With this reissue and remaster the original tapes of the first cycle of the 60s, and while the enthusiasm "hot" generated by the second cycle is now slightly fallen, it is now time to reconsider this "evidence".
Indeed, the subjective personal choices and freedoms that takes late Bernstein are far from compelling or even sometimes prove annoying. In wanting to convey the emotional power of this music, these freedoms sometimes make it a bit more pompous, diluted and / or disjointed and thus contribute to accentuate a reputation, largely unfair, too narcissistic music and autobiographical, too noisy and tearful rather than subtle, consistent and deeply inspired. We could make at this late approach "DG" the reproach of the following way: "More and less Bernstein Mahler."
But above all the supposed inferior technical quality of undergraduate deserves serious reconsideration with this fantastic remastering soundtracks that this edition for the first time at an affordable price, everything is clearer, sharper, more expressive, more piercing, more relief ... It is perhaps one of the travails of remastering that surprised me the most so it completely transforms the effect of this music on the listener. This remastering and gives meaning to this interpretation, but toned "clinic", a bit right of Bernstein, who had not much to add to the orchestra leader as ruddy, powerful, accurate and virtuoso that we can finally admire the splendor more than 40 years later. Also, the reproduction of vinyl pockets on each of the pockets CDs is very elegant, making this case also a "beautiful object" beyond the music it contains.
With this remastering, this interpretation, an objective strand then makes sense from scrupulous respect for the score and sound enjoyment to the "raw".
This vision does not achieve the urgent and dramatic peaks privacy of Kubelik nor the naturalistic dimension, a wild and organic Vaclav Neumann (two rings which have a little more "instinctive" and that I perhaps would place above this first Bernstein in my personal hierarchy), but it is terribly effective for those who want to enjoy Mahler first degree via a Mahler orchestra of choice (remember that Bruno Walter Bernstein was the predecessor of New York) in a cycle that Mahler was discovered almost a whole generation of Americans and so many music lovers around the world and which is conspicuously absent real weaknesses, regularity in the excellence that only Rafael Kubelik Mahler: Symphonies (Box 10 CDs) Vaclav Neumann Mahler: Symphonies (Complete) really managed to get by on.
