isn't it?
i've listened to this recording about 4 times this week, and it never fails to startle me - all of it.

can i nearly get your autograph?

I picked up some LPs from a nearby Oxfam earlier today, including a copy of Bliss' Clarinet Quintet and Oboe Quintet by the Melos Ensemble. I don't normally listen to Bliss, and only bought the LP because it was old, cheap and looked in decent condition, but I have to say that the Clarinet Quintet is an extraordinarily beautiful piece that fits my mood, and the early summer evening here very well. A good find, I think.

Shostakovich 9th quartet played by the chaps he wrote it for. They're very damn good. Quite different from the Borodins and Fitzwilliams, and from their successors. A thumbs-up from Ollie.

Don't worry about any of that. There's no reason you should take my word for it either. But the 4th and the 5th which arrived in the post in the last couple of days are among the most startlingly wonderful Mahler performances I've ever heard and just perhaps someone else out there might have a similar reaction. So if you get the chance to hear them, I suggest you hear them.

He really has taken the vibrato out of the strings - I don't know how he got German string players to agree to that, I play in a German new music ensemble and I gave up trying to persuade them to vibrate less quite some time ago. But the important thing is that it doesn't for a minute sound like something's been taken out. The music is still shaped, just with the right hand not the left. (In any case the number of orchestral performances I've heard where vibrato takes an role in shaping the line as opposed to simply becoming part of the sonic background I could count on the fingers of one foot.) The polyphony is incredibly clear, the orchestral sound is deeply beautiful despite being so profoundly different, the expressive palette is immense, the intonation is not perfect but damn good and they're not hiding behind anything! I can understand why he might have found it more productive working with an existing orchestra than with a period-instrument band - they wouldn't have had to build the whole ensemble culture from scratch here, of course. I suspect that ideas have been flowing liberally in both directions - I would hope so, anyway.

To be honest I don't really care if Mahler expected quite as little vibrato as this - they don't even vibrate at the climax of the Adagietto. It's just a sound which happens to bring out more of what Mahler put in than any other orchestral sound I've heard in these pieces. If the vibrato is the reason, fine, if this exactly what Mahler would have heard even better, but regardless, these are amazing performances.

Ah yes, particularly in the scherzo of 4. Which doesn't slow down towards the end and is all the spookier for it. I'm not quite sure they've caught the best of Anu Komsi's voice on the other hand - they seem to have gone in close so the perspective isn't all that natural.