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*** Riccardo Chailly/Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

MAHLER SYMPHONY NO. 8

(Decca)

Gustav Mahler’s great message of love and salvation is a masterpiece of reckless audacity, and this new recording boasts a distinguished Mahler conductor, one of the world’s great Mahler orchestras, and a high-profile line-up of soloists that includes Jane Eaglen, Anna Larsson, and Ben Heppner. Like Claudio Abbado’s recent account, Chailly’s conception of the piece is broad and expansive, worlds away from the dynamic approaches of Georg Solti and Leonard Bernstein.

He takes the opening of Part I — a setting of the mediæval hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus” — as a kind of moderato rather than the allegro impetuoso Mahler calls for: where Bernstein elicited the text’s ecstasy, Chailly illuminates its more devotional qualities. One advantage of this approach is that he’s able to build peaks rather than just rushing from one to the next: when the “Veni Creator” opening returns, it sounds like a real climax and not a mere highlight. The long orchestral prelude of Part II — Mahler’s setting of the final scene of Goethe’s Faust — is chamberlike in its clarity, Chailly’s precise ear being aided by the spectacular playing of the Royal Concertgebouw. Heppner is stunning as Doctor Marianus, the purified essence of Faust’s soul. Larsson, Eaglen, and Jan-Hendrik Rootering are also in fine voice.

The drawback here is the sound picture. Some of the dense contrapuntal textures of Part I come across as mush, and the choruses are often buried in the mix. And though it was a nice idea to have Ruth Ziesak sound as though she were singing the part of Mater Gloriosa from a great distance, her voice is almost completely obscured by the orchestra. What’s more, the organ tends to swamp everything else when it enters.

With its massive forces (some 175 instrumentalists and 850 singers in the 1910 Munich premiere), this work cries out to be heard live. (Boston has been blessed by three Boston Philharmonic performances over the past two seasons.) Among recorded versions, my preference is still for Giuseppe Sinopoli’s combination of passion and precision (Deutsche Grammophon import), but Chailly will convince many listeners that the Eighth is no longer Mahler’s ugly stepchild.

— David Weininger