"GRANT ME A LITTLE LIGHT":

The Czechs have unique credentials in Mahler, both as the composer's homeland orchestra and because the brass and wind soloists he wrote for in Vienna were often of the same origin. Mahler insisted (in a letter to Leos Janacek) that he spoke no Czech. On occasion, however, his music does - very loudly - and this orchestra speaks his idiom better than any other. Its soloists should have been named in the sleeve notes so we could give them credit, yet another record label oversight.

The Mahler scores I have studied in the Czech Philharmonic archives bear the markings of epic interpreters - Mahler himself , Zemlinsky, Bruno Walter, Vaclav Talich, Rafael Kubelik. Each adds his own perspectives and Bychkov's is no less valuable than any of his predecessors. Bychkov takes the early movements at a rather deliberate 'moderato' that proves deceptive in retrospect  when you realise how microsopically he has built tension over an hourlong span until catharsis in the Resurrection chorus offers organic rebirth.

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