Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony has rarely sounded so much like Mahler's Seventh as it does in this 2000 recording with Günther Herbig directing the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken. Not that Shostakovich's Seventh actually sounds much like Mahler's Seventh -- the anxious splendor of Mahler's fin de siècle Austria is nothing like the desperate terror of Shostakovich's Great Patriotic War Russia -- but there is something in Herbig's anguished tone and grandiloquent gestures that recalls Mahler's work, something that ...
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Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony has rarely sounded so much like Mahler's Seventh as it does in this 2000 recording with Günther Herbig directing the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken. Not that Shostakovich's Seventh actually sounds much like Mahler's Seventh -- the anxious splendor of Mahler's fin de siècle Austria is nothing like the desperate terror of Shostakovich's Great Patriotic War Russia -- but there is something in Herbig's anguished tone and grandiloquent gestures that recalls Mahler's work, something that sounds less like bone-deep fear than a bad case of hysteria.This may be interpretively arguable. Shostakovich's angst in the face of remorseless dread is palpable in the Seventh's first three movements -- but Herbig's angst feels less in the blood and more in the nerves, less life and death and more existential dread. And while the Seventh has the most overtly triumphant finale of any Shostakovich symphony, the triumph at the end of Herbig's Seventh rings hollow, as if the...
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