Not being a resident of Philadelphia, I'm in no position to say what the Philadelphia Orchestra really sounds like in situ. That said, the sound which we have on this record is what I have always imagine—time, tide, and the resident conductor permitting—they should sound like. In fact, this recording, made in February 1984, is the Philadelphians' first in an expensively reclaimed old hall. (According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, one of those solid-sounding titles which suggests the America of the young Henry James, 1,200 acoustical tiles each weighing 11 pounds were flown from England during the tests prior to these Mahler sessions—see also ''News & Views'' June, page 7 and July, page 102.) The Philadelphians would like their own custom-built hall, the more so as their regular concert venue, the Academy of Music, is not much liked by recording engineers and their most recent recording venue, the ''Old Met'', is now a threat to life and limb. But with London's Barbican Hall in mind (some might also add the Berlin Philharmonie, marvellous for concerts but an oddly uneven recording venue) they might do well to settle for a while with this Memorial Hall. Built in 1876, it's probably better than anything our contemporary accoustical witch doctors could come up with. On the evidence of this new record, the sound has bloom, clarity and depth; the Philadelphian horns and trumpets (crucial in this symphony), their eloquent bassoons, and warm-toned violins all sound very well indeed.
And what of Muti's Mahler? Though very much of the Mahler canon, the First Symphony, almost alone among the nine, plays these days like any other great late nineteenth-century symphony that mingles high art with rustic colour. Put aside a note of megalomania in the finale and you have a work as naturally ingratiating and inspiriting as, say, Dvorak's Eighth; or so it seems in this beautifully paced, affectionately played account: a reading, somewhat in the Bruno Walter style (CBS), which mingles ease and electricity in more or less the right proportions. There is evidence here and there—in the early preparation for the first movement climax and in the rather slow and unhushed shaping of the big D flat subject in the finale—that Muti isn't as analytically aware of the music's structure as, say, Horenstein (Unicorn/Kanchana), one of the oldest of old Mahler hands. But in the first movement, scherzo and parody funeral march there is a host of distinguishing touches from solo players and groups within the ensemble which confirm that this is a performance of considerable skill and affection by America's mellowest and bestbred orchestra.
The least attractive thing about the record is the cover photograph of Muti, which might pass as a fashion shot for a rather expensive kind of anorak but which does nothing for Mahler, Muti the musician, or the Philadelphians. A photo of those wonderfully effective acoustical tiles, suitably conceived in the Mark Rothko style, would have been better than this.'