New recordings of the Ninth were once major events in gramophone history. This was the work Leonard Bernstein sought to place at the very centre of his musical life (and ours), the valedictory statement of a prematurely modern man obsessed by death and yet offering up a final re-animating prayer ''for the restoration of life, of tonality, of faith''. Today, against the static of a performable Tenth, the market is saturated with Bernsteins (three), Karajan, Abbado, Haitink and the rest, and it is difficult for new contenders to make their mark. Except perhaps on grounds of cost. Naxos's ongoing series represents a laudable attempt to provide a Mahler cycle at rock-bottom price. Unfortunately, the change of conductor has not brought significant gains. The music-making here is routine at best, reminding us that Naxos's triumphs have generally been with smaller forces. To cap it all, Halasz's speeds are that bit too leisurely to permit the work to be accommodated on a single CD. Should economics dictate choice, Michael Gielen offers infinitely greater sophistication and clarity of line on a single full-price Intercord disc, while Barbirolli's passionately driven, more obviously emotive account is on one mid-price CD from EMI, expertly remastered.
Digitally encoded or not, Halasz is seriously hampered by a swimmy, unfocused recording and his orchestra sounds under-rehearsed and thin. His approach to the first movement is basically cool and pastoral. Greater intensity of feeling is elicited as the music proceeds but rarely sufficient to get to the heart of the matter. The second movement is worse, dull and devitalized without subtlety of nuance or any specifically Austrian-Landler personality. The Rondo-Burleske fairly limps along: articulation is (of necessity) cautious, with little sense of nightmarish fantasy, although the closing stages might kindly be described as brave. The finale is comparatively successful, despite the technical flaws which include a curious tape 'drop-out' in the opening seconds and a lack of cohesion in the more heavily scored passages. While scarcely approaching Barbirolli's brand of personal engagement, Halasz makes an effort to render the coda with appropriate sensitivity.'