The Mahler Third is one of my great favorites. Now there is a new recording of this work, with a conductor who has a huge background in performing Mahler’s works.
Mahler: Symphony No. 3
Live-Recording: Munich, Philharmonie im Gasteig, 15. – 17.06.2016
The voice soloist is Gerhild Romberger (contralto), with the
Augsburger Domsingknaben, Frauenchor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, and the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Bernard Haitink conducting.
Gustav Mahler’s Third Symphony still ranks today as one of the greatest and most powerful creations of the Late Romantic period. The huge symphony was composed over a period of four years from 1892 to 1896, and especially during the summers of 1895 and 1896, which Mahler spent at the Attersee in Austria.
Following performances of several individual movements of the symphony, the complete work was premiered on June 9, 1902, at the 38th “Tonkünstler Festival” in Krefeld. Mahler conducted the Städtische Kapelle Krefeld and Cologne’s Gürzenich Orchestra at this exciting event. It was one of his greatest successes, and his contemporaries were deeply impressed.
Of the six powerful movements, the slow fourth one requires not only a large orchestra but also a mezzo-soprano solo for a setting of the “Midnight Song” (“O Man! Take heed!”) from Friedrich Nietzsche’s poetical-philosophical “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” while in the cheerful fifth movement the mezzo-soprano soloist is joined by a children’s choir and a female chorus for the song Es sungen drei Engel from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn”.
Here is Bernard Haitink, leading the Symphony number 3 by Mahler:
