Szell Cleveland Mahler Das Lied Von Der Erde Review

CD Review

Summary for the Busy Executive: Glorious. And and so at that place's the Hartmann.

Perhaps I've met with extraordinarily good luck, but I have never heard anything less than a very good recording of this symphony. I've not heard all the recordings out there, by whatever means, but the ones I take include Abravanel, Bernstein's first with the New York Combo, Szell, Kubelík, Haitink, Walter (1961), Horenstein (1966 – I thank Deryk Barker for putting me on to this i), Gielen, Bernstein with the Berlin, Abbado, and Boulez. Of these, the Szell, Haitink, and Horenstein (not necessarily in that order) are for me benchmarks of interpretation.

However, I'm probably besides not a Perfect Mahlerite. That is, for me, the symphonies are not primarily quasi-religious testaments. I flatter myself that I listen to them mainly as music, rather than equally spiritual texts. Afterward all, there are a lot of God-hungry artists, merely only i Mahler, and Mahler wrote music of such individuality that nosotros go to the problem to invent eponymous adjectives for information technology. To some extent, this is undoubtedly "anti-Mahler" himself, and I probably suffer from an adverse reaction to most of the stuff I read. As most critics don't seem to go beyond the surface of Richard Strauss, virtually sink immediately into the "subtext" of Mahler. All this is just to say that Strauss wasn't a Philistine and Mahler had immense craft, and for a change perhaps nosotros should try to talk about these things.

I discover most of import in accounts of Mahler'south works a disarming "narrative" line. "Narrative" here has piffling to do with a literal story, merely more than with how the music unfolds. Over the years, it'southward go apparent to me that this kind of forward impulse – the intensity behind phrases and notes – is heightened by dandy ensemble playing, which means that both rhythmic sharpness and textural clarity assume great importance. Still, the two are not ends in themselves, but the ways to the coherence of the movement. In that location can exist beautiful Mahler with no impulse behind it which interests me less than something rougher (the nits I pick in Abbado and Boulez). On the other side of the calibration, as in the Bernstein-Berlin recording, i can encounter a "go-for-emotional-broke" with every phrase so that the shape of the whole dissolves into goo fit only for wallowing in. Given the choice betwixt a bang-up operation in less-than-groovy audio and a nifty functioning in decent stereo, I'll probably take the latter, although, for my money, no recorded performance of Kindertotenlieder surpasses Horenstein'southward 1928 Berlin Philharmonic recording with Rehkemper. On the whole, however, part of Mahler's glory to me lies in the sounds he invents.

Just for the hell of information technology, I decided to follow the Dover edition of the score equally I listened to the Dohnányi CD under review. Dohnányi obviously uses a different edition of the text (although I can't tell you which i). Nevertheless, I wanted to see how much I could glean of the relationship between print and realization: How much of the spirit resides in the letter?

Mahler's scores are thick with item – not only are phrases shaped and filigreed with every known notational mark (although there's less of that in the Ninth) – just the composer provides detailed instructions in German at the very passages referred to as to what the issue should be, how to accomplish it, and and then on. Mahler addresses not merely the usher with these remarks, but the players too, which I think pregnant. In a really cracking Mahler performance, players and conductors collaborate – everybody works to maximum chapters. I've read of a British orchestral instrumentalist feeling "naked" when he played Mahler. The orchestras may be, if not necessarily "enormous," so pretty big, and notwithstanding Mahler seldom plays up volume. Mahler asks for the numbers mainly to change colors and to generate a dazzling, clear counterpoint-on-counterpoint. He resorts a lot to momentary bedroom groups within the big ensemble. Unlike the frequent instance with Strauss, the orchestra player can't often hide backside a wall of sound. With a bang-up orchestra, the conductor seldom has to clarify texture, as long as the players follow the markings in the score. Instead, he must make clear the narrative thrust, and given the length of many of Mahler's movements, this becomes a difficult necessity.

