The idea of a record of Mahlerian symphonic fragments has its attractions but possibly more in a planning conference than in practice. For the truth is, there is little on this record that is unfamiliar, and what there is, aspects of the Totenfeier, remains of primarily academic interest. The short Blumine movement which Mahler originally included in his First Symphony has been recorded a good deal and can currently be heard in situ in Ozawa's Boston SO recording of the symphony (DG 423 884-2GGA, 1/89) and the Adagio from the Tenth Symphony is even more familiar. It is played here in the Krenek edition with emendations by Berg.
Totenfeier, ''Funeral Rites'', is the symphonic poem that Mahler began in 1888 and offered to Schott in 1891 before returning to it in 1893 as the substantially complete basis for the first movement of the Second Symphony. The International Gustav Mahler Society have now conferred independent status on it by issuing a supplement to their Critical Edition, Totenfeier: symphonische Dichtung fur grosses Orchester, ed. Rudolf Stenhan. Gustav Mahler Samtliche Werke. Suplement/i, Universal, Vienna, 1988. The differences between the two versions are large in number but small in scale. The one substantial difference is the diminished scale of the orchestral forces, and dynamic levels, in Totenfeier. Indeed, it is a tribute to the clarity and grip of Rickenbacher's Bamberg performance that he almost entirely avoids the obvious pitfall of making Totenfeier seem like an under-powered play-through of the more familiar version.
In general, this is a well-played and wellrecorded production and some may find it a satisfying hour's worth of Mahler on record. Rickenbacher provides the note, which is very short of information, general and specific, on Totenfeier. No one will expect a CD booklet note on the scale of Stephen Hefling's monumental thesis The Making of Mahler's Totenfeier (Yale: 1985) but a record that offers a scholarly rarity ought to provide collectors with rather more pointers as to what it is, precisely, they are meant to be listening to and for. Not everyone who contemplates this CD is going to spend an additional £26.00 on the new Critical Edition and its richly informative preface.'