I've been listening to Michael Gielen's Mahler 7 (Ollie, if you're in town this coming week you can have the box set back!). Like Barenboim he has the opening tremoli in measured form. In relation to Barenboim I think we dismissed this as an eccentric solecism. However Gielen is to my mind a much more precise musical thinker, so I was thinking there must be some justification somehow for this interpretative decision, which to me sounds "wrong" and affects the entire first movement of the symphony.

Any thoughts on this, anyone?

Apart from which I recommend Gielen's Mahler cycle very highly indeed. (I haven't heard 8, 9 or 10 yet though.) I'm far beyond the point of saying it's the most impressive cycle all round that I know, because in Mahler there's no such thing, and so many ways of tapping into the potential of the music, but if someone who didn't know the music asked me for a single recommendation I think this would have to be it.

I actually have Gielen's Mahler 8 on Hänssler. I got it for £3.99 (reduced from £29.99) when Virgin sold off all their slow-moving stock a couple of years ago, but I haven't even removed the shrinkwrapping yet. Maybe I should do so soon!

To me one of the most attractive features of that Hänssler series was the couplings (the 8th is twinned with Die Jakobsleiter; the 2nd comes with a wonderful performance of Kurtág's Stele, which I'd much rather have than the Abbado coupling of that piece with Stockhausen's Gruppen). Presumably you miss out on those if you get the box set.

A busy day for spinning, which began with the lastest JEG Bach Cantatas release, including BWV 86 Warlich, wahrlich, ich sage euch, with some beautiful singing by Katharine Fuge in Und was der ewig gütig Gott, accompanied by two oboes d'amore and bassoon.



Also, prompted by discussions here after the Met Satyagraha:



which I greatly enjoyed. Parts of it, especially the Attack and Fall of the Temple, reminded me of his Violin Concerto.

Spinning now, Paavo Berglund's RVW6.

2 each of RVW 4 and 6.

The two 6s from disc - Stephen Johnson's BAL choice by Hickox, and the deleted Norrington on Decca, both heard for the first time. I'm afraid the Hickox doesn't gel for me: I don't get a sense of a through line, and the scherzo, singled out for SJ praise, seems to me absolutely shapeless. What really finished it off for me was the harp in the big tune at the end of the first movement, very untidily late a couple of times - surely a prime candidate for a retake. Many of his speeds are on the high side, and the playing is pretty precise considering, but it just doesn't seem to say much at all.

The Norrington isn't perfect, but it has far more going for it: far better sonics, and some close examination of the score: there are details which really make their mark in a way I've not noticed before. I don't understand why he has to push the second section of the first movement so much: conductors who maintain a related pulse through this section achieve much more swing - none more so than Boult on EMI. (I dipped into the scherzo of Norrington's London Symphony for a taster, and found that he does exactly the same thing there, necessitating the most ungainly gear-change I've heard in years in order to retrieve his original tempo.) I particularly like his bleached last movement, although some of the wind solos are nasty: of the two I'd much rather have him than Hickox, but there are several more that I'd chose ahead of either.

Two 4s from the radio - Colin Davis/NYPO from Friday, Y-P Tortellier/BBCPhil from the previous week. The Davis was note-perfect, but completely uninvolving: speedy and strangely untroubled: as I said at TOP, a classical rather than a romantic reading. The Tortellier, scrappy in places, was nevertheless far more gripping, with a real sense of tension and inevitability: the symphonic journey had all its emotional landmarks firmly in place where Davis just skated over or round them. 

Not the outcome I would have expected, but Tortellier the clear winner. 

Todd Handley for me  Ron!! Everytime!! Spinning right now some purcell Sacred Songs, Nancy Argenta, et al. Lovely singing from NA, I must say.

Well, if it is good enough for that well known vegetarian, then it's good enough for me even but hold the buglar wheat 

I'm a bit confused by this. I have the Stokowski on CD, on Vanguard, but it's a hybrid-SACD, IIRC. Do you mean yours isn't, R?

The catalogue number on mine is ATMSC1559. The SC stands for SACD; most Vanguards (from the recent incarnation of the label, not it's confusingly still-often-listed earlier incarnations beginning 08...) begin with the prefix ATMCD.

this morning: brian's 'Gothic' symphony.  Didn't do much for me.
Later one: Berlioz's grand messe des wassit.  The Lacrimosa has, thus far, always been the big highlight of that work for me.