Mahler 8th Symphony

Excellent choices above notwithstanding, I recommend the following exceptional performances:

- Horenstein / LSO from 1959

It is an exciting performance, intensive, and keeps you focused throughout. Part 2 begins in a measured manner and builds up dramatically. I also like the tempo in Part 1 - it helps create a continuity throughout the piece. Note the mood created by the childrens’ choir...

Reissued in BBC legends, the sound is OK, I’d call it well above average.

- Mitropoulos / Vienna Philharmonic - Choir, etc / LIVE, Salzburg festival (1960)

Long story short, part II is an emotional powerhouse. Not a reviewer, so I cannot wax lyrical about it; you need to listen to it.

The sound is mediocre -- but, that’s all we have, so we have to live with it.

Reissued on Orfeo

Regards

Although I admire many of the above choices, for me the performance that gets to the heart of the symphony is the Solti from 1971, mentioned above.
Part ll is especially moving and holds together magnificently. Some performances tend to wander aimlessly.

I know Solti’s Mahler is looked down upon by some connoisseurs, but he does it for me.

The art of musical performance is for me and for psycho-acoustics anyway still a mystery ...

This mystery is not a simple objective mystery as of many question in science which anyway are sometimes without end but at least the question can be clearly ask and the beginning of an answer given valuable for everyone ; spiritual questions in art are a mystery resembling a mysterious galaxy whose parts speak to someone but not to everyone , because nobody access all the mysteries meaningful  parts and planets but access  fully his own corresponding part ...

Wholeness is a speaking gestures who speak differently to each of us .... and each of us is a galaxy too ...

Then Solti is the one for you ....Bernstein for me ....😊

@newbee

“You could have convinced me that Part I and Part II were composed as separate symphonies”

Perhaps having that in mind, Mahler directed that in performance, there be a five minute break between the two Parts.

I like the Solti a lot, but, I have not listened to it in a long time because I have it on LP and I rarely listen to classical on LP these days.  The Horenstein mentioned above is also very good, it just slipped my mind.

I guess that the five minute pause between parts is to give listeners time to go to the restroom given the nearly hour long duration of the second part.