ProStudioMasters.com

"... a very composerly performance ... forensically clear ..." - Gramophone "No painstaking, hyperemotional lingering for Esa-Pekka Salonen: he propels this symphony with a single-minded, urgent zest for life ... (he) delivers a compelling performance ... a persuasive traversal full of temperament, acuity and apposite contrasts of mood." - International Record Review "Five Stars. Salonen surely does nearly everything that most of us require from a cutting-edge interpreter with plenty to say. His Boulezian ear for balance keeps all the textures phantasmagorically clear ... the Philharmonia brass do heroic work throughout and Salonen’s alertness to the right sonority gives us some moments of supernatural beauty ... no one makes the Festival Hall acoustics sound finer than engineer Jonathan Stokes." - BBC Music Magazine Recorded live in superb audio at the Royal Festival Hall in London in March 2009, Esa-Pekka Salonen draws the best out of the Philharmonia Orchestra on Mahler's final symphony, considered by many to be his greatest. "I very much like the idea of recording this piece live. In fact, the idea of recording that finale in a studio doesn’t feel right. So many of the most celebrated recordings of the piece, Bernstein, Karajan, Bruno Walter in 1938, have been concert recordings. It’s no accident. This is about death and there must be a sense of no return. It’s your only shot. You just do it and live with the results. This is real life and death, not a video game." - Esa-Pekka Salonen