Here we have something very special, and a good deal more than ‘just another Mahler Ninth’. ‘Just another Mahler Ninth’! What am I saying?

It wasn’t too many years ago that Bruno Walter was the sole recorded representative of this towering masterpiece. Then along came the Mahler revival and, in the Ninth, Kubelík’s candour, Bernstein’s intensity, Klemperer’s marmoreal reportage, Solti’s drama and so on. Riccardo Chailly started his Mahler journey on CD with the Tenth and worked from there, consolidating a love that would deepen with the years. In conversation with Mahler scholar Henry-Louis de La Grange (included here as a filmed bonus feature) he covers such topics as Mahler and his key interpreter Willem Mengelberg, Mahler and Walter, and the idea of taking the scores themselves as starting points towards a true understanding of the composer, rather than relying on the ‘Romantic’ prompt of personal biography.

A feature on Chailly’s approach to the Ninth presents – in addition to shots of Mahler’s composing hut in Dobbiaco in the South Tyrol and its glorious pastoral setting – Chailly explaining his highly credible theory that, rather than marking a deathly end, the symphony’s serene close (triplet figures on violas) links to the wonderful viola theme that opens the Tenth, and in doing so suggests that ‘life goes on’. He tells us that Berg thought the Ninth’s first movement the greatest music Mahler ever composed. I would agree; and yet for me the most Bergian Mahler Ninth on disc is Karajan’s (preferably his live version – DG, 7/84), whereas Chailly holds fast to something altogether more life-affirming. This Leipzig Ninth is Chailly off the leash, liberating the music in a way that is impassioned, positive, fitfully fractured and often ethereal. He flicks the Symphony’s heartbeat opening into action with the most economical of gestures and at one or two points pushes for maximum excitement and extra contrast (ie at 7'33" into the first movement, far faster and more dramatic than on Chailly’s Royal Concertgebouw recording for Decca, or the parallel broadening at 8'40"). The second movement is a very rustic Ländler, again far faster than in Amsterdam, with cheeky woodwinds, less gemütlich than Bohemian. Abbado in Lucerne makes more of a play for the Austrian angle.

Being live, not every detail is perfect but it will take a very critical ear to notice what isn’t. The Rondo-Burleske suggests manic chamber music, with swirling string figurations, forceful brass and loudly protesting woodwind solos – an impatient traversal, cynical and uncompromising. Under Chailly’s direction the finale’s hymn-like opening is beautifully played, the colossal final climax overwhelming, the quiet close held as if on a single breath. Both Chailly and Abbado inspire their respective string sections to give of their very best, Abbado’s Lucerne orchestra perhaps marginally fuller in tone, but there’s very little in it. Camera direction takes the predictable route of centring on prominent instrumental lines, though never to the point of eccentricity, and the sound quality is excellent. All in all an exceptional production.