Symphony No. 8 in E flat major ("Symphony of a Thousand")
On this 2007 double disc, which completes his series of recordings of Gustav Mahler's symphonies for Deutsche Grammophon, Pierre Boulez leads the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Berlin State Opera Chorus, the Berlin Radio Symphony Chorus, the Aurelius Boys Choir of Calw, and eight vocal soloists in an earnest but unconvincing reading of the Symphony No. 8 in E flat major, "Symphony of a Thousand." The performance is full of finely wrought details and wonderful highlights of the rich orchestration; but much like his other Mahler ...
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On this 2007 double disc, which completes his series of recordings of Gustav Mahler's symphonies for Deutsche Grammophon, Pierre Boulez leads the Staatskapelle Berlin, the Berlin State Opera Chorus, the Berlin Radio Symphony Chorus, the Aurelius Boys Choir of Calw, and eight vocal soloists in an earnest but unconvincing reading of the Symphony No. 8 in E flat major, "Symphony of a Thousand." The performance is full of finely wrought details and wonderful highlights of the rich orchestration; but much like his other Mahler recordings, Boulez is inordinately focused on the minutiae of the score, so he misses the overall trajectory of the work and deprives it of steady propulsion and a feeling of urgency. This enormous symphony becomes almost misshapen due to slack tempos, and it sags the most during the long, rhapsodic vocal interludes, where the singers seem to have been given too much liberty to determine the pace; the music only picks up steam in the fast choral episodes, where Mahler's counterpoint...
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