Mahler: Symphony No 7 – review

Jonathan Nott has three symphonies left to go to complete his Mahler survey with the Bamberg orchestra. If it's been a somewhat uneven musical journey so far, the Seventh Symphony presents one of the greatest challenges in the cycle for any conductor. Nott's reading has many of the virtues that distinguished the finest of his earlier discs – formal clarity and directness; lean, crisp textures; and a total lack of indulgence. He is at his most impressive in his clear-sighted handling of the long span of the first movement, perhaps a little strait-laced and lacking in fantasy and sheer weirdness in the fragile pair of Nachtmusiken that flank the central scherzo, and as far as possible trusts Mahler's sense of architecture in the problematic finale. There Nott certainly doesn't attempt to impose his own logic on music that seems intent on veering from one extreme to the other at the slightest provocation. His approach doesn't quite come off, but then very few other performances on disc ever do.