Mahler: Symphony No. 7 (Live)

Simon Rattle has long had a strong affection and belief in Mahler’s Symphony No. 7, a work the Austrian composer began in the summer of 1904, immediately after completing his bleakly tragic Sixth. This is Rattle’s third recording (or fourth, if you count his first studio recording which he insisted was not up to standard and so should not be released), and it is truly magnificent. Surely the most emotionally complex of Mahler’s symphonies, its structure is unusual—beginning and ending with large-scale movements, bookending two very different but highly evocative “songs of the night” entitled “Nachtmusik”, which themselves enclose a central sardonic and at times nightmarish “Scherzo”, its details such as the howling strings and clarinets wonderfully characterised here. The Bavarian orchestra is at its absolute peak, totally inhabiting Mahler’s detailed, highly expressive and colourful scoring, gloriously captured in this live recording at the Isar Philharmonic Concert Hall—an acoustic ideal for this work, revealing both its gleaming string and woodwind colours while giving definition to a range of unusual effects from distant tinkling cowbells to the percussive snap of a very loud double bass and cello pizzicato.