Junge Deutsche Philharmonie & Rudolph Barshai - Mahler: Symphony No. 5 (2020)

Mahler’s Fifth Symphony was completed in 1903, and subjected to immediate revision before the composer conducted the premier in Cologne in October the following year. For such a brilliant conductor and composer for the orchestra, the Fifth appears to have caused him much trouble, and he continued to revise and tinker with the score right up to his death in 1911. ‘I simply can’t understand why I make such mistakes, like the merest beginner’ he wrote, though it has since been viewed as one of his most popular and greatest works. The work opens like the Second with a long funeral march, and the famous Adagietto was made famous in the film ‘Death in Venice’. Rudolf Barshai’s performance of the Fifth with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie is regarded by many as one of the great performances this work has received on record. Barshai is usually associated with 20thcentury composers, and in particular Shostakovich and Prokofiev. He commissioned works from composers, and also was a skilled arranger as his famous version for string orchestra of Shostakovich’s Eighth String Quartet demonstrates. Sviatoslav Richter would only work with two conductors for many years: Benjamin Britten and Barshai. He is one of the great figures of 20th century music, and a very fine conductor as this recording of Mahler’s Fifth reveals.