I shall be watching out for Michiyoshi Inoue. The notes tell me that he won the Guido Cantelli competition in 1971, that he studied with Celibidache, and that in 1983 he succeeded Ozawa as general music director of the New Japan Philharmonic. But the proof is in the music-making, and Inoue chronicles this long and harrowing work with considerable skill. He has two major handicaps: London's Royal Festival Hall, where this performance was recorded live in May of last year—not the most grateful of recording environments for all the considerable efforts, the sleight of hand, of the recording team—and the strings of the RPO. As they carry us through into the first movement's aspiring 'Alma' theme, I sorely miss body and sheen in the all-important first violins; similarly, with that questing motif at the start of the finale: at each repetition, how cruelly it exposes their shortcomings.
A more flattering acoustic would undoubtedly have helped, of course, but the fact remains that in this of all Mahler symphonies a full and dark saturation of string tone is absolutely fundamental—not least in maintaining a balance with Mahler's outsize brass contingents in the catastrophic finale. A few bars of Karajan's Berlin Philharmonic, Abbado's Chicago Symphony, or Tennstedt's LPO make the point more strongly than I ever could. At least Inoue does benefit from the considerable courage and staying power of the RPO brass. Their horns, probably the orchestra's greatest asset, are quite magnificent throughout, be they fulfilling their ecstatic descant in the reprise of the aforementioned second subject of the first movement or dominating with their dinosaural solos in the finale. To this testing latter movement Inoue brings an unerring sense of blind determination, forcefully maintaining tension and inevitability through each hopeless climax. The infamous hammer blows are 'placed' with calculated brutality, the timpani's recurrent 'knock of fate', likewise. And against all this, those uneasy lulls are especially telling nowhere more so than just prior to the final assault where Inoue achieves a bewildering numbness in the oboe and violin solos, and an acute sense of time running out in the aimless harp-led ostinato.
Touches of distinction such as this are plentiful: our transportation to higher regions—that brief oasis of tranquility—at the heart of the first movement is most sensitively handled; as is the slow movement, where Inoue is particularly successful in conveying the underlying anxiety. And speaking of anxiety, his Scherzo emerges like a war casualty from the dust of the first movement, a grim-faced return to the minor key, a real limp in its weary gait. Inoue's tempo is truly wurhtig (''heavy'', ''weighty''), the grotesqueries (low mordant winds, skeletal xylophone and col legno effects) suitably chilly, and the clumsy attempts at country dancing appropriately out of sorts. The occasional hint of grace, though, sits nicely—strangely touching.
A performance of quality and character, then, though not really (brass excepted) in the front rank of execution. Given the Berlin Philharmonic and a more atmospheric location, I might be telling a different story. Unlike my colleague RO, for me Klaus Tennstedt still tops my recommendations with his great and uncompromising reading for EMI, Karajan (DG) and, of course, Bernstein (CBS—part of a three-disc set coupled with the Eighth Symphony) are special too (though the latter's somewhat headlong first movement tempo is a misconception which one hopes he'll re-think for his DG cycle), and there is Abbado (DG Galleria), second to none in matters of textural illumination but a more comfortable option for a singularly uncomfortable work.'