Gustav Mahler (1860–1911)
Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor (1901–02)
Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra/Sir Donald Runnicles
rec. 26–27 July 2024, Walk Festival Hall, Teton Village, Wyoming, USA
Reviewed from a WAV download 192kHz/24-bit
Reference Recordings FR-763 SACD [73]

Summer months were a blessed time for Mahler. Temporarily freed of his demanding conducting commitments, he found scenic seclusion and composed intently. The Symphony No. 5 was mostly written over two such breaks in 1901 and 1902 in Maiernigg on Lake Wörthersee. It feels appropriate, then, that this vibrant new account of that work should emanate from another summer sojourn in beautiful surroundings. The Grand Teton Music Festival takes place in Jackson Hole, situated in a valley in the Teton Range in Wyoming. It represents a serious commitment for its musicians, who are drawn from 84 orchestras and 72 institutions of higher learning in North America and Europe: eight weeks of concerts, five of which are conducted by Donald Runnicles, the Festival’s Director. That’s a substantial amount of time to work together, and, as this new recording shows, players and conductor made the most of the opportunity given in July 2024 to collaborate on this first work of Mahler’s more mature style.

That new style is generally seen as a move to a more abstract approach to composition and orchestral writing, perhaps triggered by Mahler’s near-fatal intestinal haemorrhage in February 1901. As he wrote to Max Kallbeck while working on the Fifth, however, ‘from Beethoven onwards, there is no modern music that has not its inner programme’. For me, the best performances of this Symphony are those where the conductor has internalised that programme or narrative, giving the work a coherent sense of development. I have that sense with Runnicles. The opening trumpet phrase has a gravity and a precision that establish the tone for everything that follows. The funeral march’s strong pulse is inflected with resignation. Runnicles observes closely the ‘Strict’ tempo direction, so that when the sudden change Mahler asks for later in the movement, ‘Suddenly faster. Passionate. Wild’, arrives, it lands as a genuine shock — visceral and impulsive. Whatever decorum existed is gone. The second movement delivers on Mahler’s direction for ‘storminess’ and ‘vehemence’, and the recollections of the first movement are delivered like the discontinuities of a bad dream. The Scherzo in Runnicles’s reading feels like the pivot it is, with beautifully judged rubato in the Ländler contrasted with the Trio only for the overwhelming coda to make us wonder where we’re going next. The Adagietto answers that question, moving with genuine momentum and, at moments, something approaching ecstasy, the string playing full and resonant. The Rondo-Finale is unmistakeably a Rondo, the contrapuntal writing so central to its effectiveness delivered with clarity and verve by the Grand Teton players.

The most striking feature of this performance is the blended, well-shaped orchestral sound, quite the riposte to any misgivings one might have about a ‘festival’ ensemble. It bears comparison with two recent recordings with established orchestras, where I prefer Runnicles and his orchestra overall. Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic on Pentatone are too restrained, certainly in the first three movements. I was surprised to find them less folksy in the Scherzo than Grand Teton and Runnicles, for example, but to my ears they are. Paavo Järvi on Alpha with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich seems to me to lack the necessary overall dramatic vision. The Tonhalle playing is magnificent – perhaps occasionally too opulent – but I don’t feel a sense of development or joining up in Järvi’s rather incongruently structured account.

This release also ranks as one of the very best Mahler 5s in terms of recorded sound. Reference have led the way time and again in terms of the quality of their recordings, but even by the label’s own standards, this is exceptional. Everything has been judged to perfection: the range, depth, clarity and resonance of sound are all superb. I listened primarily in Ultra HD, but this is going to sound good whatever your choice of medium and resolution. I appreciated the fact that the album’s producer, Vic Muenzer, is given space in the booklet to explain the approach he took to capturing the performance.

A vital account, and among the finest-sounding Mahler 5s available.

Dominic Hartley

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