Wednesday, 11.18.09, 1:00 pm
The Spheres of Mahler
“I wouldn’t suggest the racetrack as the incubator and inspirer of poetry. I just say it might work for me—sometimes. Like beer, or [enjoying] a good woman, cigars, or Mahler with good wine and the lights out, sitting there naked watching the cars go by…” (Los Angeles Free Press, March 3, 1967)
Charles Bukowski might seem an unlikely source of insight about classical music, but he was an avid listener—especially to classical music on the radio—and he had a naturally discriminate ear. “Bach is the hardest to play badly because he made so few spiritual mistakes” is only one astute point among his 15 “Observations on Music” (from Sifting through the madness for the word, the line, the way). That Bukowski couldn’t mention Haydn without also using the F-word or a raunchy equivalent in the same sentence doesn’t take away from those insights.
Among his most cherished composers—and the one with the most references in his works—is Gustav Mahler. If “the struggle, the crisis of identity and faith, the uncertainties and the challenge of a creeping modernism that undermined life as people knew it… all seem to be reflected in the clashes and crashes of Mahler’s symphonies” (Mahler Introduction), then it isn’t terribly surprising that Bukowski responded to Mahler so strongly, even well before Mahler’s music had achieved the wide spread popularity it enjoys today.
Mahler was always one
of my favorites.
it’s possible to listen to
his works again and
again and
again without
tiring of them.
I don’t agree with that (anymore), but it’s the pithiest reference to Mahler in Bukowski I know. Unless that very apt picture of Mahler as the dinner guest already at the door, who takes an hour saying goodbye, is also from Bukowski, as I seem to very faintly remember.
That Mahler has influenced other artists isn’t surprising. Just as Mahler soaked up the music in his sphere, they soaked up his music to make it their own. I’d like to think that Bukowski, quite accustomed with earthy language, might have responded well to the subcutaneous vulgarity present in Mahler. Mahler–the crude juxtapositions in his music, the banalities that are just saved by their presumed irony–had been thought a vulgar composer well into the 60s. I never understood that sentiment until I watched Unitel’s DVD of Leonard Bernstein conducting the Sixth Symphony at the Musikverein in Vienna. The orchestra plays with some reluctance, the brash orchestral effects suddenly begin to sound like crude kitsch, and even the walls of the Golden Hall look like the seedy interior of a brothel, with Bernstein as the charming pimp in lead.
Uri Caine is a Philadelphia born avant-garde jazz artist from New York with a penchant for classical music, unsurprising given that his composition teachers were George Crumb and George Rochberg. Mozart, Wagner, Beethoven, Bach, Schumann have all inspired him to absorb and creatively regurgitate their music. The result is music unlike any you have ever heard, which is as high a compliment as I know of. His best ‘crossover’ work might well be that with Mahler. His treatment of the source material is an ethnomusicological exploration of Mahler, at once reverent, insightful, and flimsy. Uri Caine’s distortion, modification, deconstruction and reassembly doesn’t obscure the Mahler beneath it, it actually allows for deeper insights into what it is we hear in Mahler. All the Jewish and Klezmer influences emerge vividly. And whether it’s “Liebst Du um Schönheit” as a gospel collage or the “Adagietto” taken apart into individual piano notes, suspended like a mobilé, it’s always Mahler from a new angle, always surprising and delightful to the ears. I’ve come to appreciate and even love most, maybe all his ‘crossover’ albums—but his primary Mahler disc, Urlicht, remains at the top of the heap; among the handful of favorite recordings I own.
A different way to get at the Jewish and Yiddish musical roots of Mahler is by hearing the music from the same tradition that has been written at Mahler’s time or since. The Vogler Quartet plays a recital of such music Thursday night at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater. It is based on the music played by the Russian-Jewish Zimro Ensemble, a string quartet, clarinetist, and pianist that Prokofiev heard on their American tour in 1919. Their mission was to maintain a level of excellence in the “New Jewish School” of music with strong roots in Jewish folk music. Sponsored by Zionist Organizations around the world, and intent of touring their way to Palestine, they performed only music approved by the St.Petersburg Society of Jewish Folk Music. Along their American tour they greatly impressed Prokofiev who consequently wrote his Overture on Hebrew Themes for them. In the end they never made it quite to Palestine, because Simeon Bellison was snagged by the New York Philharmonic as solo clarinetist.
The Vogler Quartet (excellent Thuille!) is on their own Zimro tour now, performing the works the original ensemble (and its successor ensembles) played—Ekht-Jewish music from composers such as Grigori Krejn, Julius Chajes, Joseph Achron—and of course Prokofiev. If you can’t make the concert, the same musicians have released that program on a wonderful CD as well, which is what backs up my enthusiasm about their (Mahler-related) program tomorrow.
For the 125th anniversary of the New York Philharmonic in 1967, Luciano Berio composed (albeit missing the deadline) Sinfonia, a four-, then five-movement work for orchestra and amplified voices. There is a very decent Wikipedia article on the piece, that goes well beyond describing that the third movement of Sinfonia is a quixotic pastiche of the third movement from Mahler’s Second Symphony, cut up, re-imagined, and spliced with quotations from a dozen other composers. Next to his Schubert-realization Rendering, Sinfonia remains one of Berio’s most accessible and most easily enjoyable pieces.
The Berio-Mahler connection can be further explored on one of the four superb Frank Scheffer documentaries on Mahler that I’d like to mention. While three of those four “Juxtaposition” films—from a series that always couples two more or less related subjects to another—don’t relate directly to the music he influenced or was influenced by, they are DVD gold when it comes to delving fully into Mahler and assuming you are already a fan. Attrazione D’Amore is a film on Riccardo Chailly, ‘his’ Concertgebouw (at the time), and Mahler. A touch of hagiography, but splendid all the same. Coupled to it is Voyage to Cythera, about Berio and Sinfonia. The other coupling consists of Conducting Mahler—with Muti, Chailly, Rattle, Abbado, and Haitink rehearsing their orchestras in Mahler, opining along the way—and I Have Lost Touch With the World about Mahler’s 9th and Chailly. 
Tuesday, 11.17.09, 7:00 pm
Gustav Mahler – Symphony No.4 (Part 3)
This continues Gustav Mahler — Symphony No.4 (Part 2) from Monday, with a discussion of more “Mahler 4” recordings I particularly cherish.
While Mahler’s Forth Symphony is very different from the previous three, it also constitutes the group of Wunderhorn Symphonies with them, of which the last three had all included vocal elements. From here on Mahler set out on a slightly different path and soon had a new source of delight and suffering entering his life in the form of Alma Mahler, née Schindler.
I have just extolled the virtues of recent Mahler Fourth recordings by David Zinman, Iván Fischer, and Michael Tilson Thomas, but if they fail to elicit more enthusiastic praise from me, it is because they share with the earlier Haitink recordings and Pierre Boulez’ (DG) a missing, indefinable, distinctive quality that goes beyond exquisiteness. Unlike with the Third Symphony, I am less content with sheer excellence alone in the Fourth, since the recording catalog offers so many more choices. Swift Boulez almost gets there, though, because the Cleveland Orchestra provides him with pronounced and individualist chatter of instruments that comes, like Bernstein, a little closer to the aforementioned ideal of a “Concerto for Orchestra”. What does stand out with Boulez is his first movement, which he zips through at a pace that leaves you bopping along without your mind ever tempted to wander. Taking only a minute less than Bruno Walter (who more than makes up for lost time in the last two movements), he sounds twice as fast. His soprano Juliane Banse is equally wonderful in the totally different, very broad Sinopoli recording from Dresden (PROFIL Hänssler) where the Italian adds three minutes to Boulez’ 8’44” in “Das himmlische Leben”… with wildly fluctuating tempi. Banse doesn’t sing her quick parts any slower in Dresden than she does in Cleveland, only her slow parts are retarded to a point where it must have become challenging for the singer to maintain the line. It is exaggeration occasionally—well, regularly—seen in Sinopoli’s Mahler, but one can’t blame him for wanting to explore the beautifully spacious acoustic and striking sound of the orchestra both of which come across nicely on the recording.
