I admit to being a little surprised at the excellence of this Mahler cycle.Having been a little disappointed, comparatively speaking, with Solti's RING, I expected his Mahler to be the same--very good but not the equal interpretatively of, say, Jascha Horenstein's (who never did a complete cycle, but made recordings of most of Mahler) or Barbirolli at his best (#6 and #9), or even Bernstein, who, excellent as his cycle is, proves the axiom that no conductor can do justice to all of a composer's symphonies.But Solti and the Chicago players are amazingly good. I especially like the middle symphonies by him, and #9 is as good as it gets, IMHO.Highly recommended, especially if you're only going to buy one complete Mahler cycle.5 people found this helpful