# Zinman's Mahler Cycle. Your thoughts?



## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

I've had this cycle years but, I'll be honest, it's never really floated my boat. It's not that it's not a good one. It's well recorded and well-played. I just find it a bit safe and rarely play it. So what am I saying? Well I'm just curious what others think of this cycle. Do you feel the same as me, do you love it, hate it or think I'm being harsh? I have my own thoughts on individual symphonies in the set but would be interested to hear which performances you rate.


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## Granate (Jun 25, 2016)

From my Mahler Challenge Summer 2018 Edition.

*Zinman Tonhalle Orchester Sony Classical*

_Suffers from light-weightiness and lack of orchestral colour, getting a terrible No.2. The conducting is not a highlight but the tempos are brisk. It's quite irregular highlighting a very fine No.9 and a muddy No.8 with odd male singers. No.5 does fine but No.6 and No.7 sink into boredom. The set includes a Cooke III No.10 completion with good horns that fails to lift up even in the first Adagio, getting a muddy picture._

Literally the least competitive cycle I listened to this summer.

Plus this review from another thread:



Moscow-Mahler said:


> I also have the 1st. I suppose, it's very good. The brochure *is really great*. But I have not heard the other disks. There are a lot of reviews in the net, though the other disks had more opposite reviews then the disk with the First symphony. Zinman's interview about Mahler is also pretty interesting (along with Blomstedt's):
> http://mahler.universaledition.com/david-zinman-on-mahler/
> 
> Zinman's French menthor said that "Mahler was like Szell". It's interesting, though I do not think it's completely true.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Granate said:


> From my Mahler Challenge Summer 2018 Edition.
> 
> *Zinman Tonhalle Orchester Sony Classical*
> 
> ...


Uhhhh - Zinman's set does NOT use Cooke in the 10th. He uses the dreadful Carpenter version.

I have the set; it's not my favorite. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the playing. The SACD sound sure misfires: it should have been so much better. Zinman is a fine musician, fine conductor, but Mahler just isn't his thing. None of the recordings just raise the roof and inspire me. Even the 6th, despite the hoopla and the DVD presentation just isn't anything special. Given the current re-release price, someone coming new to Mahler would find it interesting, but with this music the competition is so fierce that Zinman just isn't a contender. Get Bertini, Gielen, Inbal, Bernstein or several others first. I will say that the 3rd comes off quite nicely.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Good, it's not just me. I always thought that maybe I was missing something. I tried the 1st and 9th again last week but ended up taking the 1st off (I was bored). I didn't think the 9th was bad at all, though. Strange that it is dull as Zinman is a big champion of Mahler's music, knows it inside out and is (allegedly) the conductor's favourite composer. He should have understood Mahler's music better (his Beethoven cycle has a similar problem with a lack of joie de vivre).



mbhaub said:


> Get Bertini, Gielen, Inbal, Bernstein or several others first. I will say that the 3rd comes off quite nicely.


Yep, when I compare it to Bertini or Gielen it doesn't even come close.


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## Guest (Sep 20, 2018)

Gielen and Boulez are easily the best two complete Mahler symphony recordings available (Kubelik to a lesser extent). I've never been convinced by what Zinman does with the symphonies here, I just thought it wasn't exactly to my taste, neither horrendously bad nor particularly good. Bernstein and Karajan, on the other hand, sometimes do things to Mahler that really cannot bring myself to enjoy, but Zinman doesn't really affect me in that way.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Zinman has always been a very competent but uninspiring conductor, with only rare flashes of being really terrific.


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## wkasimer (Jun 5, 2017)

JAS said:


> Zinman has always been a very competent but uninspiring conductor, with only rare flashes of being really terrific.


The Zinman recordings that have stayed in my library are his Schumann symphonies and Beethoven concertos with Bronfman and Tetzlaff. The rest - meh. His Schubert and Brahms were particularly disappointing.


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## techniquest (Aug 3, 2012)

As far as the 'Z's are concerned, I much prefer Zander's Mahler to Zinman's.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

I haven't heard Zinman's Mahler... yet. But I very much enjoyed his interview on the composer and the comments he made, where I felt that he greatly understood Mahler and that he was far more than the neurotic that some conductors try to make him... So, I look forward to hearing some of his Mahler recordings.


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## Guest (Sep 24, 2018)

techniquest said:


> As far as the 'Z's are concerned, I much prefer Zander's Mahler to Zinman's.


Interesting, I prefer _Zender_. Haven't heard anything by Zander yet.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

shirime said:


> Interesting, I prefer _Zender_. Haven't heard anything by Zander yet.


