Valery Gergiev, London Symphony Orchestra, Mahler: Symphony No. 1

Mahler is mostly remembered as a tortured soul, forever at odds with the audiences and critical establishment of his day. It can be surprising, then, for casual listeners to discover how much beatific contentment can be found in his music. These short-lived moments of peace are inevitably swept aside, but they are made all the more sublime for their fragility. Take, for instance, the opening to his First Symphony, which is rendered here by the London Symphony Orchestra under Valery Gergiev's baton with an appropriate sense of wonder. It opens hushed, with harmonics in the strings evoking the hum of nature. This holy quiet is pierced by small, piping notes of birdsong, then by horn calls, before gathering into a vibrant tune that babbles its irrepressible excitement in tumbling figures. You would never know, from such beginnings, that two movements later the double basses would be groaning a dire funeral procession.

This gratifyingly warm and immediate-sounding live recording of the work, taken from a performance in Barbican Hall, adeptly captures both the warmth of this enchanted opening as well as the grief that follows. Few works scale such exultant heights and plunge to such devastating lows as a Mahler symphony, and Gergiev and company maintain a sure grip on the work's arc. The famously sardonic funeral march of the third movement, which recasts “Frere Jacques” in a minor key, proceeds with just the right measure of dolefulness and black humor. Gergiev works the orchestra, which plays with vitality and assurance, into a furor for the finale, and hits a ringing climax. There are fleeting moments of pitch wobbliness, which are to be expected in a live recording and in any case are a fair trade for the continuity and coherence of this performance. Otherwise, this is a fine, stirring recording of this monumental work.