When I was beginning to collect Mahler, I was given a cassette tape of Abbado Mahler 5th with Chicago. I really enjoyed that recording and it remains my favorite.

When I was very young, I loved Mahler's first, but couldn't stand anything else.  The performance that convinced me to press on is Abbado's 7th with Chicago.  It immediately blew me away.

Now I have the Chailly and Bernstein boxes, and The People's Mahler, but that Abbado 7th remains my favorite of the 7ths.

I think that Abbado's live recordings of the 6th and 7th with Berlin phil. are absolutely fantastic but each to their own.

I would happily be the very most wannabe Mahler conductor just to have a chance to conduct any Mahler Symphony in front any professional orchestra.

I'm going to wait for the next one before I comment!  Love this video, Was quietly waiting for you to say SOLTI.  I have a vinyl version of his 1st where the sound is terrible, and a cd where it is much cleaner and everything is audible!

Another almost, but not quite for me is Michael Tilson Thomas.  I like his 1st the best, but I heard him at Tanglewood a number of years ago doing the 3rd with the Boston Symphony and thought the performance was just astounding!  I bought the recording with San Francisco, which did not live up to my expectations.  The best part of that concert was that my wife came away loving Mahler!  That alone was worth the price of the ticket! I did listen to one recording of Rattle once, hated it, never listened again.

Back around 1969, I started reading music theory/history books that contained chapters or at least lengthy passages on the symphonies of Mahler. Who is this guy I've never heard of, I asked myself. I'd play the little piano reduction snippets in those texts & just couldn't understand why he'd suddenly become The Next Big Thing. Further research needed! The only library copy of any Mahler LP in the city where I was living was the 6th symphony with the Concertgebouw, almost certainly conducted by Haitink. I fell in love with the work, but Haitink himself as a conductor left no impression on me one way or the other. No telling if I'd agree with your rather chilly assessment of his place in orchestral history if I listened to a lot of his work, but for sure he's not on my long list of musicians whose work I have a strong affinity for & appreciation of.

SINOPOLI!!!!
Vänskä
Maazel
Tabakov
Zinman

I consider Rattle more of a Wannabe Wannabe.

Good video: I will say the Abbado M2 with CSO was great. M3 with Vienna and Berlin not so much. Of the 5 conductors you mentioned, Abbado is the best but he was inconsistent.

I like that you stress the word "limited"  (to 5) because  it causes me to "focus"... and that's the word I use.

I know that Ken Russell used the Haitink recordings for the soundtrack of his MAHLER film.

Hi Dave! I love the topic, thanks so much for sharing. I do LOVE the Haitink 7th, but I haven't quite found another Mahler recording of his that I particularly bonded with, so your analysis makes a lot of sense to me. I want to ask about your review of the Paul Ben-Haim 2nd Symphony on DG with the Israeli Philharmonic. Are you planning on reviewing it?  I am very curious to hear your take on it, and perhaps on Ben Haim and perhaps other Israeli composers as well.
Thanks again,
Yonatan

I bought Haitink's recording of Mahler Symphony #2 with the Staatslapelle Dresden to commemorate the reopening of the Frauenkirche.  I was not impressed.  But I loved Mehta/VPO, Klemperer/Philharmonia, Solti/CSO, and Bernstein/NYPhil/DG.

Im going to add Tilson Thomas.  An excellent das klagende lied, an excellent 2nd. 4th, two excellent 7ths, a flawed but satisfying 8th, I think that’s as of success rate as most of these conductors.

In baseball terms, this sounds like the hypothetical "Hall of Very Good".  All five of these conductors did achieve great things with specific Mahler symphonies or recordings, but it can be hit and miss, the hits often exceptionally good, the misses more disappointing than bad (although there were a few stinkers thrown in).  Abbado was the first one I thought of, because 1) he does a lot of Mahler (just listened to his 3 with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra yesterday), and 2) I've heard Dave damn him with faint praise on several occasions before.

Hah. Rattle was the first name I thought of when I saw the video title. Another...Vänskä?

Today I heard two new mahler discs. Jurowski with the ninth which I really liked. So much so  that I'm listening to it again now. The second was lieder von erde with Francois Xavier Roth, which was abysmal imo. I really hated just about everything about this recording. Would love to hear whether you agree with me about it.

Any thoughts on Jonathan Nott's cycle in Bamberg? I have the 3rd, and 6th which are both fine, but I don't play too often.

A frequent general assessment, with which I tend to agree, is that early recordings of major works by great conductors are the best. Subsequent recordings don't capture the magic of the first recording. I wonder why this is, as it seems, on first consideration, to be paradoxical. Isn't it logical to think that players and conductors improve their game with time? I wonder if overthinking and trying too hard to be "different" is the curse of later recordings?