The Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vänskä bring us Gustav Mahler’s Third Symphony, an extraordinary work by any standards. Scored for extended Wagnerian woodwind and brass sections, posthorn, a large array of percussion, women’s chorus, alto soloist, and boys’ choir, the symphony has a duration of over 100 minutes and is filled with extreme emotion, revealing what the composer wanted to say about his own connection with nature and humanity’s place in it: “My symphony will be something the world has never heard before! The whole of nature will have a voice in it…” he wrote about this mammoth work.
The recording was made following a concert performance in November 2022. In this musical communion with nature, we hear the beautiful voices of English mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston, the Minnesota Boychoir, and the women of the Minnesota Chorale. The symphony’s finale, a deeply absorbing adagio, might simply be some of the most beautiful music ever written. The last work recorded by the Minnesota Orchestra and its conductor laureate, Osmo Vänskä, Mahler’s Third Symphony is a fitting culmination to this complete cycle, which began in 2016.
