As long as there is a recording medium, there will be copies of this performance of
Mahler's Symphony No. 9 made by
Bruno Walter and the
Vienna Philharmonic on January 16, 1938. It was the first recording of the work made by the conductor and the orchestra who premiered it a quarter of a century earlier a year after the composer's death, the conductor who was the composer's best friend and disciple, and the orchestra that was the composer's own for ten years. And it was the last recording made by the conductor with that orchestra of
Mahler's music for almost a decade because the conductor and the composer were both prescribed under the Nazis, who annexed Austria a month later.
Although there have been dozens of great recordings of the Ninth since 1938,
Walter and the
VPO's Ninth is still the touchstone. It is a passionately transcendent performance, a performance of excruciating agony and unendurable ecstasy, a performance of complete belief and ultimate transfiguration, a performance that justifies the existence of recordings. This particular EMI remastering is as good as most of the other recent remasterings. One may prefer the Dutton for its honest clarity, the Pearl for its clear honesty, or the EMI for its ever so slightly muted honest clarity. But whichever remastering one hears, everyone should hear this performance.