Kubelik Mahler Cycle

[Katzelmacher]

I think this may have been the second complete cycle to hit the market, just after Bernstein’s, in the late sixties. So, it’s pretty well-known.

I acquired it as part of the DG Kubelik centenary box a few years ago but am only just giving it a second listen. So far I’m up to 6.

And, so far, it’s all good. While I’m not sure any of the individual performances would be first choices, RK keeps things moving and avoids the repulsive self-indulgence that has become endemic in so much latterday Mahler performance (‘Now, let’s see if I can break the record for the longest Adagietto? And can I get my 9th onto two discs?’)

Interestingly, the 3rd apart, Kubelik keeps everything to under 80 minutes. No small feat!

[Bryn]

I think this may have been the second complete cycle to hit the market, just after Bernstein’s, in the late sixties. So, it’s pretty well-known.

I acquired it as part of the DG Kubelik centenary box a few years ago but am only just giving it a second listen. So far I’m up to 6.

And, so far, it’s all good. While I’m not sure any of the individual performances would be first choices, RK keeps things moving and avoids the repulsive self-indulgence that has become endemic in so much latterday Mahler performance (‘Now, let’s see if I can break the record for the longest Adagietto? And can I get my 9th onto two discs?’)

Interestingly, the 3rd apart, Kubelik keeps everything to under 80 minutes. No small feat!

I think you will find that the Abravanel was pretty much simultaneous with the Bernstein and Kubelik, though it stretched out a little later in being completed. Here are the years in which the Abravanel recordings are reported as having been made.

1st = 1974,
2nd = 1967,
3rd = 1969,
4th = 1968,
5th = 1974,
6th = 1974,
7th = 1966,
8th = 1963,
9th = 1969,
10th (Adagio) = 1974 (last recording).

[Richard Barrett]

Kubelik's were the recordings I got to know the music from. I still listen to them quite often, especially 4 and 8.

[Bryn]

Kubelik's were the recordings I got to know the music from. I still listen to them quite often, especially 4 and 8.

Composer friend, John White is particularly fond of Kubelik's recording of the 6th. Of the Kubelik DG survey, the 2nd is the only one I have problems with, and that is down to DG's artificial effect for the off-stage band. The performance is not, I feel, best served by this. I fairly recently 'upgraded' to the re-issue which comes replete with an audio-only Blu-ray.

[Petrushka]

I think you will find that the Abravanel was pretty much simultaneous with the Bernstein and Kubelik, though it stretched out a little later in being completed. Here are the years in which the Abravanel recordings are reported as having been made.

1st = 1974,
2nd = 1967,
3rd = 1969,
4th = 1968,
5th = 1974,
6th = 1974,
7th = 1966,
8th = 1963,
9th = 1969,
10th (Adagio) = 1974 (last recording).

I'm pretty sure that the Haitink/Concertgebouw set was the first Mahler cycle issued with the same conductor and orchestra. Haitink's dates are:

1st = 1962
2nd = 1968
3rd = 1966
4th = 1967
5th = 1970
6th = 1969
7th = 1969
8th = 1971
9th = 1969
10th (Adagio) = 1971

[jayne lee wilson]

I think this may have been the second complete cycle to hit the market, just after Bernstein’s, in the late sixties. So, it’s pretty well-known.

I acquired it as part of the DG Kubelik centenary box a few years ago but am only just giving it a second listen. So far I’m up to 6.

And, so far, it’s all good. While I’m not sure any of the individual performances would be first choices, RK keeps things moving and avoids the repulsive self-indulgence that has become endemic in so much latterday Mahler performance (‘Now, let’s see if I can break the record for the longest Adagietto? And can I get my 9th onto two discs?’)

Interestingly, the 3rd apart, Kubelik keeps everything to under 80 minutes. No small feat!

Rattle was never inclined to indulge anything, or anyone, in his own often quite revisionist CBSO Mahler readings... latterly you have the "cool choice" between Vanska, Zinman inter alia.... from what you reveal of your tastes these may suit you very well...
Try Xavier-Roth in the 5th....

I guess I grew up as a Mahlerian with the Haitink and Kubelik cycles, both very rewarding; Klemperer in 2,4 and 9......... the main problem back then with Bernstein was the LP pressing quality. But when I got the DSD remaster of the NYPO cycle, it became another (non-self-indulgent) reference - always much preferred to the later DGG....

Always a good idea, if you generalise about Mahler (or any) interpretation ("self-indulgent" etc) to give examples....

[Barbirollians]

Rattle was never inclined to indulge anything, or anyone, in his own often quite revisionist CBSO Mahler readings... latterly you have the "cool choice" between Vanska, Zinman inter alia.... from what you reveal of your tastes these may suit you very well...
Try Xavier-Roth in the 5th....

I guess I grew up as a Mahlerian with the Haitink and Kubelik cycles, both very rewarding; Klemperer in 2,4 and 9......... the main problem back then with Bernstein was the LP pressing quality. But when I got the DSD remaster of the NYPO cycle, it became another (non-self-indulgent) reference - always much preferred to the later DGG....

Always a good idea, if you generalise about Mahler (or any) interpretation ("self-indulgent" etc) to give examples....

