Mahler: Symphony No. 2, C Minor "Resurrection" / Litton, Murphy, Lang
One does not have to invest in a home theater system to infer the spatial dimensions of Delos's engineering, which conveys the ambience of Dallas's Myerson Hall more realistically than the 1989 Mata/DallasResurrection, also recorded live. No special miking, for instance, was needed to balance the offstage brass in the last movement with the huge instrumental and choral forces onstage. Similarly, Litton's orchestra has made tremendous strides, as revealed in the fine-grained section work and deliciously characterized solo playing throughout. Litton likens Mahler's explicit performing instructions to having a conducting lesson with the composer, yet he is not averse to taking liberties in order to point up climactic moments, some of which come off better than others. His roller-coaster tempos in the visionary opening movement pull the music apart at the seams, while, conversely, the ebb and flow of the finale's lyrical sections pay haunting dividends in soft choral passages. Heidi Grant Murphy and Petra Lang handle their solos with security and clarity. If the Dallas Symphony does not quite command the sheen of its Saint Louis (Slatkin/Telarc) or San Francisco (Blomstedt/London) counterparts, audiophiles and Mahler-philes alike will garner much pleasure and insight from this fine release, especially at its two-for-one price.--Jed Distler