Mahler Symphonie n 8 Fischer - AVI8553474 - AVI Music - Classique - Nos labels

Le parcours Mahler d’Adam Fischer était jusque là quasi sans faute, Anna Larson déparant tout de même son "Chant de la Terre", mais cette fois la Huitième Symphonie le voit achopper. Un "Veni Creator" sans élan montre les forces de Düsseldorf, chœurs comme orchestre, plutôt hésitante, jamais la lumière ne jaillit, la Scène finale du Second Faust de Goethe se perd dans ses détails alors même que le tempo choisi par Adam Fischer est vif (53 minutes) mais sans pour autant avoir la fluidité narrative qu’y osaient Georg Solti ou Giuseppe Sinopoli. Alors on se rembourse avec l’Egyptienne de Katharina Magiera, avec le Pater Ecstaticus d’Hanno Müller-Brachmann, et on espère demain qu’Adam Fischer retrouvera l’élan qu’il avait jusque là imprimé à son cycle Mahler. (Discophilia - Artalinna.com) (Jean-Charles Hoffelé)

Mahler’s Eighth is a special challenge for all participants: in rehearsals, in performance, and, of course, when making a recording. The challenge lies in freeing the music from all of the technical and logistical problems that come with it. Whenever new possibilities emerged in music history (such as new musical instruments), composers tended to introduce the novelty quite frequently in the first phase to show its potential. A good example was the Mannheim School in the 1700s. The crescendo had just been invented: musicians no longer had to play dynamics in “terraced levels”. Mannheim pieces from that period are thus brimming with crescendos: musicians reveled in the new possibilities. Mahler, later on, wanted to explore the possibilities of an orchestra of unprecedented size, particularly in the Eighth. The effects made possible by such an enlargement should not become an end in themselves. That is the special challenge we have faced. If on this recording we have over 500 people singing and playing together, that is only a means, not an end