Mahler - Symphony no. 4 - NewYork Philharmonic Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein -Reri Grist soprano

In 1967, CBS released the first integral recorded set of the nine completed symphonies of Gustav Mahler. The conductor, logically, was Leonard Bernstein who, with his zeal and charisma (and mastery of the media) had brought this music permanently into the public consciousness and the international concert repertory.
Mahler was in good hands–those of Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Jascha Horenstein–prior to Bernstein's becoming music director of the New York Philharmonic in 1958. But those worthy elders lacked Bernstein's popular touch, and their efforts on the composer's behalf met with only modest success. Still, it would be foolish to believe that Bernstein succeeded through glitter alone. He had–and retains–a profound identification with and affinity for this music. Bernstein, the highly emotional Jewish conductor-composer, and Mahler, the highly emotional Jewish composer-conductor, were fated to hit it off.

But Bernstein's way with Mahler has not inevitably been the critics' way. As they have rightfully pointed out, there were before–and certainly are now–conductors who imposed greater discipline on Mahler's sprawl, who were less inclined to pile their own emotional baggage onto Mahler's already overstuffed valises. But then, Bernstein during his New York Philharmonic days never was a critics' conductor, just as Mahler was not a critics' composer.

Mahler by Bernstein was triumphantly launched in 1960 with the Fourth Symphony. Bernstein, without obscuring the basic purity of the score, also explores its dark corners and the subversive undertones of its endless richness. And soprano Reri Grist, never again so lovingly captured by the recording microphones, is a ravishing delight in the finale as she recounts a child's vision of heaven.
-Herbert Glass

http://rapidshare.com/files/254260036/Mahler__Symphony_No.4_Bernstein_NPO.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/254265167/Mahler__Symphony_No.4_Bernstein_NPO.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/254267842/Mahler__Symphony_No.4_Bernstein_NPO.part3.rar
Booklet/lyrics/covers:
http://rapidshare.com/files/254267951/Mahler4Bernstein.PDF