The latest CD releases reviewed

MAHLER: SYMPHONY NO 8
Chor der Deutschen Staatsoper Berlin, Rundfunkchor Berlin, Aurelius Sängerknaben Calw, Staatskapelle Berlin/Pierre Boulez Deutsche Grammophon 477 6597 (2 CDs) ***

Pierre Boulez's cycle of the Mahler symphonies, under way since 1994, here culminates in the so-called Symphony of a Thousand, recorded last January with the Staatskapelle Berlin. It's a sonically sumptuous production, both as recording and in all aspects of the performance - the soloists are Twyla Robinson, Erin Wall, Adriane Queiroz, Michelle DeYoung, Simone Schröder, Johan Botha, Hanno Müller-Brachmann and Robert Holl. Boulez is his ever-observant self, and the striding clamour of the first movement's setting of the hymn Veni, creator spiritus, is suitably overwhelming. Sadly, the tension is allowed to sag unduly in the scene from Faust in the second half, an effect for which even such consistent gorgeousness can't fully compensate. www.deutschegrammophon.com

BEETHOVEN: STRING QUARTETS OP 18
Toyko String Quartet Harmonia Mundi HMU 907436.37 (2 CDs) ***

Refinement is the order of the day in these new recordings of Beethoven's first set of string quartets from the Tokyo Quartet. If you like your Beethoven done with a light touch, if you want to hear these works' demanding first violin parts handled with sometimes miraculous-seeming deftness, and if your taste is for Beethoven with a smoothish finish, then these may well be just the performances for you. However, the playing conveys little sense of a young man's freshness of invention. It's as if everything in the music has been so long and so well digested that the presentation has become that of an old recollection rather than the communication of an immediate experience. Even when the music is at its most agitated, the energy level in the playing never seems high. www.uk.hmboutique.com