The Mahler Album = MAHLER: Adagietto from Symphony No. 5; Adagio from Symphony No. 10; BEETHOVEN: String Quartet No. 11, “Quartet Serioso” – Amsterdam Sinfonietta/ Candida Thompson – Channel Classics

The Mahler Album = MAHLER: Adagietto from Symphony No. 5; Adagio from Symphony No. 10; BEETHOVEN: String Quartet No. 11 in f minor, Op. 95, “Quartet Serioso”, arranged by Mahler – Amsterdam Sinfonietta/ Candida Thompson – Channel Classics multichannel SACD CCS SA 31511, 59:55 [Distr. by Harmonia mundi] ****:
Okay, the name is a bit of a misnomer—Mahler wrote only two of the works here, and the Adagio from Symphony 10 is an arrangement, a downsizing from the original orchestral score, of which only this movement and part of one other were actually completed to the point of orchestrating them. No need to go into the pros and cons of whether the whole thing should ever have been completed—that’s for another time. But the fact is that this is one of the most powerful movements of music Mahler ever penned, a genuine skirting with the world of atonality, and conceived at a time (1910) when he was extremely worried that his premonitions about his cheating wife—all too true, sadly—being involved with Walter Gropius were driving him to distraction, and even a round of sessions with Freud would only delay the inevitable relapse, cut short by the composer’s death the next year. But oh the music, the music—nothing has been written that even comes close to its passion and regret, his desire to leave this world’s constrictions and soar into the next. I am glad to report that this arrangement captures most of what we like to hear in a proper performance, and is well played and passionately presented.
The Adagietto from Symphony 5 is maybe one of the most, if not the most popular slow movement in all of music, being constantly pulled out of the folders and divorced from its brother No. 5 movements whenever special occasion call for it. I was a little turned back by the close miking which is needed to beef up the obvious lack of heft in the small string orchestra, but Channel’s wonderful surround sound ended up defeating any objections that might have been forming in my mind.
I am not a big fan of the Mahler arrangements of Beethoven quartets; Yuri Bashmet and the Moscow Virtuosi gave a spanking performance of this particular quartet years ago on RCA, about as beautiful a string orchestra tone as I ever hope to hear, but even that was not in the end persuadable. Neither is it here, despite the added bonus of Super Audio. But it is performed without a snag and with lots of commitment, so those of you partial to this sort of thing will find the totality of this album quite overwhelming; the rest of us will settle for the bookended genuine Mahler as the main attractions on this well-recorded disc.
—Steven Ritter