MENZA, Don: Voyage (Don Menza)

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In light of the large number of recordings of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2 in C minor, "Resurrection," no one should pick this historic recording by Carl Schuricht and the SWR Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra as a first choice; certainly, other great recordings are preferable for having superior sound quality, tighter pacing, and smoother production. It's true that this live recording is riddled with lots of audience noises; that parts of the symphony vary dramatically from the norm in tempo, momentum, and emphasis; and that there is an abrupt edit at the beginning of "Urlicht," the fourth movement. These are reasons enough for newcomers to avoid making their initial acquaintance with Mahler's Second through this faulty recording. However, experienced listeners who have heard several performances of this revered work and know it well may want to investigate Schuricht's 1958 performance for specific points of interpretation, to see how he handled particular passages. Such an inquiry may be valuable to some scholars, for Schuricht was a younger contemporary of Mahler and a long-time champion of his works; any insights that can be gleaned from this performance may give a better idea of how the music probably sounded in its time. One may not, however, feel the same way about Schuricht's 1954 performance of Franz Josef Haydn's Symphony No. 86 in D major, "Paris," which seems to conform to mid-twentieth century notions on Classical music, before the advent of the movement for authentic performance practice. Schuricht delivers a reasonably brisk reading, but the recording is compressed enough to make the music feel quite bottom-heavy, thick in texture, and dull in tone.
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