has a tangy, aptly whiny solo violin and lusciously mellow trio sections. An adagio is perfectly timed — about twenty-two minutes — with gorgeous string playing, ideally judged “accelerating” variations, and a whopper of a climax at the end. The finale — with Miah Persson, one of the best sopranos to take the role since Reri Grist (Bernstein) — could only be considered quick by those used to today’s increasingly droopy tempos. Fischer and Persson capture the music’s innocence with unforgettable sweetness and joy. And they understand that the little joke that Mahler plays at the symphony’s very end works best when still presented in lively fashion: “everything awakes to joy,” the solo sings, just as the music does the opposite: it goes to sleep in dreamy contentment.
-David Hurwitz
