REVIEW | Carnegie Hall: Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen & Symphony #7

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das Ding an sich reviewed the Carnegie Hall performance of Mahler's Symphony No.7 Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 8 PM. Daniel Barenboim lead the Berlin Symphony with Baritone Thomas Hampson.

An exhausting evening. I will never know the Seventh well enough, but strongly suspect that Barenboim could know it better, too. At least he took a score with him to the podium this time. His Fifth had seemed to me ‘indefatigable,’ and it was true enough last night as well that the musicians kept going, and going. But rarely did the music, amid all that music-making, much soar, or move, or shape. I almost haven’t the heart to review the memory thereof, and since coming home have had to listen to a few recorded accounts (Bernstein, Tennstedt, Abbado) just to revive a sense of this work’s revelations.

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