Mahler: Symphony No 1 / Levine, LSO

Time flies in the supposedly timeless world of classical music. It's easy to forget superb performances of even the greatest masterpieces when confronted with dozens, indeed hundreds, of recordings that differ from one another audibly, but often not all that significantly. So it is with this Mahler First, certainly one of the freshest and most vibrant performances, but one that also tends to get lost in the shuffle. The playing of the LSO is terrific: the scherzo bids fair to be the best on disc, but then Levine seems unusually energized and spontaneous throughout. Only the opening of the finale fails to erupt with the kind of violence that others (Bernstein especially) bring to it. Levine seems a mite hasty here, not giving the brass enough time to really bite as they should. But this also is the result of sonics that are dry in the bass and not all that wide-ranging compared with today's digital norm. Still, despite this minor caveat, this is an outstanding performance in all other respects, and moreover one that will sound well on iPods, in cars, and in all of those places where soft passages tend to vanish annoyingly in a welter of ambient noise. It certainly deserves to remain available, and thanks to Arkivmusic.com "on demand", it will be.

--David Hurwitz,ClassicsToday.com