Michael Gielen专辑介绍：Review by: David Hurwitz

Artistic Quality: 10
Sound Quality: 10

Michael Gielen’s Mahler cycle is now complete, and as predicted it moves straight to the top of the list as the most idiomatic and consistent single set currently available. You probably could put together a slightly more magnetic cycle from Bernstein’s two, but if you’re looking for one box with practically no weaknesses, this is it. To recapitulate briefly: only two of these performances previously enjoyed wide currency–the Seventh, which is one of the great ones, and the Fourth, which is good but not great (it is, in fact, the weakest performance in the set). Everything else is wonderful, the two new performances (the Fifth and the Ninth) especially so. Gielen turns in a performance of the Fifth very similar (surprisingly) to Kubelik’s. Without stinting on the emotional intensity of the first two movements, he keeps the music moving ...