The gEMIni re-issue of Paul Kletzki’s Fourth—coupled with his acclaimed Lied—does the EMI remastering-engineers proud: the 1957 sound is far better than one might expect and the performance among the light ones that please. Paul Kletzky’s wife, Emmy Loose, sings faultlessly and wonderfully innocently, if without particular distinction beyond that. Washingtonians with a long memory and therefore skeptical of such musical Mahler-Fourth / Wife nepotism can be assured that Loose earns her inclusion in that performance on account of skill, not wedding band.
One Mahler recording issued in 2008 truly stood out among the lot: the Concertgebouw’s performance of the Fourth Symphony with Bernard Haitink conducting and Christine Schäfer taking the soprano part. If a Fourth Symphony can easily be undone by an inappropriate soprano (Gielen/Whittlesey, Abbado/Fleming), it can’t generally be ‘made’ by a great singer. Well, maybe Schäfer could actually, because her soprano is simply perfect for “Das himmlische Leben”. Clarity and beauty of tone are a given with her, but the innocence, the angelic ring that she believably exudes is exactly what the symphony (and Mahler) asks for. In theory a treble might be better, still, but put into practice it simply doesn’t work.
Fortunately Schäfer doesn’t have to rescue anything here, she’s simply the crowning glory of what is a superb performance. Haitink is generally short on cutting and acerbic tones in Mahler and long on beauty. So here. This Fourth Symphony (his fourth commercial recording of it!) benefits from beauty and suffers not from the absence of tortuous and biting sounds, as for example the Sixth would. Generous, rich, and yet transparent, there is plenty of that beauty to go around here. Among his three live recordings (two with the RCO and one with the Berlin Philharmonic), this is the one with the quickest pulse. The RCO plays with near-perfection (this is a true live recording, not patched from several performances), its usual gorgeousness, and grandeur of sound—all caught perfectly by the recording engineers. This sumptuous performance has now replaced Inbal, my previous top choice.
Michael Gielen’s Mahler is more and more becoming a favorite of mine. Here is a conductor with a modernist perspective of Mahler (like Abbado and Chailly) who (unlike Abbado and Chailly) can really rip through these symphonies instead of making them sound ‘lovely’. There is little of that ‘well behaved’ sound in his recordings with the South-Western Radio Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden. Perhaps because his players are not as seasoned a Mahler orchestra as areChicago, Vienna, and even Berlin? His Fourth suffers from the same problem Abbado’s does, though: Three good movements and then big a let-down from the soprano. Christine Whittlesey’s problem is not self-conscious artificiality but that she sounds like the evil witch from one of Brother’s Grimm fairy tales. You’d think that once she finishes with “Die eng’lischen Stimmen / Ermuntern die Sinnen, / Daß alles für Freuden erwacht” she’ll rush back home to roast Hänsel. (Gielen’s inclusion of the sublime Schreker “Prelude to a Drama” probably makes for the best filler on any disc with the Fourth Symphony, though.)
Another wonderful and appropriate filler are the Seven Early Songs by Berg. The above mentioned Abbado offers them (and here, unlike with Mahler, Fleming shines)—as does the Ricardo Chailly recording with the Concertgebouw and Barbara Bonney. Like Gielen, the recording can be difficult to get outside the complete box (Arkiv currently lists it, actually), which is a shame as neither collections—Gielen’s or Chailly’s—include any of the ‘fillers’. Chailly’s Fourth is unwavering in its forward-momentum… steady and secure like a sewing machine. Understated, but surreptitiously powerful. The playing (aided by excellent sound) is three-dimensional. There isn’t a more delicate, more loving third movement on record. This is a monument to well thought-out craftsmanship of the highest order.
Many consider the George Szell recording (Sony) with Judith Raskin one of the finest recordings; inexplicably it has gone out of print… though thankfully it can now be had as an ArkivMusic licensed re-print (if you can’t find the original cheaper on Amazon) and should be heard; it remains one of the finest in the catalog even after so many years of strong competition. The same cannot be said of every recording that has old age on its side. When, after timid discovery, I started listening to Mahler in earnest, it was usually a Bruno Walter recording that I went with. My first impressions of the First, Second, and Fourth were with Walter. Such early impressions are usually indelible, but in this case they have all been dislodged and surpassed. His Fourth (Sony) with the New York Philharmonic from May of 1945 for example is nice and brisk, and the less than perfect playing, occasionally sour, can be said to add lots of character. (More character, still, comes from the so-so 1945 recording quality!) But it is full of strange touches, too. Take the first movement, where Walter doesn’t hurry up the introductory sleigh-bell phrase and consequently has no room or time for a ritardando. (Boulez almost does the opposite: begins fast and refuses to slow down.) By not making much of a distinction between “Deliberate” and “Very leisurely”, it sounds like his sleigh grinds into the snow and never quite gets going again. For reasons of interpretation and authority, Walter is always worth coming back to. But if I had only two or three Mahler Fourths on my shelf, I’d not put up with the technical limitations this one demands excusing.
The font used in the title is “Eckmann Regular”
Mahler 4 Choices
1. Bernard Haitink / Christine Schäfer, CSO, CSO Resound
2. Eliahu Inbal / Helen Donath, Frankfurt RSO, Denon / Brilliant
3. Paul Kletzki / Emmy Loose, Philharmonia Orchestra, EMI
4. Esa Pekka Salonen / Barbara Hendricks, LA Phil, Sony via Arkiv
5. George Szell / Judith Raskin, Cleveland, Sony via Arkiv
6. Riccardo Chailly / Barbara Bonney, RCO, Decca
Mahler 4 SACD Choice
Bernard Haitink / Christine Schäfer, CSO, CSO Resound
Gustav Mahler. Postcard by Hans Boehler.
Courtesy of the Carnegie Hall Archives
Monday, 11.16.09, 6:00 pm
Gustav Mahler – Symphony No.4 (Part 2)
This continues Gustav Mahler — Symphony No.4 (Part 1) from Saturday, with a discussion of more “Mahler 4” recordings I particularly cherish… and some I don’t.
Mahler’s Fourth Symphony was begun in a flurry of inspiration during the last ten, very intensive days of his otherwise miserable 1899 summer vacation at the Altaussee. The muse beset him so fast and furiously that he could no longer handle it physically and came down with a debilitating dizziness.
Apart from a rainy summer and initial difficulties finding the necessary quiet to compose, there was trouble brewing at the opera house in Vienna that Mahler was eager to get away from and reluctant to return to. And with his vacation over, he worried whether he could pick up with the symphony where he had to leave it. Henri-Louis de La Grange speaks of “torment” from which this symphony arose, which leads the author to the ‘astonished observation’ that the Fourth is so “delightfully carefree”, a “lyrical intermezzo among his other… tragic symphonies”.
