Eugene Ormandy - Mahler: Symphony No. 2 "Resurrection" (2022 Remastered Version) (2022) [Hi-Res]

It's hard to say what's more impossible to believe: that this 1935 recording is the second of Mahler's Second Symphony or that it was conducted by Eugene Ormandy. But both are true: Oskar Fried did record the Second in 1923-1924 and this dynamic, hard-driven, and tightly controlled Second is indeed the work of Ormandy.

Ormandy was his fifth and next to last season with the Minneapolis Symphony when this live recording was made on January 1, 1935. It has the flaws of both a live performance -- blown entrances, smudged notes -- and of a performance of an unfamiliar work -- lapses in ensemble, shaky balances. But Ormandy was in those days a hard task-master and he drove the Minneapolis to a level of technical execution beyond what some may have thought possible, beyond, indeed, that of his Philadelphia Orchestra's recording of the work three decades later.

But the truly impossible thing to believe is the quality, depth, and the emotional and even spiritual fervor that Ormandy brings to the Second. Despite a few questionable decisions -- an Andante that is much too fast -- and a few lamentable errors -- the climax of the Scherzo nearly disintegrates -- this is a great Second. It's powerful, despairing, exalting, brutal, tender, sublime, and ecstatic; in other words, everything a Second must be. And Ormandy takes it one step further and makes his expansive conclusion truly transcendental: the entrance of the choir is one of the most effective and affecting. Even Ormandy's regrettable addition of Minneapolis' church bells at the climax of the movement does not diminish his achievement. ~ James Leonard