Another truly sublime performance, it actually had me in tears during the last two movements, it's so moving, i played it over the park, a real sense of nature with the trees and grass, it's the first Mahler Symphony i ever heard, took me a little while to get into Mahler's soundworld, but it became the springboard to all other Mahler Symphonies, i played this just over a year ago [29th March 2011].
Andre Previn is originally German, but moved to the United States when he was young, and became a citizen there, he's now 83 years old, he made this recording in 1978, i really like these EMI Studio Plus recordings, and there's some beauties in this series, all the booklets show a close up of the Artist, with a colourful box for the lettering, almost a colour code, this one is blue and yellow, i like the photo and the whole package.
Like i said above, it was the last two movements which moved me deeply, the long [23 minutes] third movement develops a powerful intensity on the high violins towards the end, but all this sets the scene for the last movement, a simple and rustic view of heaven from the perspective of an innocent child, now i don't know how to speak German, and i only know a few words, but i got the gist of what was being said,.
Here's Elly Ameling singing the fourth movement on YouTube, this time with Bernard Haitink conducting.
