Nicholas Kenyon 

Mahler: Symphony No 3 (CD); No 5 (DVD) – review

Two live performances from conductor Klaus Tennstedt, recorded as illness loomed, are almost unbearably intense, writes Nicholas Kenyon
  
  


You begin to worry when legends occur during your lifetime: these live performances by the great Klaus Tennstedt seem from a bygone age, yet they both date only from the mid-1980s. They are almost unbearably intense, recorded live as the pressures of illness loomed over the conductor. The intensity is palpable on the CD of the Third Symphony, whose sprawling first movement is here fantastically vivid and varied, but it is visible on the DVD of the Fifth: Tennstedt's unique way was to let the music unfurl with total freedom (and some vagueness) and then galvanise its climax with frightening concentration.

 

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