Mahler

You can hear and see this excellent performance of Mahler's militant, stormy and sometimes ethereal Symphony No. 5 in standard DVD (on disc 1 of the set) or hear it in a variety of digital audio formats. A bonus DVD-Audio disc (without visuals) offers a choice of standard stereo or two varieties of surround sound. The surround sound is even richer and more precise than the standard DVD, and this matters with Mahler's colorful and finely detailed orchestration. But the video is useful for conveying Simon Rattle's expressive gestures, his fine control of the Berlin Philharmonic, and its precise playing in this his first performance as the orchestra's music director. Ades's Asyla (the plural of "Asylum," used in both its meanings, as a place of refuge and a scene of madness) is available only in the video format, which is sonically quite good and visually striking. It is energetic music, with a lot of percussion, including one piece that looks like a tomato juice can, and one movement that annotator Andrew Porter describes as "a sort of Rite of Spring cum disco." A video interview of Rattle is a fine bonus. --Joe McLellan