This might suggest that Mahler, like Mozart, was able to compose the cheeriest music under the dourest of circumstances and vice versa. Certainly the darkest, the Sixth, Symphony, composed when everything seemed to go well in Mahler’s life, seems to suggest so much. But for that the trouble surrounding and preceding the Fourth Symphony’s beginnings was probably too superficial to really bother Mahler, whose “talent for suffering” (Haitink) would otherwise have made sure to express it either here or in “Revelge”, the Wunderhorn-Lied that he drafted a few weeks earlier.
Nowhere in this symphony… will there be a single fortissimo.
Later that summer, Mahler prospected and eventually found the—almost—ideal spot for his summer getaway in Maiernigg at the Wörthersee. It would have to, and did, include a location for his isolated little composing-hut, the famous “Häuschen” that he from now on created his symphonies in. He ordered it built and it was ready in time (the villa itself wasn’t yet) to serve him the next summer when he returned to Maiernigg to finish the Fourth Symphony. The composition had been out of his mind during the work year, but now Mahler found that completion came surprisingly easy and quite naturally to him, as if he had sub-consciously (the term didn’t exist then) worked it out in the time since last jotting down the sketches.
This is also where he told Natalie Bauer-Lechner that the slow movement now called “Ruhevoll. Poco adagio” ‘almost had a religious and catholic atmosphere… Neither in this movement nor anywhere else in the symphony, in accordance with its subject, will there be a single fortissimo. Those who accuse me of always taking recourse to grandiose gestures will be astonished…’
There is something religious about this Adagio (Mahler had also called “the smile of St. Ursula” and likened to his mother’s face as she smiled through her tears). Its serene quality is that of a smile unsmiled, the calm and gentle resignation in good hope of better things to come. Just yesterday I listened to that movement, soft as spring dew on a daisy (with Daniele Gatti, RCA), when I heard a child crying inconsolably outside. It felt as though the symphony wanted to wrap its arms around the child in comfort while letting it continue to cry, knowing that tears are sometimes necessary.
Photo © Koscher
The last movement—the Wunderhorn lied “Das himmlische Leben” that was supposed to the the finale of the Third Symphony—and the choice of singer are very important for the success of this symphony. Most listeners would agree that a light, clear voice with earnest innocence—as Mahler demands—is best suited. Artificial theatricality or self-conscious beauty (courtesy of Renée Fleming) can undo three good movements as in Claudio Abbado’s recent Berlin recording (DG). Bernstein opted for the logical extension of the voice’s angelic profile in his last recording with the Concertgebouw and chose a boy soprano from the Tölzer Knabenchor. It’s perfect for the character of the song but the music is difficult and strenuous and the voice should ideally be bigger and more secure. A noble failure. In the very colorful New York recording, Reri Grist’s strangely boyish voice is an acquired taste.
Since the Fourth is a light(er) work, esprit and joie de vie are important; heft and sumptuous glory can detract. Eliahu Inbal (Denon) gets lightness and irony right, nor is he afraid of some old fashioned portamento. His Frankfurt RSO adds a touch of flying-by-the-seats-of-their-pants which adds character (like some of the earlier Kubelik recordings did) and Helen Donath is a near-ideal soprano for the role. For the longest time—until Bernhard Haitink’s new recording came out last year—this was my undisputed first choice in this symphony. Maazel (CBS/Sony) and Salonen (Sony), for better or worse, reign over more overtly splendid orchestras, the Vienna Philharmonic and the L.A. Philharmonic, respectively. Both have exquisite light sopranos: Maazel the young Kathleen Battle; Salonen, Barbara Hendricks—and both are superb accounts for it. Salonen relaxes the third movement (all four are ‘slow movements’, really) as much as this symphony can take without becoming unduly ponderous. Both, Maazel and Salonen, were in my original recommended-list, but Sony has taken them out of their lineup. ArkivMusic at least has Salonen available as an ArkivCD; Maazel is easily had on Amazon. For now.
Perhaps that’s an East coast thing: Michael Tilson Thomas (SFS Media,
) does the same thing with the San Francisco Symphony: aided by some of the most refined, gentlest string sound—and only at such sound can this successfully pulled off—does he span the movement over an astonishing 26 minutes. (The average is a little over 21 minutes, Kondrashin and Walter have it over and done with in under 18.) With him the music seems to be taking a deep, natural breath after each phrase. No real complaints about his soprano, Laura Claycomb, but nothing to write home about, or lift this glorious performance far above the mass of other wonderful performances.
The opposite is true for Michaela Kaune, who sings on the recording of Zdeněk Mácal with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra (Exton,). I assume her slurring of the opening notes are an interpretive choice, but even if they weren’t, Kaune isn’t special for precision or refinement but for the intriguing character of her voice that makes my ears perk. I can’t even tell whether I like it or not (perhaps not), but it adds an extraordinary—is it reedy?—quality to the Lied.
Recent additions are David Zinman (RCA,) with Luba Orgonášová and Iván Fischer (Channel,) with Miah Persson, both of which are lovely, played roughly along the interpretative mainstream with similar timings. Fischer’s Miah Persson is more child than angel; her innocence is a playful one with more ‘sandbox’ than apotheosis. Orgonášová is a little like Claycomb: not disturbing, not ideal. Amid the Tonhalle Orchestra’s muted colors in the slow movement, Zinman micromanages the dynamics with extreme care and precision, which he does without disturbing the all important flow. Fischer’s slow movement, with distant sounding strings, conjures a wistfulness one might feel at the sun disappearing behind the rolling hills. Both are distinguished by nuance and especially Fischer by the subtle Easter European lilt he so appropriately sneaks into the finer rhythmic details. It’s almost as if no unsatisfactory recordings of this symphony were produced anymore.
(Continued tomorrow)
The font used in the title is “ITC Souvenier Light”
Saturday, 11.14.09, 12:00 pm
Gustav Mahler – Symphony No.4 (Part 1)
I’ve always found the Fourth Symphony of Mahler to have a similar—if not quite as pronounced—problem as Beethoven’s Fourth: its two neighbors are too famous and too overbearing. On one side the oddly entrancing, over-long third symphony casts its very own spell, making No.4 look like a rather ‘normal’, conventional symphony: three movements capped by the Wunderhorn text “Wir genießen die himmlischen Freuden” as a small fourth movement doesn’t raise any eyebrows after symphonies two and three. And if relative normality be desired, the showier Fifth with the all-too-famous Adagietto gets more of the limelight. Alas, this personal perception is not borne out in reality: After the First, the Fourth Symphony remains the second most recorded and one of the three most often performed symphonies[1].
Every time I hear the Fourth it charms me utterly only to fall back into a certain degree of obscurity right after it finishes. It’s not sardonic or sarcastic nor even very tragic: a fairly relaxed symphony. Classical in build, its seven themes offer mostly tender, light, music—not the expected Mahlerian grandiosity; different from everything that came before. Adorno calls it the “monad in relation to the other symphonies”. What makes it the most popular now is what it has suffered for during its critical and popular inception. Instead of continuing the evermore daring-bigger-louder-more grandiose trend, he turns his back to the ‘shock and awe-symphony’ to a delightful four-movement symphony of—by his standards—moderate size and length: A work of happy, fairly untroubled mood (almost), the ‘Haydn Symphony’ among Mahler’s symphonies.
