Mahler: Symphony No. 3

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[Roth] goes at the crazy world of the Third with all wind and brass guns blazing…He isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty with the raggle-taggle marchers of the first movement. Even the trombone... — BBC Music Magazine, May 2019, 5 out of 5 stars (Performance) / 4 out of 5 stars (Recording) More…

Release Date: 15th Feb 2019
Catalogue No: HMM90531415
Label: Harmonia Mundi
Series: Roth Mahler Symphonies
Length: 93 minutes

Record Review

2nd March 2019

Disc of the Week

Mahler: Symphony No. 3

Work length1:33:23

Album only

Sara Mingardo (soloist)
Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, Women's choir of Schola Heidelberg, Young Singers of the Kölner Dom
François-Xavier Roth

No. 1. Kräftig. Entschieden

Track length32:08

Album only

No. 2. Tempo di Menuetto. Sehr mäßig

Track length8:56

$1.20

$1.50

$1.75

No. 3. Comodo. Scherzando. Ohne Hast

Track length16:32

Album only

No. 4. Sehr langsam. Misterioso. Durchaus ppp

Track length8:51

$1.20

$1.50

$1.75

No. 5. Lustig im Tempo und keck im Ausdruck

Track length4:17

$1.00

$1.25

$1.45

No. 6. Langsam. Ruhevoll. Empfunden

Track length22:39

Album only

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A masterpiece first played by the Gürzenich-Orchester. The premiere of Mahler’s Third Symphony took place in June 1902 in Krefeld (not far from Düsseldorf) but it was indeed the Gürzenich-Orchester of Cologne who gave that first performance, greeted with acclaim. This was not always the composer’s experience with his masterpieces.

Originally conceived as a hymn to Nature, in which the inert chaos of the opening movement is gradually left behind, the work calls for enormous forces (large orchestra, women’s choir, boys’ choir and contralto soloist) and, at each hearing, leaves an unforgettable impression on the audience. Such was the case in October 2018, when François-Xavier Roth led the esteemed successors of the work’s first interpreters in this latest Mahler adventure.

Reviews

May 2019

[Roth] goes at the crazy world of the Third with all wind and brass guns blazing…He isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty with the raggle-taggle marchers of the first movement. Even the trombone sounds more like a raw force of nature than a sophisticated funeral master…Roth shows he can do serious too, with mezzo Sara Mingardo symbolic of the performance as a whole: not an unearthly oracle but a feeling human being.*****

April 2019

With a first movement majoring on local colour and fresh-faced charm, Francois-Xavier Roth leaves Mahler’s potentially laboured metaphysics to take care of themselves in later movements… There is a Wunderhorn-style warmth and energy to her singing that leads us naturally into the fifth movement’s angelic tableau (beautifully sonorous bells, boys and girls too).

3rd February 2019

Roth and the Cologne orchestra have a knack of making the most familiar Mahler sound new, with vivid extremes of colour and dynamics. Hearing the prodigious Third makes me marvel afresh at it, and at the stupidity of critics who were deaf to its greatness

15th February 2019

Timbres matter a lot to Roth...and the detailed interplay of colours and solo lines stand out spectacularly...He and his talented Cologne musicians neither wallow nor preen, they simply let the music speak, expertly navigating the extended first movement’s shifting moods and letting the final slow movement’s measured crescendo reach its peak without any prodding.

Mahler: Symphony No. 3

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