Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Mahler's 9th, Giulini, The Fabulous Philadelphians in 1972: What a ride!


Statework is ridiculously proud to present (all thanks to Ray):




Gustav Mahler

Symphony # 9



The Philadelphia Orchestra

Carlo Maria Giulini, conductor


Alan places the recording from either the March 17

(Friday concert) or March 18 (Saturday evening concert)

Philadelphia, PA

1972.


Ray contributed this, "One of the great performances of this symphony. In excellent sound. "


In the crowded football field full of Mahler 9th recordings that exist in the world, here is a standout, a steal, a touchdown.


-Or, as some of my fellow broadcast freaks ahem, expert listeners have effused: "...a gem, indeed...", "As fine as his studio recording is, this is even better. Again, the situation of a live performance is just more tense and intense. Did I hear
Giulini's voice somewhere in the first movement? And forget about that
trumpet intonation at the start of III, the orchestra is flat out gorgeous..."


Tom V, a Statework member, remembers the concerts:


"I was there at the Saturday night concert, up in the $1.50 or $2 "nosebleed" seats in the amphitheatre of the Academy of Music. It was my first live performance of any Mahler symphony and "live" is an understatement.

Giulini's Chicago recording never matched my memories of the Phila concert. Now I know my memory is correct.

Three notes:
1.Giulini conducted the performance w/o a score.

2. I don't recall a dog barking during Saturday's performance, so this must be Friday.

3. The announcer is probably from the late lamented WFLN, which was heavily involved in the production of the Orchestra's radio series for many years..."


My own scribbling from a third hearing (many more have passed since then!) include '...incisive attacks-surging, oceanic but opposite of schmaltz-then a clearing, a respite...3:47 Giulinian stomping ensues-'


Please listen closely to this recording for what you will, not least of which may include the oddball, "...And I thought there was a dog bark in the last movement! Sounded like a little lap thing who woke up in her master's purse"


En fin, a must-have. If it happens to be your first brush with the Mahler 9th or Mahler 's work (gasp!) in general, you couldn't have come across a finer first date. And before this I thought I was taking a Mahler vacation...



23 comments:

Guillermo said...

139.43 MB in a .zip folderfull of MP3 fury.

http://www.mediafire.com/?zcztnygmyhh

or, the same but shorter:

http://tinyurl.com/M9Giulini72Philly


If you prefer FLACs, (it's more MB though!) here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=50ae659d938e90f3ab1eab3e9fa335cab66d0e955a06718c

or,

http://tinyurl.com/M9Giulini72FLAC

sasha said...

O yes!!! Thanks for the hard sale..Absolutely important given the 20 or so versions lurking about one's hard drive and cd/vinyl collection..Otherwise one might have passed this by..Glad to have made its acquaintence..Looking forward to the listen..Will return with any thoughts etc..Many thanks.

Sandflyer said...

Nice.
It will be interesting to compare this to his later (1975?) studio recording of the Ninth with the Chicago SO on DGG

Sandflyer said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sandflyer said...

Aigh, let me rephrase the question: when and where was the recording made, i.e. was it a radio broadcast, what station etc.?

Sorry for the trouble and TIA.

Guillermo said...

If I understand the source correctly (the taper's memory), he was living in Philadelphia at the time he recorded the broadcast from the radio. The reason he and other tapers leave the station announcements at the beginning and end is precisely because the passage of time would erase the recollection of other details...
The other info so far is that reconstructed by Alan regarding the probable dates from which this performance was recorded.

Although I also glean an admittedly ridiculous pleasure from having performances by specific humans at specific times and places,
-and by no means do I mean to minusvalidate the sonic archaeology performed on this wonder-
the sounds presented in this post are such that, standing alone and without the boon of being associated with any 'great' conductors, orchestras or the like, anyone can listen to and enjoy a very special version of a beloved symphony.

Sandflyer said...