It wasn’t though delightful at all to the initial audiences. They had just about gotten used to—and more importantly: expect—the bombast… and now they were missing it, chiding the Fourth what the first two were chided for not being. Was it because of the naïveté of the Fourth? Or because they thought he was mocking or affecting innocence, or because they felt uncomfortable thinking that he might for once not parody a blissful state? I know it took me a while to overcome its sleigh bells, present enough to make the first and last movements of the Fourth suitable for pre-Christmas broadcasts in shopping malls.
Henri Louis de La Grange calls the work a “virtuoso piece for orchestra [the character of which] gives each musician [in it] the role of a soloist.” I have yet to hear a performance on record that bears this out with the same perspicuity as de La Grange’s statement, but I did hear a recent live performance with Daniele Gatti and the Munich Philharmonic that displayed all that and then some. Together with the recent Haitink recording (Best of 2008), the concert has done a lot for my appreciation of this superficially simple, but possibly most complex Symphony of Mahler. (Gatti also has a very fine, but not remotely as unique or daring, out-of-print recording of the Fourth.)
[1] Based on a survey of Mahler performances by three of the four most important, traditional Mahler orchestras, the Vienna, New York, and the Concertgebouw. The First is in all three cases, and by a fair margin, the most often performed. For the European orchestras the Fourth follows in second place before the 5th (Vienna) and Das Lied (Amsterdam), while in New York the Fifth precedes the Fourth which is in turn followed by the Ninth.
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Friday, 11.13.09, 4:00 pm
Gustav Mahler – Symphony No.3 (Part 2)
This continues Gustav Mahler — Symphony No.3 (Part 1) from Thursday, with a discussion of more “Mahler 3” recordings I particularly cherish.
Mahler wrote his Third Symphony in the summers of 1895 and 1896—having become the ‘summer composer’ only two years before, while finishing the Second Symphony. Unwilling to see himself only as a conductor and opera director rather than a composer, he compared himself to what the great composers before him had achievee at his age (then about 35), and realized that he needed to get cracking.
The Third wasn’t premiered until after the Fourth—1902 in Krefeld at the 38th annual festival of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein (the General German Music Association founded by Franz Liszt to promote the “New German School” of music). For one, it is even more unwieldy than the Second Symphony before. And the Berlin critics had called Mahler a lunatic, after hearing three excerpted movements a few years earlier, which might not have helped, either. The work is scored for quadruple-everything: flutes, oboes, bassoons, trumpets, trombones and five clarinets, eight horns, two harps, a huge percussion section, alto soloist, women’s choir, boys’ choir, and more strings than most orchestras could muster. The final Adagio alone, never mind the massive 35 minute first movement alone, is longer than most Haydn symphonies.
It also took so long to get the Third Symphony premiered, because this time around Mahler was not making any compromises. The premiere had to be perfect, or not take place at all. He had to conduct, and he had to get as much rehearsal time as necessary. He wrote Richard Strauss, who, in his position as head of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein organized the concert and overcame any and all doubts (Mahler’s Fourth had flopped, too), material and financial obstacles to get Mahler all he needed.
When it finally was mounted, under the critical and intrigued eyes and ears of his colleagues (apart from Strauss, there were, among others, Eugen D’Albert, Leo Blech, Hermann Bischoff, Max Reger, Felix Weingartner and Hugo Wolf), the whole symphony was a—literally, one might add—smashing, popular success. The orchestra, having overcome its skepticism about this newfangled music, ended up exceeding Mahler’s expectations, and he liked the trombonist so much, he poached him for his Vienna opera orchestra.
The symphony itself, with its mix of texts—a Nietzsche poem and folksy Wunderhorn-lyrics—offers endless opportunity to wonder what exactly Mahler had intended. But since Mahler “remain[s] fundamentally opposed to all analyses… good or bad” because “no one can help the audience [which can only help itself] by listening again and again and by reading [the score] again and again”, it might be wise to heed his advice and not analyze, or ‘understand’, but listen and then perhaps to ‘get it’, on an emotional level.
The one recording I might esteem more than Pierre Boulez’ (mentioned yesterday) is Claudio Abbado’s most recent recording from Berlin (DG). After the Seventh, this is surely his best recording from what might be a new, live cycle-in-the-making. Atmosphere in spades, warm, passionate playing and conducting, a mezzo with low notes to die for in Anna Larsson (altogether a much earthier animal than von Otter): it is abundantly clear by the end of this performance why the Berlin audience sits in stunned awe before it dare starts applauding. One of the most regularly amusing CD critics has called this a “dismal, wretchedly recorded (live) approximation of Mahler’s Third Symphony”, which should not really keep you from exploring it.
Similar reasons make Esa Pekka Salonen’s LA Philharmonic recording from 1997 (Sony, liner notes by Tim Page) so attractive. Anna Larsson is a joy to listen to in “Oh Mensch”, Zarathustra’s “Midnight song” by Nietzsche. The sumptuous, clean performance is about as well played as Chailly’s Concertgebouw recording (and as well recorded), but as mentioned, I have found the latter to be clinically detached, despite the superb sound and all the positive reviews heaped on it. Kubelik’s live recording from April 20th 1967 on Audite is a very moving performance—the gingerly played high trumpet notes in the Wunderhorn-referencing Scherzando of the third movement are just (barely, but still) on the right side of dread and accuracy: Appropriate for the grotesquerie of a bucolic postcard-version of nature and the mockery that the animals make of it (“Oxen, taking each other by the hoofs, in a triumphal ring-a-ring-o’ roses” , Adorno).
Zubin Mehta’s L.A. Philharmonic recording is his other great Mahler on disc: vigorous (Mahler does demand “Kräftig”), even brutal the opening; with extremes accentuated and an element of dread with which Pan is initially being woken. The lighter episodes are sprinkled in between. Valery Gergiev, whose Mahler (LSO Live, ) is short on idiom and manages to be speedy and occasionally coarse without generating any excitement, turns in a fine Third with a surprisingly tender finale. Then again, no one has yet managed to make that last movement anything but tender.
But trying to look for what’s great about Gergiev’s Mahler (and finding a thing or two to cling to) just can’t compare to Michael Tilson Thomas’ 2002 effectual recording (SFS Media ) with Michelle DeYoung which establishes very naturally, immediately, that there is greatness at work. A superbly gripping and detailed first and third movement, a moving, moaning Misterioso fourth movement, a superbly singing chorus marvelously caught by the engineers, and a heart-wrenchingly affectionate finale. It’s easily enough for me to rank among the best, and possibly ahead of Salonen, Mehta, and Kubelik. That it also contains DeYoung’s account of the Kindertotenlieder only makes the two-SACD set more attractive. A Grammy nomination for once fully deserved.
If MTT’s SACD version is surpassed by a recent recording at all, it’s not Haitink, and the CSO (CSO Resound , his debut performance as CSO principal conductor)—touching, although it is played with sincerity, honest passion, and consummate skill. The soloist is also DeYoung. Instead I’d chose David Zinman’s Zurich recording (RCA ); the best from his cycle, so far. Both Haitink and Zinman take an understated approach, but the soft hues that elsewhere hamper Zinman’s Mahler from really taking off are applied to greatly moving effect here. His soloist Birgit Remmert is a little dusky, a good fit to the plangent English horn of Martin Frutiger. A symphony with a finale like the Third does not need to be performed-to-impress to bring out the desired, awed effect. There are older recordings that are much admired, too. They are not included because they cannot honestly compete with newer, better sounding versions. Rarity and nostalgia have made of a very good interpretation like Horenstein’s, for example, a mythical one. And while any of Mitropoulos’ Mahler should be worth hearing, the only currently available Third, from New York, in English, savagely cut, and in a scrappy performance, is not.
