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Review title: Never really gets going
Product review: Some recordings grow on you over time; others diminish. This is one of the latter. On its first release in 1988, I thought this was one of the singularly great Mahler Fifths; now I think it's almost inert. A great interpretation, no matter how willful or idiosyncratic, has you convinced--even if only while listening to it--that there's no other way to play the piece. Here, you're all too aware of a ham-handed conductor exercising his prerogative and missing the point. The thread of the musical argument is lost amid overemphasized incidental details and preciously mannered phrasing. There ARE a couple of passages which stop you dead in your tracks--such as the lamenting cellos in the second movement, sounding almost like a human voice--but mostly it's the music which stops dead. Actually, it never starts. The CDs by Zander, Gatti, Inbal, Boulez and half a dozen others all convey this difficult work much more cohesively, engagingly and movingly.
