This performance of Hindemith's Mathis der Maler is very fine. All of the performing forces rise to the occasion and deliver one of the most dramatic and fluent performances of this rambling work I've yet heard. Was there anything Sir Charles Mackerras didn't conduct well? It should be admitted upfront that there are a lot of cuts here. Nicholas gives an accurate analysis of what is included in his remarks below. I will add that this probably isn't the entire performance; bits and pieces, especially at the beginning and ending of a few scenes seem to have been missed by the tapist. I suspect this was an in-house job: the voices are clear, but sound a little recessed at times.What disqualifies this set from being given the five star rating is the sloppiness of production. You must begin with Track 9 on disc 2 and then go back and play the discs in reverse order. Nicholas explains all this below, but that was over nine years ago - and Opera Depot never fixed the problem.If you love this opera as I do, you'll make the effort to go back and forth between discs - the performance is worth it. All the same, I wish Andy would create a new master with all the tracks in the correct order.

THis is what OperaDepot can provide you with - fine recordings of live perfomances you need to know. This is going to be a beautiful friendship.

Great performance of a difficult, but beautiful work.

Barring a few taping gaps, what we have here is a complete performance of a heavily cut production of Hindemith’s opera. “Heavily” means that literally one third of the piece is gone: a note-complete Mathis runs three hours, and this version clocks in at about two. The omissions range from a few measures to several pages at a go. The largest missing chunks are the opening choral scene of the 2nd Tableau and the final scene of the 3rd. Many of the elisions are smooth, but inevitably some are abrupt. Overall, it’s a bit like reading a drastically (but not insensitively) abridged version of a novel.The Hamburg State Opera brought its production to the Met around this time, with a slightly different cast – was Edith Mathis the Regina? – and also a different conductor, I believe; a private tape from that visit circulated, and was the only full-length recording of the opera available until the note-complete 1979 EMI studio version under Rafael Kubelik (now available from ArkivMusic). In 2005, Hamburg made amends with a new, all-but-uncut production, conducted by Simone Young, which has been issued on CD (Oehms Classics).The most serious of the tape lacunae here are: the first half of the Prelude (Concert of Angels), a short stretch at the top of the 3rd Tableau, and a longer one near the end of the 4th. Other musical notes: baritone Hubert Hofmann (Mathis) clearly lacked the top for the role, so there is a fair amount of rewriting to avoid high notes. The Regina starts shakily, jumping a couple of entrances (an understudy?) but settles down later on. Fans of mezzo-soprano Tatiana Troyanos should be aware that her role (Countess Helfenstein) is a short one, further reduced by cuts.Paradoxically, this is the most theatrically vivid and exciting recording of Mathis der Maler available. Much of this is due to the committed ensemble work of the cast, which presumably had had time to settle in both musically and dramatically over repeated repertory performances. But the lion’s share of the credit must go to Charles Mackerras’s thrilling conducting, which blows away any remaining doubts about Hindemith’s dramatic instincts. While this version can never be a first choice, anyone who knows and loves this great 20th century opera from the Kubelik, Young or Albrecht (Wergo) versions will certainly want to hear it.Incidentally, my copy of the Opera Depot CDs came with the labels reversed. The sequence should be:Disc 1 – 54:52 [11 tracks] (Tableaux 1 through 4)Disc 2 – 61:54 [9 tracks] (Tableaux 5 through 7; Prelude)Note that track 9 on Disc 2 should actually be the first track on Disc 1. (It would be wonderful if at some future date this could be corrected.)Finally, I must respectfully take issue with the short description of the opera given above. Mathis der Maler focuses on the inner turmoil of a painter in a time of great social and political unrest who feels compelled by the social injustice he sees around him to leave his safe haven of church patronage and join the cause of the poor. But he becomes disillusioned by the hatred and brutality that has infected the struggle, and by his personal failure as a “man of action.” In the end, he finds peace by accepting his responsibility towards his God-given gifts, and re-dedicates himself to his art. His journey is thus ultimately a spiritual one.