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Mahler’s fourth symphony is perhaps most memorable for its unsettlingly gorgeous second movement,entitled ‘In gemächlicher Bewegung. Ohne Hast.’
No modern conductor’s name is more easily associated with the great romantic composer than George Szell. This 1965 recording shows the Cleveland Orchestra stepping superbly through Mahler’s score, allowing that second movement all the time it requires to develop its inexorable and unhurried momentum in true Mahleresque style.
It doesn’t end there, of course. Throughout the Fourth Symphony and the Lieder, Szell and his musicians are acutely on task, able to brood intelligently in a way that Mahler—the late Romantic definitive Über-Brooder—would have approved. Many critics refer to this recording as among the two or three definitive readings of the works it covers, all of which accrues to the merit of the Sony Classical project and its sound engineers.
Canter Bridge 
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