GREAT RECORDINGS phase 15

MAHLER: SYMPHONY No.2 ‘RESURRECTION’
Arleen Augér & Janet Baker
City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus & Orchestra
Sir Simon Rattle

3 45794 2
(Angel: 3 45802 2) (2CDs)
Recorded 1986
Stereo/DDD
86 minutes

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‘This is conducting akin to genius, with insights and instincts that can’t be measured by any old yardstick. Rattle’s sense of drama, of apocalyptic events, is so strong that at the final chords one is awed. The CBSO emerges as an orchestra of world class and the CBSO Chorus is magnificent. The recording is superb.’
(The Gramophone)
Award: Gramophone, GB

When Simon Rattle made this recording of Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ Symphony in 1986 he was 31 and just 6 years into his 18-year association with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. The recording created a sensation and confirmed Rattle’s credentials as a major Mahlerian. Subsequently, he has recorded all the Mahler symphonies (Nos. 5 and 10 with the Berlin Philharmonic, No.9 with the Vienna Philharmonic and the others with the CBSO).

The success of the 1986 ‘Resurrection’ was built on Rattle’s deep knowledge and experience of the work. He first heard the symphony as a boy of eleven, and at 18 he courageously mounted a performance at the Royal Academy of Music in London, which drew the excited attention of the critics (and of the young conductor’s future agent). Subsequently the work has become something of a Rattle speciality. The recording was preceded by public performances, and Rattle would conduct the symphony again on significant occasions during his years in Birmingham and beyond.

In 1988, the recording won two Gramophone awards (in the ‘Orchestral’ category and as ‘Record of the Year’) and the performance is now ranked as one of the finest in a discography that includes the earliest generation of great Mahlerians, Oscar Fried, Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer, who knew and worked with the composer himself.

To the ‘inspired’ Rattle, his ‘world-class’ orchestra and the ‘magnificent’ CBSO Chorus, EMI was able to add two superb soloists: Janet Baker and Arleen Augér, whose ‘heartfelt and characterful’ singing in the symphony’s last two movements brings further distinction to this fine achievement.