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Mahler 3 Choices
1. Claudio Abbado, BPh, DG
2. Pierre Boulez, WPh, DG
3. Michael Tilson Thomas, SFS, SFSMedia
4. Esa Pekka Salonen, LA Phil, Sony
5. Rafael Kubelik, BRSO, Audite
5. Mehta, LA Phil, Decca
Mahler 3 SACD Choices
Michael Tilson Thomas, SFS, SFSMedia
David Zinman, Zurich TO, RCA
Thursday, 11.12.09, 6:00 am
Gustav Mahler – Symphony No.3 (Part 1)
The Third Symphony, Mahler’s longest, has sublime moments and plenty of them, but it can be difficult to find your way to—and around—it: Its quilt of music is complicated and never just straight forward and clear-cut. It has two large outer movements around four smaller movements—the first movement alone takes over half an hour. In my traversing Mahler, only the Seventh was more stubborn in opening itself up to me. The titles that Mahler originally gave the movements, only to withdraw them later, don’t offer much help. But the fear that knowing these titles might lead to misunderstanding the symphony is no longer given either, so there is no harm in listing them:
The symphony itself had two working titles before Mahler opted for employing neither: “The happy life—A Summer-Morning’s Dream” (in German even more clearly a riff on Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream”, though Mahler denied any connection to it) was one. Later Mahler chose the Nietzschean title “The Gay Science”. That Michael Gielen likens the Mahler Third to Robert Musil’s novel “The Man Without Qualities” is gratifying to read. I love Musil’s novel about—essentially—nothing, and I’d never claim to understand it, either. The feeling of being removed from life and the world that Mahler expresses in the Rückert Lied “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” applies very well here.
The Third Symphony as a kind of mental refuge (because in his everyday life, Mahler was everything but removed from the world—in fact, he was very much in its midst, with all the bustle, stress, anxiety, and little triumphs) is an appealing image. Like many Nietzsche aphorisms or the Georg Trakl poem that Gielen also quotes in his liner notes, much of the Third is “flavor”—which you either relate to, or not. This relation—to a time, a mental state, a social setting, a mood—can only be made possible to an outsider (someone who has not had similar experiences, lived similar moods, never known a similar social environment) through music. The movement titles may therefore provide answers to intellectual questions we have, but cannot achieve to evoke any feelings that the music can’t rouse. Which is also what Mahler said (in a letter to Max Kalbeck about his First Symphony): “No music is worth anything if first you have to tell the listener what experience lies behind it.”
What did the job of giving me access to this symphony, eventually, was the combined glory of the Vienna Philharmonic, Anne Sofie von Otter (!), and Pierre Boulez: A recording of stunning clarity, von Otter’s silvery voice ethereally high (almost soprano-like), superb playing and attention paid to every detail. Boulez is lifting the rug for you in this symphony and lets you have a peek at what it is all about. He does the same in the Seventh, too, but with the Third that approach holds up even better to return visits, no matter how well you understand or like the symphony. I found his recording more enchanting and more involving than the much acclaimed Chailly/ Concertgebouw recording with Petra Lang that came out in 2004. The latter is impressive, as all of Chailly’s Mahler is, for the impeccable playing in a great acoustic in wonderful sound. But Boulez offers that, too, in this case—and counter to the usual and tired stereotypes against the Frenchman, he is not devoid of emotion, even for all his admitted clarity and detailed structure. In my initial review, I have called it haunting and subversive. I’ll stick with that. Only a tiny editing glitch in the third movement ruptures the sense of perfection on this issue.
(continued tomorrow)
The font used in the title is “Windsor Light”
Today in Mahler:
Symphony No.8. At 9:06AM a teaser in form of the Gloria, with Valery Gergiev and the LSO (LSO Live). Then at 9PM the performance with Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (DG).
Tuesday, 11.10.09, 12:00 pm
Gustav Mahler – Symphony No.2 (Part 2)
This continues Gustav Mahler — Symphony No.2 (Part 1) from Sunday, with a discussion of more “Mahler 2” recordings I particularly cherish and some that I don’t.
The early performances of Mahler’s Second Symphony were always a success, which must have been relieve and comfort after his First—“it is and always will be my child of sorrow”—continued to be harangued as, for example, a “conglomeration of nervous impressions”. (That was after the 1899 Dresden performance and, although part of a thoroughly negative review in the Dresdner Nachrichten, the characterization actually rings true for the First and several subsequent Mahler symphonies.)
Around the same time, a Sylvain Dupuis championed the Second Symphony in Liége with his “mediocre and choppy” (Mahler) orchestra. When Mahler came to conduct a performance himself, he had to re-arrange the orchestration to accommodate the lack of bass tubas, contrabassoons, and five-stringed double basses. He didn’t like the experience, but he was hardly above making any host of changes to get his works performed at all. Following the performance, on critic (Gazette de Liége) called it the “most masterly work of its kind since Mendelssohn [sic!]”. Perhaps the writer was fresh under the impression of Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony, but surely this was the only time a Mahler symphony has been likened to one of Felix’. What follows are empty phrases of exaltation that mean nothing. Much more perceptive and articulate are two slightly more critical reviews. One points out that the symphony was audibly “the work of a sceptic [, a] vast poem of life [that] exalts fatality [and] a joy which is lacking abandonment or confidence… The work seems to be analyzing itself…”. The other finds it an “uneven work… very beautiful in parts, weak in others. One is to aware of effort, of its desire to be original…” Whether you love the Second Symphony or not, both statements ring true of Mahler in general and the work in particular.
After the Mahler-conducted Munich performance, another critical review—Henri-Louis de La Grange calls the author Rudolf Louis a convinced anti-Semite—gets the essence of the Symphony surprisingly right when he attests that Mahler’s dynamic and fiery temperament rendered the musical language captivating… and compelled the audience… to ‘surrender unconditionally to the composer’… and that the audience found itself ‘overwhelmed rather than convinced’. The difference is that today, audiences are both.
Mahler prepared that Munich performance of the Second Symphony in 1900, although not with the Mahler-championing Kaim Orchestra (the Munich Philharmonic-to-be, which at the time was lead by Felix Weingartner), but in this case by the “Munich Society for Modern Composition”, formerly the Hugo Wolf Fan Club. This time he had to deal with small string sections and added a clarinet to a section of the chorus, to support the shaky tenors. After the performance, concerned about sufficient contrast between movements, Mahler still toyed with the idea of placing the Scherzo second. He didn’t, because the Andante would have been too similar in mood with the following—Urlicht—movement. In the case of this symphony, that is not too important… but it is helpful in remembering that ‘finished’ symphonies are not works necessarily cast in stone the way we know them. More about that when we reach Sixth Symphony.
Also for the Munich performance, Mahler demanded for the contralto part a “voice and expression of a child, since I myself, when I heard the tinkling of a small bell, imagined the soul to be in heaven where it will have to start afresh… as a small child.” That sounds similar to his demands for the soprano in the Fourth Symphony, but who could possibly imagine the low part of Urlicht to be at all child-like? Maybe the young Christa Ludwig (Mehta) comes close.