I enjoy Zander's Mahler recordings, many of which come with illuminating (and quite substantial) introductory talks and notes.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> I enjoy Zander's Mahler recordings, many of which come with illuminating (and quite substantial) introductory talks and notes.


I would agree. Zander's performance of the Mahler 9th is excellent and also recorded in excellent sound.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Zander's Mahler is one of the frustrating issues of the CD era. I love his recordings - it's not the performances so much, although they are good, but his detailed analysis of the music is fabulous and far more revealing than reading some arcane, dry, academic book. His explanation of the "correct" order of the two middle movements of the 6th is marvelous.

So what's frustrating? That he didn't get to do the whole cycle. Zander is also a terrific conducting teacher. The accusations against him several years ago were tragic.


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## perdido34 (Mar 11, 2015)

What allegations against Zander? He hired someone with child sex offense convictions to be a videographer at the Boston Philharmonic. Were there allegations that Zander himself did anything inappropriate; if so, what substantiation or corroboration was there for such allegations?


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> I enjoy Zander's Mahler recordings, many of which come with illuminating (and quite substantial) introductory talks and notes.


I got his 5th for fifty cents. No buyer's remorse yet!


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

perdido34 said:


> What allegations against Zander? He hired someone with child sex offense convictions to be a videographer at the Boston Philharmonic. Were there allegations that Zander himself did anything inappropriate; if so, what substantiation or corroboration was there for such allegations?


There were none against him, just guilt by association or some other dumb thing. The accusations were made before the facts were known - but the damage was done. Sound kinda familiar. Here's the story.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

mbhaub said:


> Zander's...explanation of the "correct" order of the two middle movements of the 6th is marvelous....


In all fairness to Mahler, Zander does not have the ordering of the middle two movements correct according to the composer's wishes, and there's a great deal of supportive evidence, period. Zander has them incorrect with the Scherzo before the Andante-the ordering of which Mahler never publically performed ever-not in his lifetime-and in his revised 2nd and 3rd published edition, he had given his publisher specific instructions to have the Symphony printed with the Andante before the Scherzo. He never changed his mind with regard to this in his lifetime.

Zinman, to his credit, not Zander, plays the 6th as Mahler intended with the Andante before the Scherzo. Zander's self-serving explanation has no basis in fact, only rationalizations and perhaps personal preference because that's the way he may have first heard the symphony, erroneously so according to Mahler. This subject has been done to death and without Alma Mahler's interference 10 years after her husband's death, there never would have been any controversy at all about what Mahler wanted and the correct ordering according to his own irrevocable decision.

The performance history of Mahler's 6th:

"Three weeks before the first performance, Mahler had the Symphony read through in Vienna under his direction, at which time he irrevocably decided that the correct middle-movement order should be Andante-Scherzo. Mahler conducted the world premiere in Essen on 27 May 1906, with the middle movement order of Andante-Scherzo, after having instructed Kahnt to insert an erratum slip in the unsold copies of the scores and in Specht's booklet, detailing the correct middle movement order, and to republish the scores and booklet with the corrected middle-movement order, which Kahnt did in November 1906.

"From that point on, therefore, there would seem to be no question regarding the order of the movements, the more so as the remaining five complete performances of the Symphony in Mahler's lifetime were given with the order of Andante-Scherzo. Chronologically, these performances were:

*October 1906, Oskar Fried conducting, Berlin (Mahler attended the rehearsals and performance)
*8 November 1906, Mahler conducting, Munich
*14 November 1906, Bernard Stavenhagen (a pupil of Liszt) conducting, Munich (the second performance in the city in a week)
*January 1907, Mahler conducting, Vienna (the Philharmonic Orchestra)
*March 1907, Hans Winderstein conducting, Leipzig
*April 1907, Ernst von Schuch conducting, Dresden (middle movements only, in the order Andante-Scherzo).

"Mahler died in May 1911 in Vienna, six weeks before what would have been his 51st-birthday. The following November, Ferdinand Löwe conducted the Sixth Symphony in Vienna, with Alma in the audience, and in September 1916 Willem Mengelberg gave the Dutch premiere of the work in Amsterdam with the Concertgebouw Orchestra; both of these posthumous performances were given in accordance with the re-published score, the middle-movement order of Andante-Scherzo."

Those who argue that this is a "dual-version" symphony, in an effort to justify the Scherzo played before the Andante, are making the assumption that Mahler wanted that order on the basis of KEY CENTERS or KEY RELATIONSHIPS between the different movements rather than simply a change & contrast of MOOD-and such an assumption is unprovable because it is not in keeping with the final decision that he made regardless of the "key centers or relationships" or not. That assumption is based on speculation rather than how Mahler actually performed his symphony.

