| Review by Luukas September 9, 2014 (6 of 10 found this review helpful)
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After Gergiev's and Tilson Thomas' performances, this [Mariss Jansons' account] is pretty good, maybe the best available version of this work.
Mahler's Third Symphony is composer's longest symphony: there are six movements and the first movement's total time is almost 35 minutes! By the way, Jansons really understands Mahler's score, and he brings his interesting ideas to the performance.
First movement begins eight horns solemnly thema, and it sounds powerful here. The famous funeral march is wonderful, and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra plays very well.
Second movement's lightly minuet is gentle and touching, but sometimes it sounds too kindly. The funny third movement is also very good, and post horn's distant peaceful melody comes very close in 5.0 multi-channel mode. It sounds like you are in the summer fields, and you hear shepherd's lonely quietly playing from far away. Stunning listening experience!
Fourth movement is mystical, and fifth movement is funny. Jansons' tempo is moving, and both choirs sings lovely.
Sixth movement is very beautiful: strings hymn-like melody sounds often too heavily, but Jansons reaches melody's breathtaking lightness very well: sound is natural and very clearly. The long climax is excellent, and finale's fantastically end sound very good; the whole orchestra's long D major chord is - at last - very long, and results are marvelous.
There are my reviews: ***** (Performance), ****1/2 (Recording).
There are also many good recordings, so I tell my own top 5 recommendations:
1) "Enjoyable 'natural' performance" (this one)
2) "Powerful, exciting live recording" (Anna Larsson (alto), Tiffin Boys Choir, London Symphony Chorus, London Symphony Orchestra, Valery Gergiev (conductor), LSO Live)
3) "Marvelous recording" (Lilli Paasikivi (mezzo-soprano), Tiffin Boys Choir, Philharmonia Orchestra, Benjamin Zander (conductor), Telarc)
4) "Grammy Award winner" (Michelle DeYoung (mezzo-soprano), San Francisco's Girl Chorus, San Francisco Chorus, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas (conductor), Avie)
5) "Blistering account" (Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Jonathan Nott (conductor), Tudor)
So, choice your own favorite, but I think that Janson's performance is the best.
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| Review by jeffreybehr September 19, 2014 (4 of 5 found this review helpful)
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This will be brief and perhaps unusual, since I listened to only the last movement, one of my favorite in the Romantic-period repertoire. (I have loved Mahler's music for about 50 years and most of all the adagios and am quite happy listening to only the slow movements.) The orchestral playing and the recording--the sounds of this big orchestra in its hall--are both 5-star...natural and spacious...simply excellent. I wish I loved the conducting more. Jansons plays the small transitional phrases and other sections somewhat casually and quickly for me, and I feel a tad cheated out of an opportunity to hear some of this beautiful music played more strongly. I'm confident that most lovers of this music will not hear it this way or even understand what I'm hearing, and that's OK. For whatever it's worth, my favorite Mahler 3 is James Levine's with the Chicago SO on RCA (CD). (Unfortunately the 1976 recording is typical RCA multimono, highly spotlighted and knob-twiddled work of the period.) Levine takes almost 27 minutes for this last movement compared with Jansons's almost 23 minutes, but Levine's is never slack or lacks momentum; it's played strongly and passionately...some might feel that it's too passionate.
Jansons's Mahler 3 last movement is very good but a near miss for me.
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