Mahler – Symphony No.9
Budapest Festival Orchestra; Iván Fischer
Channel Classics CCS SA 36115
Iván Fischer’s ever-innovative Budapest Festival Orchestra, now in its 30th season, is a unique ensemble. Formed from a core of younger freelance musicians and a modicum of state support it thrives without a musicians’ union or job security. Fischer aptly describes the profile of the BFO as “not a dinosaur but a tiger.”
This sixth instalment of their outstanding series of Mahler symphonies presents one of the finest recordings ever of the Ninth Symphony. The performance of the first movement, virtually a symphony in itself, is revelatory. It perfectly depicts Alban Berg’s description of this movement: “It expresses an extraordinary love of this earth, for Nature; the longing to live on it in peace, to enjoy it completely, to the very heart of one’s being, before death comes, as irresistibly it does.” The second movement, an archly ironic Ländler, is nattily performed with a curiously bourgeois restraint (the disruptive timpani strokes are barely audible), though all hell breaks out in the contrapuntal near-panic of the subsequent Rondo-Burleske. Time stands still in the intense longing and eventual serene acceptance of the Finale. Rarely have I heard such an exquisite balance within and between the sections of the orchestra; such unanimity of tone can only have been achieved with intensive sectional rehearsals, a luxury most orchestras have long abandoned. The orchestra is equally well served by Jared Sacks and Hein Dekker’s outstanding recording and production. At a relatively swift 75 minutes the work fits on a single disc in a hybrid SACD format. Not to be missed!