2nd paragraph - impressed! ;-)

This is where I differ in cooking my broadcast archives - I try to leave them as close to the "actual concert experience" as possible. If the musicians tune for 40 seconds between movements - this stays in my archive, but I cut the announcers out.
I copy the info about the concert etc. to a separate text file.

Thanks for the info and best, as usual.

Guillermo said...

And to you, Sand!
The text file thing is great, without doubt. The thing here is that some of the original tapers were saving the .txt files onto very low-Gigabyte "Masking Tape" or "Lined Paper Library Card" media, in the 70's, '80's and such, with the format being reel-to-reel or cassette. Analog, on any case!
Time, floods, forgetfulness, chidrearing, sunlight, darkness and vengeful ex-significant others can all take their toll on these hallowed repositories...

raybo said...

Love this performance, but at 8:24 of the FLAC 1st movement, the file is bad - sounds garbled. If I stop the FLAC playback and then play, it seems to clear up. However, when I convert to Apple Lossless, it remains bad thru the end of the track no matter what I do.

Ray

Sandflyer said...

@guillermo:
Well, yeah. Some of my "text files" are scraps of paper with pencil written notes, kept in a binder... ;-)

@raybo:
I finally started listening to the symphony this morning (transferred to audio CD) and yes, the music cuts out at 8:24.
This is Mediafire, so my suggestion is to try the downloads again.
Rinse, repeat until successful. Mediafire does this a lot, so sometimes it takes several tries until the file DLs uncorrupted.

Guillermo said...

Also, try decoding the FLAC with another program. I has problems with the 1st movement in various guises, using my favorite decoder, XLD. I wasn't able to procure a clean decode until using Switch and Max.

Sandflyer said...

The discussion is fragmenting into technicalities, but on my VU Player, the music plays fine (from the first download), so the files do not seem to be evidently broken.

ipromesisposi said...

I finished a comparative discography about Mahler 9 a few weeks ago, so I'm going to listen this permorfance with the greatest interest.
Very kind of you.
(You are welcome if you want follow the link)

Carrie Counsel said...

Mahler is one of my favorite composers...I especially like his 3rd Symphony. Check out my blog, I just started it:

http://www.carriecounsel.blogspot.com/

Guillermo said...

Apropos, Carrie! Mahler always sounds like such a searching, developing music to me.
Makes sense that you love the 3rd especially, as it seems you're looking to reinterpret what people tell you; the third symphony is Mahler's vision of What Nature Tells Me, What Man Tells Me, What Love Tells Me...

Tom V said...

I was there at the Saturday night concert, up in the $1.50 or $2 "nosebleed" seats in the amphitheatre of the Academy of Music. It was my first live performance of any Mahler symphony and "live" is an understatement.

Giulini's Chicago recording never matched my memories of the Phila concert. Now I know my memory is correct.

Three notes:
1.Giulini conducted the performance w/o a score.

2. I don't recall a dog barking during Saturday's performance, so this must be Friday.

3. The announcer is probably from the late lamented WFLN, which was heavily involved in the production of the Orchestra's radio series for many years.

Many thanks,

Tom V

Guillermo said...

Tom V, Thank you for sharing these memories! This is the best possible function of a blog like this. I think it becomes a node where someone's personal experience can enrich the offerings which are otherwise unavailable, and certainly without the telling details such as you've provided.

I hope this serves as apology for going ahead and incorporating your comments to the post- 'Better to plead for forgiveness than ask for permission'
;)
Thanks again Tom V.

Tom V said...

Guillermo:

Another recovered memory.

I believe the announcer is Jim Keeler, who was (if I recall) Program Director of WFLN at the time and introduced the broadcasts.

WFLN began broadcasting classical music in Philadelphia in 1949 and went off the air in 1997.

Best wishes,

Tom V.

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elliot Rothenberg said...

Thank you for sharing this great performance. I have come in late but am sorry to report that the link to movement 1 (flac) is defective. The message is "error in the decoder". I hope you can fix this. Many thanks.