Although Mahler establish his vocalization early on and indeed re-used themes and ideas, I've never felt that he repeated himself. For me, each symphony differs from its fellows. The composer keeps extending his range and finding new uses for familiar things. The 9th, however, is the only one of his works where I feel him lingering in the by – in this case, the immediate by of Das Lied von der Erde. The musical language, particularly the reliance on "oriental" pentatonicism and much of the orchestral sound, seems to comment on the earlier work. Already by the 10th, nosotros get something different again. In Das Lied we go symphonic songs. The musical tension in that work culminates i of Mahler's earliest symphonic concerns – how to base the open, "becoming" form of the symphony on the closed form of songs. In Das Lied, Mahler opens upwardly the song up to, simply not crossing, the line into symphony with vocal commentary. The songs, despite their calibration, retain their private arcs – actually the extension of a song like Schubert's "Ganymed." In the Ninth, Mahler uses much the same linguistic communication to create a genuine symphony.

Many commentators, at least since Berg and Redlich, have found the work "death-obsessed," strongly related to Mahler's perception of his illness. Certainly, the musical connections with Das Lied – specially with "Der Einsame im Herbst" and "Der Abschied" – reinforce this view. I've zippo confronting it, and iii cheers if it helps people penetrate this wonderful work. I know too piffling of Mahler's life to have a definite opinion. However, the 10th Symphony – an entity really only available since Cooke'south first realization in the 1960s – sows uncertainty in my heed. The triumph in that symphony makes me wonder whether the fatalism of Das Lied and by extension the Ninth stems from the poesy Mahler gear up or from Mahler himself.

In general, the emotional arc of the symphony has the family unit look of Tchaikovsky'southward Sixth (a work which, by the way, Mahler detested) – a "struggle" starting time motility, a "relaxed" second, a frenetic third, and a dull finale. I don't really hear "death obsession" in the start motility – in other words, what Alban Berg heard. To me, the motion is as much "almost" the intense contemplation of the natural globe every bit annihilation else. We hear Mahler's musical symbols of nature – the "shivering" strings, the slow procession of single notes from the chief harp, the fanfares of nature awake (going all the manner back to the First Symphony). We too have that intense pentatonic counterpoint from Das Lied. This symphony is, if annihilation, contrapuntal, and the first movement a stunning exemplar. On the 1 mitt, pentatonic counterpoint is pretty simple to write. After all, if you just press down the black keys of a piano (which make upward the usual pentatonic scales), you already have something that sounds pretty good. But with Mahler, it'southward merely never that unproblematic. We certainly have music pentatonically-based, for the most part, only which possesses the magical ability to modulate anywhere, through the chromatic amending of a single notation or even enharmonically. Pentatonic music usually doesn't attune. It stays where information technology is harmonically – like i of those drinking-cups that don't tip over – and for that reason, it can't all by itself hold interest for the nearly half-an-hour the motion runs. Pentatonic music is, in a sense, anti-symphonic. Unless the composer gives it a kick, it doesn't "go anywhere." Yet, Mahler also includes a chromatic strain to the work which provides both contrast and motion. Chromatic music goes far and fast. Its danger is that one never the gets the feeling of "arriving" anywhere. Farthermost chromaticism tends to undermine a listener'due south sense of coherence. Conductor and orchestra must find a way to reconcile these two elements, for that becomes the main musical issue of the movement. Mahler'southward contemplation of nature is never completely untroubled. Nature soothes and quiets the restless eye.

The sheer playing of the Cleveland runs at such a high level, it creates its own difficulty: 1 may non exist able to become past the surface beauty to the emotional subtext. Furthermore, Dohnányi portrays emotion like a patrician. Intensity is e'er accompanied by analytical distance. Dohnányi doesn't try to become the composer as much as he tries to comment on or criticize (in its not-debasing sense) the composer'due south work. This results in an private point of view, one which tries to comprehend both the psychology of a piece of work and its position inside a culture. Plenty of listeners don't similar this kind of distance, and sometimes I discover Dohnányi's readings fashion off the mark – similar the critic in dear more with his commentary than with the piece of work itself. On the other mitt, I've never been indifferent to Dohnányi's readings – honey 'em or hate 'em. I happen to love this. Dohnányi'due south altitude and the beautiful, unearthly playing of the Cleveland Orchestra give a noble, life-affirming quality to this movement very rare in my experience with the work. I normally hear something more desperate and, at the end, more exhausted. That's certainly one way to read the piece of work, but I similar Dohnányi'southward way as well.

