With these releases, Naxos's laudable attempt to provide a Mahler cycle at rock-bottom price runs into serious difficulties. Too often the sound is uncomfortably muddled and inconsistent, while the two-disc format dictated by some deliberate speeds is not very attractive. There are preferable (albeit analogue) recordings of both works available on single CDs at mid-price.
The first movement of the Resurrection begins without any sort of sonic explosion, but Wit's is a decent enough presentation of music that can easily seem overblown. Although his realization of glissandos and other details is not beyond reproach, he is generally convincing in the gentler, more rustic sections. Jadwiga Rappe, Haitink's Erda, is again stranded in her own resonant pool for a gravely beautiful rendition of ''Urlicht''; alas, Wit's tempo is implausibly slow and worse, unsteady, so that the orchestra is not always with her. In the massive finale, his control of line breaks down altogether—the movement sounds as if it was recorded in sections—and the soprano soloist is frankly unendurable, unsteady and overmiked. In welcoming Klemperer's classic Philharmonia version back to the catalogue, ES regretted that such blemishes as an early bassoon entry in bar 12 of the first movement had been immortalized on the final master. My own bugbear with this performance is its out-of-tune final chord, and I am not sure that Rappe's ''Urlicht'' isn't preferable to Rossl-Majdan's. Even so, I cannot imagine settling for Wit's reedy trumpets and erratic balances while Klemperer's implacable (and superbly sung) account of the finale remains in the lists.
In the Sixth too, Naxos cannot resist gilding the lily, falsifying their modest Katowice forces with none-too-subtle boosts of the slider controls. In the first movement there is plenty of reverb on strings but the brass still snarl rather petulantly. The crucial A major-minor triad is weak and distant, horns dominating wind in the transition to the 'Alma' theme. In the development too, important woodwind data gets lost behind dominant horns, and the cows rattle their bells with implausible insistence, disrupting an otherwise effective nostalgic reverie. Timps are never ideally crisp. The best thing about the second movement is its carefully articulated trio. Unfortunately, the second return of the Scherzo is sabotaged by an early trombone entry. The Andante moderato is dangerously long-breathed—you need a top-flight orchestra to sustain this sort of tempo—and the horn, forced forward by the engineers until it sounds like a refugee from the finale of the Ninth, is not exactly in tune. Wit presses shambolically into the main climax. The finale opens without much rush of adrenalin, the sound rather muted, those crucial timps too muffled to intimidate. Wit does encourage the brass to have a go at the glissandos and his overall approach is by no means tepid or disinterested. Then, at around the seven minute mark, there is a gradual, wholly artificial-sounding increase in volume. The combination of analytical clarity and depth of sonority I look for in this score is not readily obtainable by such means. If you can take Solti's unrelenting vim and vigour, his recording is a much more convincing bargain.'