Mahler • 10 Symphonies
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was only last summer that Deutsche Grammophon brought out its big
box of all the recordings the conductor Rafael Kubelík made for that label, and now
here is a much smaller box, of unusual significance in several respects. It contains yet
again all of Kubelik’s Mahler symphonies, with his own Bavarian Radio Symphony
Orchestra -- in two different formats, and with more care for accompanying detail than in
the big box, though not replacing quite all the Mahler in that set.
First of all, there is ample documentation here: complete texts, with translations, for all the works involving voices, and essays by Karl Schumann and Constantine Floros, from the original LP issues. The presentation box is once again impressive in its own right, this time using as frame the cover for Felix Salten’s book on Gustav Klimt, painted by Klimt himself. This is a classy presentation, more than compensating for some of the omissions in the big box (a pretty classy presentation in its own right, despite those omissions). A surprising omission in this Mahler box is that of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, which filled out the disc of the First Symphony in the big box, and also on some of the earlier reissues on single CDs -- most appropriately, since some of the themes in that symphony came from that song-cycle. I can’t imagine why the songs are omitted in this latest offering, but I’m not registering a complaint here, just noting the unexpected omission. One might say there is another omission, unavoidable in this case because Deutsche Grammophon did not record a Kubelík performance of Das Lied von der Erde, which Mahler labeled a symphony, but without assigning it a number. (This involves Mahler’s superstitious fear of composing a Ninth, a story told many times.) Kubelík hoped to record Das Lied von der Erde with the British mezzo Janet Baker, who performed it with him in Munich in February 1970 (with the tenor Waldemar Kmentt as her fellow soloist), but she recorded the work for Philips, with the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Bernard Haitink, and Kubelík never made a commercial recording of Das Lied von der Erde. The Audite label, however, which has brought out quite a few of Kubelík’s broadcast recordings, has this 1970 gem in its catalogue [Audite 95491], and Amazon offers it in various formats. Apart from questions of omission, though (and those cited here are hardly of the sort to be of major importance to most prospective buyers), this set is stunningly impressive, by any standards. Generally available for less than 57 dollars, it is something that may be admired and treasured on several levels, and might be described as a more intimate memento of an outstanding Mahler conductor, while the big box issued last summer retains its unique status as complete coverage of the richly varied discography Kubelík ran up on Deutsche Grammophon that so comprehensively acknowledges his status among the great conductors of his time. So, bottom line: this is quite a striking memento of a truly unforgettable musician in repertory that held special meaning for him, and the presentation, first-rate in every respect, may turn more than a few curious listeners into enthusiasts for Blu-ray, which duplicates all of the recordings from the CDs in 24-bit/96kHz stereo sound. The ample booklet, already mentioned, indicates that
Deutsche Grammophon has issued similar boxes -- each a set CDs plus a single Blu-ray Disc
of the entire contents -- of (a) all of Leonard Bernstein’s Beethoven symphonies with
the Vienna Philharmonic, (b) the Amadeus Quartet’s Beethoven cycle, and (c) all of
the conductor Carlos Kleiber’s recordings for this label. |