Every once in a while a deceased composer deserves to have somebody stand up for his interests rather than the interests of the historians, or his interfering former wife, who may like to speculate at the expense of the composer's final wishes. Mahler lived for five more years and never changed his ordering of A-S. More supporting evidence can be found here:

http://www.posthorn.com/Mahler/Correct_Movement_Order_III.pdf


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## Kiki (Aug 15, 2018)

Placing the scherzo third is the last thing that Mahler said to his publisher about the order in his sixth symphony. That should be definitive from a musicology point of view. What Alma Mahler said later in her life, as did some musicologists, are opinions.

However, glancing through the list of recordings listed on Wikipedia, there are more conductors who decided to record the scherzo-andante order. I can only guess that they found this order more convincing in a recording.

Personally I find the scherzo-andante order giving me more of a sense of going from start to finish in one go. The first movement builds up the intensity, then the scherzo compliments it, then the andante releases the energy and that prepares for the launch of the epic finale. One might or might not feel the same, but that's my two cents (happy to exchange into pennies!  ).

On the subject of Mr. Zinman's Mahler. I know, I know, he placed the scherzo third, and he also made this movement sound more grandiose than some others, but I do not find that deterrent, otherwise I would have missed a lot of wonderful recordings. In fact I find his No. 6 rather engaging throughout! I got a feeling that he tried very hard on every note, in a positive way, to express the music. The superbly recorded sound also enhances the listening experience a lot. I can hear the percussions and doublebasses clearly! Have to admit I am one of those record buyers who usually stay away from Mr. Zinman’s records, but I find this a little gem rather than a flop.

I do have one little compliant. Zinman’s hammer blows sound spectacularly reverberant. This is not the dull, dead sound that I would have anticipated. But OK at least there are only two hammer blows, not three!


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

I picked up his 7th at a garage sale for about 2 bucks. It’s well recorded and I am a Surround Sound enthusiast, but I don’t remember much else about it


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

This is a perfectly decent set of the Mahler symphonies, and I think Zinman has a lightness of touch that can be quite appealing, even in, say, his Beethoven cycle, where as far as I am concerned he is quite fleet-footed, rather than aggressively fast. In his Mahler cycle, for me the highlight is No.5, and maybe No.1, but in the really huge works, like No.2 and No.8, I found the performances a bit underwhelming. But very musical and fresh and clear. The Tonhalle are a good orchestra, there's no doubt, but for me they sometimes sound like they could do with beefing up.....

Me, I am delighted to have a recording of the Carpenter "completion" of the Tenth. I also have Litton's and Zinman is preferable. I'd rather have someone's cycle with Cooke, but I'd rather have Carpenter than nothing at all.....It's an interesting exercise, and without the later Cooke versions, it'd be the best we have (?). But Cooke makes this symphony a MAHLER symphony, not a misch-masch compilation, and it's thanks to Cooke that I think we have a final Mahler symphony, albeit one with a few regrets and "what ifs". Incidentally, I also think there's something special about the Wheeler version, which has a chamber quality that one could argue is how Mahler was heading with his orchestral style?


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

As i said at the outset, i dont dislike this cycle but theres just something missing. Along with that theres a few real duffers. The 2nd Symphony is pretty awful. Listened to it again today and some of the singing is just bloody gruesome. For me, the strongest performances are definitely the 6th and 9th.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> I enjoy Zander's Mahler recordings, many of which come with illuminating (and quite substantial) introductory talks and notes.


I'm glad I'm not the only one who likes Zander's Mahler. Of course, he was my introduction to Mahler, so that's how I think Mahler should sound.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Well this isn't going to help....Breaking News re Boston Philharmonic


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Oh dear. Benjamin Zander writes, "The person who suggested Act 3 of Siegfried was my life-long musical collaborator, David St. George [the artistic advisor of the Boston Philharmonic and a member of the Boston Wagner Society], who has been a passionate Wagnerian since the age of 13..."


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## techniquest (Aug 3, 2012)

shirime said:


> Interesting, I prefer _Zender_. Haven't heard anything by Zander yet.


Well that's fun cos I've never heard anything by Zender yet  I'll see if he's on Spotify.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

I once contacted Zander's office and his secretary sent me a free copy of his recording of Beethoven's Ninth. It was broken into 38 tracks, presumably for instructional purposes.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

You say 'Zender', I say 'Zander'. Let's call the whole thing off.


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

I'm a prisoner of the former....


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Wrong mail address: "Zander not home, return to Zender. Zinman lives here now."


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