haitink conducts mahler's no. 3

In the past few days I could not have enough of this performance. I played the recording many times over.
Does people listen to radio anymore in this age of everything mobile, online streaming, and social? I still do regularly. I try to catch the weekly broadcast of Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) and New York Philharmonic (nyphil) performance, in addition to certain Portland's jazz station KMHD programmes that are true straight ahead jazz. On the CSO and nyphil weekly live performance broadcast I usually record them with a minidisc so I can listen again if I like the performance. More often than not the recordings are keepers. I now have a good collection of these "live" broadcasts.

This past Sunday afternoon I remember to tune into the broadcast of NY-phil recording of Bernard Haitink conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra performing Gustav Mahler's symphony number 3. Mahler's number 3 is not that often performed due to the exceptional length (about 100 minutes). I had listened to all Mahler's symphonies frequently but his number 3 is the most unfamiliar to me. I didn't not know how much I like it until this broadcast. I enjoy this Haitink led performance of New York Philharmonic. Even though the FM broadcast has gone through a lot of audio *degradations in the transmission and reproduction chain before making to my sound system, the live recording quality is very good. Here is the NY Times' review of the performance. I have been listening the recording  4 times now and cannot have enough of it. Amazing that Mahler composed this work in the late 19th century. A very big work indeed.

* 1) the program was streamed to Portland's classical station with not so high bit rate lossy compression. 2) the station's Internet connection is susceptible to broadband data rate fluctuation, or downright starvation (due to network congestion) as I often experience with A/V contents. 3) FM ability to carry fidelity audio is far narrower than what considered as de facto  20 - 20k Hz audible spectrum. 4) Instrumentation of a live performance of a big orchestra in any concert hall is a complex sound engineering endeavour and seldom the result is this good.

While this recent Haitink's performance with nyphil is not available for free streaming now, here is the symphony in entirety conducted by the great Leonard Bernstein and nyphil