Search - Gustav Mahler, Kent Nagano, Dagmar Peckova :: Symphony 3

Is Mahler better when he's cool and trimmed down?

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 06/03/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Kent Nagano's lightweight Mahler Third, which is even airier than Tilson Thomas's and leaner than Salonen's (both on Sony), may be the wave of the future. But if you are used to Bernstein or any other conductor who sees the Mahler Third as an oportunity for searching insights, cosmic contrasts, and endless shadings, this performance comes as a shock. The first movement is quite cool--no wrenching climaxes here--and the second movement a jaunty skim wihtout shadows.



Nagano keeps the textures clear and clean, and with excellent sonics from Teldec and a light touch from the Berlin Deutsche symphony, the listener discovers a sunnier world than in any other Third. Let's leave aside that in the third movement featuring its haunting posthorn solo offstage, Nagano's musicians are far from the virtuosos we're used to in this music. Clearly he's riding a trend; younger conductors eschew profundity in Brahms and Beethoven, too. I would have to agree with this approach to give a higher rating here, however.



Peckova is light-voiced and uninvolving in Nietzsche's tragi poem at the heart of the fourth movement, and her Slavic tone isn't to my taste. The children's and women's chorus are light-hearted and lovely in the fifth movement. Peckova rather garbles her part. The finale skims the surface in an open-eed lyrical way, missing all the depths of melancholy Mahler intended. I can see that every other reviewer has loved this recording. It disappeared from the catalog fairly quickly but is now back in a mid-priced version."