Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Mahler: Symphony No. 6 (2006)
DSF Stereo DSD64/2.82MHz | Time – 01:18:19 minutes | 3,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Digital Booklet |  © Channel Classics Records B.V.

After the dress rehearsal, Mahler paced back and forth in the greenroom, wringing his hands and sobbing. He was beside himself. In the last movement he had let his ‘hero’ be killed by three violent blows of fate, a sort of Old Testament prophecy of the destruction of humanity by a higher power. In the score he symbolically notated three dull thuds made by a hammer on a wooden box which he had had especially built. But after the premiere he removed the third blow in measure 783. And as a symbol of the last remains of earthly existence he brought in the characteristic sound of cowbells, the last sounds which echo from the valleys and meadows on the highest summits of the world. They were meant to sum up the whole of human experience, from childlike innocence and wonder to fury, despair, and destruction. His Sixth Symphony is the most merciless and uncompromising portrayal of this vision….

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Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Mahler: Symphony No. 2 ‘Resurrection’ (2006)
DSF Stereo DSD64, 1 bit/2,82 MHz | Time – 01:22:19  minutes | 3,24 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | ©  Channel Classics Records B.V.

‘Resurrection’ (1894) is a gigantic work of enormous proportions, extreme contrasts, and a score that surpasses even his First Symphony from two years earlier. Ten horns, eight trumpets, two harps, organ, five percussionists, two vocal soloists (soprano and alto), as well as a large mixed chorus, fill the podium. And behind all this, invisible, is a ‘Fernorchester’ (distant orchestra) as a symbol of ‘the resurrection’. The work lasts for some 80 to 85 minutes, twice as long as Brahms’s Fourth or the Franck and D’Indy symphonies of the same period. And relative to a Haydn or Mozart symphony, there is a tripling in size. Only Bruckner approaches it in the length department with his Fifth and Eighth, each lasting about 75 minutes. But then Mahler, in this symphony, is dealing with the themes of life, death, and resurrection, and he took whatever space he felt that he needed. There is a strangely sharp contrast between the untroubled key of C major and the dark and turbulent contents of the work. It has been suggested that the theme of life, death, and resurrection was borne in on Mahler on the occasion of the funeral of the great conductor Hans von Bülow in 1894. In any case, the words of Klopstock that were read on that occasion are the same ones that Mahler used that year for the apotheosis (last movement) of his Second Symphony: “Aufersteh’n, ja aufersteh’n wirst du, mein Staub, nach kurzer Ruh unsterblich Leben wird der dich rief gegeben.” (Thou shalt arise, yes, arise, my dust, after a brief slumber, thou shalt be called to immortal life). And Mahler expanded the text further with his own words: “O glaube, mein Herz. Es geht dir nichts verloren. Dein ist was du gesehnt. Dein, was du geliebt, was du gestritten. O glaube: Du wardst nicht umsonst geboren. Hast nicht umsonst gelebt, gelitten.” (O have faith, my heart. Nothing shall be lost to thee. What thou hast longed for is thine. Thine remains, what thou hast loved, what thou hast battled for. O have faith: thou wast not born for nothing. Thou hast not suffered in vain.) From liner notes (Clemns Romijn)

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Budapest Festival Orchestra, Ivan Fischer – Mahler: Symphony No. 1 ‘Titan’ (2012)
DSF Stereo DSD64, 1 bit/2,82 MHz | Time – 55:28 minutes | 2,2 GB | Genre: Classical
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 55:28 minutes | 975 MB
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | ©  Channel Classics Records B.V.

‘In full sail’ (Mahler’s original title for the second movement) could be a motto for the whole symphony. Here is the young Mahler, full of optimism. We hear his loveof nature and beauty, and his childhood memories. Fragments of distant military music, birdsong and Yiddish folk tunes come to his yet untormented mind. These episodes are real jewels, especially the Viennese trio in the second movement, the briefKlezmer music, then the Schubert-like Lied (did he have the Lindenbaum in mind?) in thethird; and the poetic, gentle melody that interrupts the stormy final movement.Admirable too is the architecture, as the composer completes his journey from hell to paradise, “dall’inferno al paradiso”, in the footsteps of his idol Beethoven. Mahler was in his late twenties when the world made acquaintance with his first symphony. It was in the Hungarian capital Budapest, and circumstances were difficult.In the diffuse acoustics of the Vigadó Hall, surrounded by hatred and mistrust, Mahler experienced his first major flop. Since then, at each performance I feel that we Hungarians have a moral duty to convince audiences that this is a perfect and exceptionally beautiful masterpiece. –Iván Fischer

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