White-hot intensity is achieved by—it may come as a surprise to those who know him as a purveyor of polished, ‘politically correct’ rather than emotionally drenched, Mahler—Seji Ozawa. Not from his Boston Cycle (none of which is currently available in the U.S., anyway—a shame in the case of the Second, Fifth and Eighth) but from a concert with his Japanese Saito Kinen Orchestra. (The orchestra’s first clarinet, by the way, is Karl Leister.) Emiko Suga (soprano) and Nathalie Stutzmann (alto), his soloists, are good if not necessarily outstanding; the choir is extraordinarily precise. But it is the orchestra and the conducting that really shine: These players seem to understand exactly what Ozawa wants—and what begins a very relaxed and loose performance, unnoticeably, surreptitiously ratchets its way up to an emotional force second to none. Ozawa vacillates between calm beauty and searing, roaring moments. His second movement has a gentle flow to it that exudes peace and Gemütlichkeit… very apt for a movement with the instructions “Sehr gemächlich. Nie eilen” (“Very gingerly paced. Never rushed”). His Urlicht emerges from the depths like it should. Even where the entire last movement does not quite soar as with Boulez, the finale is riveting.
Before Zubin Mehta became an indiscriminate conductor of commercial schlock he was a young, fiery Indian, out to take the world of classical music by storm. Including Vienna, where he made one of his few truly great recordings: a Mahler Second that still stands the test of time. A beautiful performance with Christa Ludwig and Ileana Cotrubas (delicate, natural) at the peak of their careers (1975), it exudes controlled (but only ‘just’ controlled) passion and a certain air of impetuousness. Perfectly appropriate for a symphony that Mahler started at the young age of 23. The quality of the singing is matched by the captivating Viennese forces. The recording is less controversially hailed than the Ozawa recording, but then it has also been considered “great” for a long time, while Ozawa had a (Mahler-)reputation problem by the time he recorded this symphony for the second time.
A grand yet taut reading—not unlike Boulez’, although with a little less of that glow the Vienna Philharmonic produces—is Michael Gielen’s. Like Boulez he comes from modern music to Mahler (which is, coincidentally Abbado’s as Chailly’s general approach, too) and looks forward with the music, not back to Wagner and the like. His Mahler interpretations have some detractors—but with reviewers like David Hurwitz[1] and plenty of Mahler-versed acquaintances of mine he is consistently among the highest rated Mahler conductors. His South West Radio Symphony Orchestra seems infected by Gielen’s fervor and they play with gripping intensity throughout. Juliane Banse (soprano) and Cornelia Kallisch (alto), the EuropaChorAkademie and the Rundfunk-Chor Berlin round out the vocal element very pleasingly. I prefer it over the Michael Tilson Thomas recording (SFS Media )which is a little bland in comparison to Boulez, Abbado and Gielen. Nonetheless, I would loath to give up the MTT’s Second, because the Lorraine Hunt Lieberson Urlicht alone is worth having it—especially given her tragically early exit from stage and life. Reviewing it in 2005, I said: “[C]asting hues many other singers should envy […], her natural and honest tone is perfectly suited to Urlicht.” It’s just as true, re-listening to it now—only with the addition of moister-still eyes.
Klemperer (New Philharmonia, EMI GRoC) did not stand up to most modern versions when I last compared it in the review of MTT’s Second and although a bargain on one disc at mid-price, there is too much that is better (Mehta, for one, is available at the same price) to leave it a serious competitor. Nor does, after hearing more and more versions, Simon Rattle’s once much hailed (by the English press, of course) recording stand out quite as much.
Solti with the London Symphony Orchestra has beautiful moments—but the sound is not helping the almost unlistenably harsh brass section. They are cringe-worthy and slightly ‘off’ in the Urlicht, for example. A shame for Helen Watt’s beautiful contribution. No shame for Zlata Bulycheva’s bizarre, incomprehensible contribution on the more recent LSO recording (LSO Live ) with Gergiev, though. What a mess—and not a performance to make up for it from the Russian and his band, either.
A good contribution comes from Zinman (RCA ), though, who rips into the opening chord with quick determination, enough to jolt you, not expecting the Maestoso broadside from the usually stately opening movement. The Andante is sly, everything has a slightly lighter touch than Christoph Eschenbach’s more imposing, thunderous recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra (Ondine ). Convincing as both of them are, the SACD Choice is pretty clear, all the same: Fischer Iván ahead of Tilson Thomas / Hunt Lieberson.
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Mahler 2 Choices
1. Pierre Boulez, WPh, DG
2. Zubin Mehta, WPh, Decca
3. Michael Gielen SWRSO, Hänssler
4. Seiji Ozawa, Saito Kinen FO, Sony
5. Iván Fischer, Budapest FO, Channel Classics
Mahler 2 SACD Choice
Iván Fischer, Budapest FO, Channel Classics
Michael Tilson Thomas, SFS, SFSMedia
Appropriate Exaggeration Prize Winner: Bernstein, NYPO, DG
The font used in the title is “Serlio Regular”
[1] I don’t see any mention of this in his enthusiastic reviews, but full disclosure would stipulate that he mention having written the liner notes for several of the Gielen Mahler releases.
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Today in Mahler:
Today, 100 years ago, Gustav Mahler conducted his second concert as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall. On the program were Bach (Suite for Orchestra and the E-major Violin Concerto, some Rameau, Handel, a Gretry aria and a Haydn Symphony (No.104) as the conclusion.
New York Philharmonic Society, Program from the 68th Season 1909 / 1910.
First Concert of the Historical Cycle at Carnegie Hall
Gustav Mahler, Conductor
Wednesday, November 10th at 8:15 P.M.
Courtesy of the New York Philharmonic Archives
Monday, 11.9.09, 12:00 pm
Maybe I Do Love Mahler: The “International Cycle” on Classical WETA
Today begins the “International” of the three Gustav Mahler Symphony Cycles that Classical WETA plays as part of Mahler Month. Made up of some of my absolute favorite recordings—to the extend they were in print or available. It is, a Leonard Bernstein appearance in Das Lied von der Erde apart, a Western- and Central European cycle… although that is not to take away from the Aisan and Russian contributions to the Mahler discography, which I will touch upon in the accompanying articles published here, this month.
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Today, Monday, November 9th, at 8pm we will hear one of the finest new Mahler recordings made in the last few years: Symphony No.4 under Bernard Haitink with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and soprano Christine Schäfer on RCO Live (SACD LOGO). Apart from a very different live performance I have recently heard with Daniele Gatti, this is the finest Fourth to have come my way, live or in concert.
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Iván Fischer’s first Mahler recording with the Budapest Festival Orchestra (Channel Classics) was that of Symphony No.6, and it immediately set the tone for the excellence of the other releases to come. Even though Fischer’s conception isn’t at all that of my ‘ideal’ Sixth (fire & brimstone, for me, please!), the performance, conception, and especially the rhythmic feeling is so extraordinary, that it immediately became one of my favorite versions. It will be performed on Tuesday, November 10th.
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I long didn’t get Das Lied von der Erde, and didn’t think of it as one of the symphonies. That changed when a musician friend played Das Lied for me, one late, vinous night in Baltimore and made me guess who was performing. I bumbled, guessing-wise, but as I listened my ears opened and I was eventually hooked. The performance turned out to be Leonard Bernstein’s 1966 recording with the Vienna Philharmonic and James King and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as his singers (Decca). Lied-time is Wednesday, November 11th.
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Symphony No.8, with two grand choral movements, is the odd symphony out, even among Mahler’s already unconventional symphonies; a strange beast which some Mahler-credentialed conductors (Fischer and Haitink, for example) refuse to conduct, or do so reluctantly. Because Seiji Ozawa’s Boston performance wasn’t available, Claudio Abbado (Berlin Philharmonic, DG) will fill the international cycle’s gap with his performance that manages chamber-like textures, despite the grandiosity of it all. It will be aired on November 12th.
