Title : Mahler - Symphony No.9
Artist : Herbert von Karajan (cond),
         Berliner Philharmoniker

Cat No. : LP43036
Label : Deutsche Grammophone
Format : 2 LP Box, 180g Vinyl 
Barcode: 8808678160369

* From the original masters of Universal Music.
* Audiophile analogue mastering by Maarten de Boer
* Cutting at Emil Berliner Studios
* 180g audiophile virgin vinyl
* Pressed by Pallas GmbH in Germany.
* The first time ever on vinyl

In 1982, the BPO's centenary year, Mahler's Ninth was played in an unforgettable series of concerts in Salzburg, Berlin and New York. Two things were evident in the momentous first performance in Salzburg in April 1982. First, Karajan was bringing an added toughness and truculence to the opening measures of the second movement, strengthening still further an already masterly unfolding of Mahler's powerfulessay in the metamorphosis of the dance. Secondly, the LP recording was no studio fabrication. Schwalbe and his men really did play the work from first note to last with a degree of technical address which, by normal standards of human perfectibility, was well-nigh incredible. As the 1980 LP recording was not in digital sound and as the reading had itself evolved, Karajan seems to have needed little persuasion to allow the taping of the final, Berlin performance in 1982, I say performance advisedly, for what we have here is a single performance, though the dress rehearsal was taped as a precaution and used (I would suspect in the concluding Adagissimo) where audience of platform noise was likely to be damagingly intrusive. The result is again exceptional. Certainly this is the finest live performance of a Mahler symphony to have appeared on any kind of record since Mengelberg's 1939 account of the Fourth Symphony. - <The Gramophone Magazine>

* Live recordings from the 1982 Berlin Festival
* Originally released 0n 1984