Mahler’s review 9 | Finnish Mahler, power and mastery

Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä adds an important stone to his integral Mahler at BIS with an impressive Ninth.

It is especially with his two chiselled complete Sibelius symphonies (in Lahti, then in Minnesota) that the 70-year-old conductor made himself known to the musical world. But his ongoing Mahler integral with his former Minneapolis orchestra (he conducted it from 2003 to 2022) is positioning the conductor, who incidentally conducted the Orchester symphonique de Montréal last September, as the one of the great Mahlerians of our time.

His Fourth, voted hands down the best version among six others (including none less than Bernstein/Concertgebouw, Haitink and Abbado/Vienne) in a blind listening at the Tribune des critiques de records de France Musique last fall, strongly impressed us with its polyphonic clarity and the art of atmosphere distilled by the performer and the orchestra. Only the Third and the Eighth remain to be published.

In the meantime, his Ninth by Mahler gives us ample food and drink. The precise, not too reverberant acoustics of the Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis allow us to appreciate all the instrumental qualities — the strings and horns in particular — of the former orchestra of Ormandy, Mitropoulos and Dorati.

What differentiates Vänskä from its main “competitors” is its slow, rather lively movements. If it can be defended with the first, marked “andante comodo” (going and comfortable), we remain more doubtful for the last, called “molto adagio” (very slow).

The two central movements are more “classical” in interpretation, energetic but still with a beautiful orchestral fullness. The Finnish chef animates the complex Mahler fresco with skill and enthusiasm.