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Friday, November 13th, it is time for Symphony No.2 again, and again with the fine, sensitive combination of Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, while Saturday, November 14th will feature Symphonies Nos.1, 9, and 7—with Rafael Kubelik (BRSO, Audite), Herbert von Karajan, and Claudio Abbado, respectively (both Berlin Philharmonic, DG).
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The international cycle will be concluded on Sunday, November 15th, with performances of Symphony No.5 under Pierre Boulez (Vienna Philharmonic, DG), No.3 under Claudio Abbado (BPh, DG), and No.10 under Gianandrea Noseda (BBC Philharmonic, Chandos).
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Sunday, 11.8.09, 3:00 pm
Gustav Mahler – Symphony No.2 (Part 1)
The gestation period for the Second Symphony was the longest of any of Mahler’s symphonies, and with nearly 59 months of labor—from the first sketches on July 8th 1888 to the final touches on March 29th 1894—it is only appropriate that the resulting baby should be a musical elephant of grand proportions.
At ~80 minutes (usually a few more, occasionally a few less), it is not the longest of Mahler’s symphonies (the Third is), nor the most opulently orchestrated (the Eight is). But it has one of the boldest opening movements (as “Totenfeier” it could and did stand on its own as a symphonic poem) and a grandiose finale that is composed so that it must, invariably, be overwhelming. For someone who never had any resounding success or external encouragement as a composer, this Second Symphony is almost more impressive than his First.
Moving, in the interim, from jobs in Leipzig via Budapest to Hamburg and dealing with personal tragedies (his sister and mother died), Mahler finally took to working again on the Second in the summer of 1893: he incorporates, transforms, and expands his Wunderhorn songs “Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt” (“St.Anthony’s Sermon to the Fishes”) and “Urlicht” into the work as the third and fourth movements*, and returns to the sketches of the slow second movement. (The movement order was actually in limbo for quite some time, which is good to know when that discussion pops back up with the Sixth Symphony.)
Condensing his own thematic analysis of the symphony, Richard Specht describes the four (five) movements’ themes as: “Hero’s lament”, “Reflection” (“A ray of sunlight from the Hero’s past life”), “Life’s Dance of Shadows”, and “Resurrection”. The last movement progresses from anticipating the last judgment and hearing the trumpet of the apocalypse to the chorus of the saints after suspenseful silence which cumulates in a declaration of universal love. Hence the nickname “Resurrection”, especially when Mahler once described the earlier Scherzo with these words: “The world and life become for him [the hero] a disordered apparition; disgust for all being and becoming grip him with an iron fist”. The movement later inspired Luciano Berio for his “Sinfonia”.
Just the last movement, for which Mahler envisioned a grand choir—unfavorable comparison to Beethoven’s 9th by critics be damned—refused to get under way. Only when he attended a memorial service for the great conductor Hans von Bülow did the break-through come. Just a few years earlier von Bülow had reacted very discouragingly when Mahler played through the first movement on the piano for him. Apparently this champion of his contemporaries Wagner, Brahms, and then Richard Strauss, the most important man in German music of his time, had made a face and then said, without a trace of humor: “If what I have heard here is music, I understand nothing about music… compared with this, Tristan is a Haydn symphony.” But now Mahler witnessed the chorale setting of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock’s secular song “Auferstehn, ja Auferstehn” which enjoyed brief popularity in the 19th century, and he immediately knew he had found the text needed to compose this symphonic-choral apotheosis that leaves no listener since its 1895 Berlin premiere untouched.
It may have been hasty to put the just-released Boulez / Wiener Philharmoniker on top of the heap immediately after it appeared (see review here). But it is a passionate reading that offers delicacy and—not to be scoffed at—superb sound. When the tempo changes from ‘Scherzo-like’ to “very broad” in the last movement, Boulez makes you soar over a green hill, toward the light; you can feel the lift of the music more acutely than with any other conductor. Especially since the surround sound SACD version has been discontinued, Boulez makes the second Kaplan recording utterly superfluous: Equally well sounding in red-book stereo (Boulez was given some of the best DG-sound from the Musikverein in Vienna, recorded by engineer Wolf-Dieter Karwatky and Tonmeister Christian Gansch), the performances are fairly similar in conception except for Boulez’ being superior in every detail and with better vocal contributions. Michelle DeYoung is a splendid mezzo for this role, even if I tend to prefer Abbado’s Anna Larsson. Christine Schäfer’s crystalline, pure soprano—without sacrificing expressiveness for those qualities—might well be ideal and offers a good contrast to the huskier DeYoung.
An even newer recording of the Second got rave reviews, among them from the New York Times and Washington Post. Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra with Lisa Milne (soprano) and Birgit Remmert (mezzo) have issued their second Mahler recording and it sounds wonderful—both as an interpretation and because of the sound quality that Channel Classics () was able to capture in the new National Concert Hall. With his second Mahler out (Fischer is no fan of complete cycles, so don’t expect him to do them all; especially not the Eighth), Fischer’s approach can be likened to Abbado’s. He prefers round over harsh edges, subtlety over blazing glory, tenderness over abrasiveness. Since the Second Symphony is in little need of harsh, abrasive, or even blazing elements, both conductors succeed—but Fischer more so. Just like Fischer’s Sixth (discussed below) is more rhythmical engaging than Abbado’s overrated Berlin version, Fischer’s Second makes it easier to capture your interest. Adoring Abbado and his Mahler as I do, Fischer better manages to magnify the difference between ‘smooth / subtle’ and ‘bland’. His soloists are no drawback, the chorus good. If Fischer’s first movement is more alive than Boulez’, the latter’s ‘moments’ and ‘transformations’ are more impressive, still.
Abbado’s first recording from Chicago (1977) is very beautiful by all means and his soloists—Carol Neblett and Marilyn Horne—do him proud. The chorus, too, performs superbly, even if you can’t understand what exactly they are singing. For all the beauty, the impact of this Second (coupled with his Vienna Fourth from 1978 on a DG “2CD” set) in the first three movements is too muted for me. The strongest moments come with Marilyn Horne’s Urlicht and at the beginning and the end of the 5th movement. (Unfortunately an editing glitch mars that movement just at the choral entry “Bereite Dich” [track 14, 1’14’’].) Good as it is, with Eteri Gvazava and especially Anna Larsson as his singers, I prefer Abbado’s most recent (his third) recording from Lucerne with ‘the world’s best pick-up band’ (DG—together with a shimmering La Mer, briefly reviewed in the “Best of 2004” list). The hushed qualities, the relief and redemption, the sense of a momentous occasion are well captured. Only the sound could be a little clearer for unadulterated delight. Abbado’s 1994 recording from Vienna disappoints, despite the promising collaborators Cheryl Studer and Waltraud Meier with her chilling, dark “O Rrrrrrrrröschen rrrrrrot!”. Splendid moments amid a rather sedated quality (at 87 minutes)—it is, perhaps, too subtle?
(Continued tomorrow)
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The font used in the title is “Galadriel Regular”
The “American Mahler Cycle” continued and continues today. This morning at 9:06am it was Michael Tilson Thomas in the Second Symphony, at 3pm it will be the Seventh Symphony with Pierre Boulez and the Cleveland Orchestra, at 7:13pm Tilson Thomas again in the Ninth Symphony. For more and daily details check out the online playlist.
