Mahler: Symphony No.7 / Mozart: Symphony No.41 "Jupiter"

Gramophone Classical Music Guide 2010 “The Seventh was not an especial high-point of Tennstedt's Mahler symphony cycle with the London Philharmonic – not that it's a bad performance, per se, it just never really catches fire. A live performance from 1993 (EMI), made at one of the conductor's last public appearances, is considerably more compelling, though the first movement is encumbered by some dangerously slow tempi. This BBC Legends release comes from a 1980 concert given at the Edinburgh Festival just a few months before Tennstedt and the LPO took the work into EMI's Abbey Road studios. It's a revelation. Yes, the interpretative outline is similar in both accounts – and the live version is not without its technical stumbles, of course – but how fervent the playing is here, and how much more sense Tennstedt's tempo manipulations make. Listen, for example, beginning at 9'05” in the first movement where a vast landscape of breathtaking purity is conjured, or to the movement's end, which is driven with just the right amount of brute force, it seems, to set one's heart pounding. The Scherzo is appropriately eerie, full of shadows and shrieks, yet it sings, too – a weird and powerful effect. Most impressive of all, perhaps, is the treacherous finale, where Tennstedt and the orchestra make the most of the music's manic mood swings. This is, without a doubt, a great Mahler Seventh. Mozart's Jupiter Symphony would have benefited from an acoustic less cavernous than the Albert Hall, but it's still a stylish performance. The slow movement is given an operatic sense of dramatic purpose, the Minuet has a surprisingly songful grandeur, and the joyousness of the finale is not merely exuberant but heartfelt. Treasurable.” Gramophone Magazine December 2007 “…how fervent the playing is here… Listen, for example, beginning at 9'05" in the first movement where a vast landscape of breathtaking purity is conjured, or to the movement's end, which is driven with just the right amount of brute force, it seems, to set one's heart pounding. The Scherzo is appropriately eerie, full of shadows and shrieks, yet it sings, too - a weird and powerful effect. Most impressive of all, perhaps, is the treacherous finale, where Tennstedt and the orchestra make the most of the music's manic mood swings. This is, without a doubt, a great Mahler Seventh. Mozart's Jupiter Symphony would have benefited from an acoustic less cavernous than the Albert Hall, but it's still a stylish performance. Treasurable.”