Mahler: Symphony No. 9 (Live Recording)

Speaking of a live performance by Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, a critic once remarked that “you might never again hear playing as beautiful as this, but now you know that it can be done.” That’s not a bad summary of this award-winning interpretation, recorded live in 1982, in which the Berlin Philharmonic and its veteran maestro not only play sublimely, but find an edge-of-the-seat emotional commitment that isn’t always present in their studio recordings. Mahler’s Ninth is sometimes called a farewell to life, but it’s also a celebration of life, in all its longing, beauty, terror, and joy. Karajan delivers on all fronts before fading to an ending so inward and intense that it almost seems to become one with the silence around it.