Friday, 11.6.09, 6:00 am
Gustav Mahler – Symphony No.1 (Part 2)
This continues Gustav Mahler — Symphony No.1 (Part 1) from Wednesday, with a discussion of more “Mahler 1” recordings I particularly cherish and some that I don’t.
Bruno Walter, the conductor most closely associated with Mahler, recorded his mentor’s work gladly and often. He stood on the rostrum for the (posthumous) Mahler premieres of the Lied von der Erde (1911, Munich Philharmonic) and the Ninth Symphony (1912, Vienna Philharmonic). In his recordings for Columbia/Sony half a century later he is still strongly advocating the causa Mahler. His First (in good sound) stands out, along with his Ninth that he recorded during the same sessions in January and February of that year. By way of contrast, Walter is a fine example of how the late romantic repertoire (Bruckner, Mahler, Wagner) has continuously been slowed down over the last decades, even as historical performance practice groups have sped up everything from Bach to Beethoven. But slowness rarely equals gravitas and Walter keeps things moving before they end up a cliché. That doesn’t mean he’ll hold back: In the opening of the finale he throws everything at his disposal at the listener—and with more energy than Solti has ever mustered. Just why Walter’s timpanist is pitched a semi-tone higher than is the norm I don’t know—but it becomes rather obvious during the “Frère Jacques” round where his bassist plays—just perfectly—in that panicky, dread-struck way. Upon re-listening, I find Leonard Bernstein’s New York recording (Sony) not too dissimilar; riveting and zippy.
There are things to be said about James Judd and the sadly defunct Florida Philharmonic. In what must be the most unlikely combination—a lesser known (if excellent) conductor from New Zealand leading a distinctively third-rate orchestra, from Florida of all places, into the sound world of Mahler—one is re-taught not to judge a book by its cover. Not this book, at any rate, and its exceedingly ugly budget-label cover. The playing is first class, Mahler’s idiom well approximated and, apart from the attractive budget price of the Harmonia Mundi Classical Express line of recordings, the disc includes the Blumine movement that Mahler originally included in this symphony but later threw out. There are others that include this movement—Ozawa I (Philips, oop), Rattle (EMI), Muti (EMI), Ormandy (Sony), Halasz (Naxos)—but none of them suggest themselves as superior. It has recently gone out of print, but there are still plenty used copies floating about at Amazon and it is available as an mp3 download, as well.
The most recent addition to the “M1+Blumine” recordings is David Zinman’s opening salvo in the Mahler-cycle contest on RCA (). Zinman’s will be the first integral cycle available on SACD, a technology that never entered the mainstream music market but has found a strong and enthusiastic niche among classical music lovers. (Especially among Mahler-lovers, it seems, which is why I try to indicate SACD-availability of a recording with the little SACD logo and indicate for each symphony my top-choice on SACD.) It is good to see that some companies—notably Harmonia Mundi, cpo, Chandos and RCA—stick to releasing convenient SACD-hybrids that play like a regular (“Red Book”) CD in any normal player but offer their sonic advantages (usually including surround sound) when played on an SACD compatible machine.
Zinman has flexibility and idiom, a generally warm and round approach, less militaristic. He’s generally rather ‘soft’ and awfully gentle in the third movement, his timpani muted. (No sense of dread among the basses, either… his first bass playing with way to much ease and skill to ever be pushed to his limits.) He’s stately bordering tame in the finale, but helped by the excellent depth of the burnished, dark RCA sound that gives even this less abrasive and ‘never in your face’ approach (just) enough heft.
Kyrill Kondrashin with the NDR Symphony orchestra looks attractive at mid-price on an EMI import. It is his last recording—he died the very night he conducted this performance. I’d like to extol the virtues of a particularly riveting Russian Mahler, but the interpretation is not so different that it would merit sitting through what are too many individual flaws in the playing. Repeat listening would be no joy here. Should it appear on the market again, his 1969 Melodiya recording with the Moscow PO—coherent, marvelously untroubled—is certainly and much preferable.
The unknown audiophile Acousence label has released a live recording of Mahler’s First Symphony that might not be notable for the playing of the Philharmonic Orchestra Hagen led by Antony Hermus (although they do their job beautifully), but because it is a performance of the 1893 Hamburg version of the work (“Titan—A tone poem in symphonic form” split in two parts: “From the Days of Youth” and “Commedia humana”). Apart from extant programmatic titles that means inclusion of “Blumine” as part of its natural environment, rather than having the movement simply tacked on a performance of the otherwise revised version (as is the case with Judd, Zinman, Rattle, Ormandy, et al.). It’s also notable for its absolutely gorgeous recorded sound: Politely distant, elastic, very vivid yet refined and atmospheric. More of a dark horse recording, still, than Judd’s. Too bad Acousence’s distribution is haphazard, at best.
Otmar Suitner’s 1963 LP for the East German VEB Schallplatten (People’s-Owned Company – Records) with the Staatskapelle Dresden is the only truly exciting “First” that I have recently discovered for myself (save Haitink/CSO). Superb, rich mono sound, compelling conducting, wild climaxes, musicality and frenzy in perfect balance. Little wonder Berlin Classics has re-issued this on their “Eterna Collection”—both as a heavy vinyl LP and a beautifully produced CD with the original cover and liner notes. It further helps this release that it is coupled with an equally—or even more—gorgeous rendition of the “Songs of a Wayfarer”. The (East-) Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under Kurt Sanderling and booming roundness of Herrmann Prey were recorded in 1961 and it’d all be a perfect match were it not for the considerable distortion. All the same a true joy to listen to.
Mariss Jansons has been recorded in Mahler’s First three times. Live with the Oslo Philharmonic in 1999, in concert with the Concertgebouw in 2006, and again in 2007 with his Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra—also live. (The latter isn’t yet commercially available, but probably will be before long, as Bavarian Radio has—finally—launched its own record label.) The description of Jansons’ Mahler will occur more often throughout this overview: “Impeccable and well mannered”. Far too good to be boring, ever. But never quite exciting, either, which is deadly in Mahler. Much more involving versions can be had by Michael Tilson Thomas (SFS Media ) and, brand new, Bernard Haitink (the above mentioned CSO Resound issue). Although no speed-demon himself, MTT is a little quicker, a little tighter of the two. Both, in any case, nail the symphony; the best version on SACD need only be sought among those two and I’d hate to choose. The First (and the Sixth) Symphony would seem most suited to a gruff, unkempt, and wild-eyed style that one could well imagine Valery Gergiev (LSO Live ) to bring to his Mahler. The First isn’t an outright disappointment, but ultimately the impression is flabby-flimsy rather than bristling with personality and the sound lacks presence.
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Mahler 1 Choices
1. Rafael Kubelik, BRSO, Audite
2. Rafael Kubelik, BRSO, DG
3. Pierre Boulez, CSO, DG
4. Otmar Suitner, Staatskapelle Dresden, Berlin Classics
5. Bernard Haitink, CSO, CSO Resound
5. Michael Tilson Thomas, SFS, SFSMedia
Mahler 1 SACD Choice
Bernard Haitink, CSO, CSO Resound
Appropriate Oddity Prize Winner: Bernstein, RCO, DG
The font used in the title is “Arnold Boecklin Regular”
The “American Mahler Cycle” continues today with the Scherzo from the Fifth Symphony as a teaser at 9:06am and then with the whole symphony played at 9PM. For more and daily details check out the online playlist.