| Label: LSO Live Catalog: LSO0663 Format: SACD Valery Gergiev; London Symphony OrchestraMahler: Symphony No.1 Valery Gergiev follows his critically acclaimed recording of Mahler's Symphony No.6 with an equally intense performance of the First Symphony.
Gergiev's second LSO Live release was recorded in London during January as part of his ongoing Mahler cycle. Although he has established a formidable reputation as one of the leading interpreters of Mahler's works in concert, these LSO Live releases are the first time that Gergiev has recorded the composer's music.
The third release in the cycle, scheduled for August, is likely to feature the Symphony No.7. The complete cycle is currently being recorded with the final performance featuring Symphony No.8 to take place at St Paul's Cathedral in July 2008. The symphonies will be released throughout 2008 and 2009. Also in 2008 and 2009 Gergiev will be recording music by Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Bartók and Stravinsky with LSO Live.
Forthcoming LSO tours with Gergiev include performances in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Netherlands, Russia, Japan and the USA.
Concert Reviews:
'a riveting performance of the composer's Symphony No.1...vital, reckless and thrilling. In the first movement, the feint skein of virato-free violins seemed not so much to have started as to have been there all along, unheard, part of a sublime landscape in which Gergiev acted as cinematographer, zooming in to the dense forest of clarinets, then swooping down to a meadow of silken cellos....the sinus-clearing shriek of the last movement was one of the most exciting things I've heard from the LSO' - Independent on Sunday (UK)
'an exercise in barley suppressed hysteria, brilliantly illuminated by the LSO woodwinds. Most conductors permit a sense of spatial grandeur as the close approaches. Gergiev was unremitting; aggression and dissonance held the stage at the very end. If you like your Mahler visceral, spine-tingling and dangerous, this was for you...the LSO are certainly playing out of their skins for Gergiev' - The Guardian (UK)
'He makes all the right noises, he applies the appropriate rubatos, and generates tremendous excitement. There were passages - not least in the tempestuous finale - where the smoldering figurations of the LSO strings could have generated power for a small nation' - The Independent (UK)
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