I have always much enjoyed the First and more recently the Fourth with Elsie Morison. I was less enamoured of his Fifth that did seem rather cool to me and it was soon replaced by the VPO/Bernstein and the Barbirolli in my affections.

[cloughie]

I have always much enjoyed the First and more recently the Fourth with Elsie Morison. I was less enamoured of his Fifth that did seem rather cool to me and it was soon replaced by the VPO/Bernstein and the Barbirolli in my affections.

I think the Adagietto of the 5th was played at the swifter speed which at the time was ‘normal’ until so many conductors decided to slow it right down in the 1970s. The third movement of the 4th received similar treatment eg VPO Abbado.

[richardfinegold]

Composer friend, John White is particularly fond of Kubelik's recording of the 6th. Of the Kubelik DG survey, the 2nd is the only one I have problems with, and that is down to DG's artificial effect for the off-stage band. The performance is not, I feel, best served by this. I fairly recently 'upgraded' to the re-issue which comes replete with an audio-only Blu-ray.

How is that Blu Ray?

I didn't imbibe my Mahler as a cycle, because I wasn't hooked right off the bat. I came to explore each work individually through a hodgepodge of performers, usually because I would encounter a recording that was priced attractively and seemed to promise quality as well. The Ninth, for example, when I came upon a Supraphon recording with Ancerl and the Czech PO in a cutout bin.

[Katzelmacher]

Rattle was never inclined to indulge anything, or anyone, in his own often quite revisionist CBSO Mahler readings... latterly you have the "cool choice" between Vanska, Zinman inter alia.... from what you reveal of your tastes these may suit you very well...
Try Xavier-Roth in the 5th....

I guess I grew up as a Mahlerian with the Haitink and Kubelik cycles, both very rewarding; Klemperer in 2,4 and 9......... the main problem back then with Bernstein was the LP pressing quality. But when I got the DSD remaster of the NYPO cycle, it became another (non-self-indulgent) reference - always much preferred to the later DGG....

Always a good idea, if you generalise about Mahler (or any) interpretation ("self-indulgent" etc) to give examples....

I’ll be obvious and say ‘late’ Bernstein, when he revisited most of his repertoire for DG. His second complete cycle features some good stuff (especially the 3rd, a symphony he ‘got’ better than many other conductors, I’d say) but a lot of eccentricity elsewhere.

Sidebar, but I’m quite a fan of his notorious NYPO Pathetique Symphony. The playwright Peter Shaffer once crudely remarked, apropos of an RAH Mahler performance by LB, ‘Lennie’s humping the music again....’ Well, Tchaikovsky gets well and truly ‘humped’ there.....

[Katzelmacher]

I think the Adagietto of the 5th was played at the swifter speed which at the time was ‘normal’ until so many conductors decided to slow it right down in the 1970s. The third movement of the 4th received similar treatment eg VPO Abbado.

I like swift Adagiettos. Apparently, Death In Venice (can’t remember which recording was used for that) by making the Adagietto even more famous than it was before, sparked the trend for ‘lingering’, a trend that continues to this day.

[Richard Barrett]

The Ninth, for example, when I came upon a Supraphon recording with Ancerl and the Czech PO in a cutout bin.

I would quite understand if you decided to look no further than that, where no.9 is concerned!

Of course, interpretative views of any composer evolve over the course of time, with the example of the Adagietto, but I can't say I prefer it faster or slower. Kubelik's 5th, for example, strikes me as having been conceived as a whole rather than with the fourth movement as an outlier or complete change of scene. To me the whole symphony could be seen as a passage between darkness and light, and the Adagietto is closer to the end of that journey than the beginning. While these days I might oftener listen to the more "knowing" approach of Gielen or Abbado or indeed Norrington, I don't think the feeling of discovery I got from the Kubelik records (which I think is really there, rather than in my imagination) will ever leave me.

[Katzelmacher]

I'm pretty sure that the Haitink/Concertgebouw set was the first Mahler cycle issued with the same conductor and orchestra. Haitink's dates are:

1st = 1962
2nd = 1968
3rd = 1966
4th = 1967
5th = 1970
6th = 1969
7th = 1969
8th = 1971
9th = 1969
10th (Adagio) = 1971

Yes, Haitink began earlier but both cycles wer concluded at the same time (1971). The quick Czech caught up with the phlegmatic Dutchman.

[cloughie]

How is that Blu Ray?

I didn't imbibe my Mahler as a cycle, because I wasn't hooked right off the bat. I came to explore each work individually through a hodgepodge of performers, usually because I would encounter a recording that was priced attractively and seemed to promise quality as well. The Ninth, for example, when I came upon a Supraphon recording with Ancerl and the Czech PO in a cutout bin.

Ancerl’s Sym 1 is a lovely performance, as indeed is Kubelik’s VPO from the 50s.

[jayne lee wilson]

I like swift Adagiettos. Apparently, Death In Venice (can’t remember which recording was used for that) by making the Adagietto even more famous than it was before, sparked the trend for ‘lingering’, a trend that continues to this day.

It was Franco Mannino with the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (as The Orchestra of the Academy of Saint Cecilia). No idea of the movement timing itself..... I wonder if it was simply the, well, extensive use of it through the film that created such an impression....

The 3rd was also used, the Nietzsche setting... (one of my favourite Mahler moments)......