The second movement plainly confuses some critics. Every bit belatedly as 1970, for case, well into the Mahler revival, Philip Barford wrote in the BBC Music Guide to Mahler's symphonies:

The adjacent motility, a tedious and far too expansive Ländler, does not rivet the listener'southward attention like the first. Its main thematic substance is a niggling commonplace of the Viennese idiom, and it is not redeemed past the burden of development information technology has to bear. The massive extension of the movement, through derivative and subsidiary material, seems an artistic miscalculation.

God only knows what Barford was listening to. For me, this counts as one of the most bizarre movements in all of Mahler, and that's saying something. The composer marks the move with the direction "Somewhat clumsy and very coarse." The first thought is so manifestly footling, considered all by itself, information technology would have a very thick caput indeed to think that Mahler hadn't a clue. Very quickly the composer puts this slightly annoying thought to serve not merely satire, but the depiction of a dream world. Many conductors emphasize the "clumsy" and "coarse," Dohnányi the "somewhat." I especially bask Mahler'southward utilize of extreme, side-slipping modulations – of the kind Prokofieff later congenital a career on. The basic technique stems from Wagner, and Strauss extended it. But Strauss oftentimes goes for the harmonic achieve only to render quickly to the original central – a kind of musical yo-yo that always finds its manner back to the hand which cast information technology. Mahler, to the opposite, uses the technique as a symphonist – to transform the given into something new, to wing to a new identify. At times, the music seems similar it's been through a taffy pull or looking at its own reflection in a fun-firm mirror. Because the Cleveland Orchestra plays so incredibly in melody, the freshness of these modulations hits the listener more forcibly, without inflating the emotional content. The move ends with a brilliantly poetic feat of orchestration, what has always struck me as surrealism before the fact – a desolate landscape riddled with ghosts. I'thousand sure some critics might object to Dohnányi'southward restraint. I, withal, like the elegance of it. For me, he arrives at the right place with less strain and hysteria than about.

The 3rd motion, "Rondo. Burleske," is nigh the same kind of movement every bit the second, just on amphetamines. That is, it takes substantially very elementary, extremely brief ideas and betrays that simplicity, this time through a virtuosic contrapuntal display and a breakneck tempo. It takes the character of a very quick march – a kind of commentary on the more grotesque Wunderhorn songs similar "Revelge," merely the brilliance of the orchestration likewise suggests the beginning and fourth parts of Das Lied. One also finds a transformation of a march idea in the 3rd Symphony, here weirdly distorted almost to a polka, which again shows Mahler's ability to build on and extend his earlier work and the unity this gives to his symphonic cycle.

Early commentators had problem with this move as well. Information technology'southward not that they couldn't figure out what Mahler was doing and then much as why he wanted to do information technology. Some had criticized Mahler as a "homophonic" composer (Mahler'southward primary musical criticism of Tchaikovsky, incidentally). Merely they weren't really listening. In this movement, Mahler rubs their noses in very circuitous counterpoint indeed. In fact, if yous consider the lines separately, their contrapuntal fit probably wouldn't occur to you. He dedicated the movement to "my brothers in Apollo," and the main character direction is "sehr trotzig" (very stubbornly or defiantly). Obviously, Mahler writes it in role every bit satire, just the satire surpasses the matter satirized – as if one were to write a great cord quartet on themes by Kenny G. As if that weren't enough, Mahler inserts a slow, yearning passage non entirely costless of grotesqueries, and, enveloped by music racing like demons, becomes even more enigmatic. Dohnányi again reads the passage more at a altitude than other interpretations I've heard. What comes to stand out are the strange little slides and out-of-tunes that frame the passage and serve every bit transitions from the quick to the slow and back over again. They give the music an unease that standard Romantic yearning doesn't cover – almost earliest, like a forest out of Grimm. The whole movement reminds me a fleck of a grinning skull, an apprehension of Expressionism. One might expect a pristine operation from the Cleveland, merely Dohnányi counters expectations. Not that it's sloppy, mind y'all, but information technology's not presented as a mere contrapuntal do either. "Defiance," I think, provides the emotional key. The account is manically defiant – Cagney in Public Enemy – without losing command.

The adagio finale is textually unproblematic and emotionally complicated. It assumes the character of a funeral song – tears and farewells, including the "Bye" ("Lebe wohl") motif from Beethoven'southward Piano Sonata #26. Of all the four movements, I think this the most death-obsessed, but not necessarily Mahler'due south expiry. Musically, information technology's unusual, even for Mahler. Despite magnificent interludes – one for winds, ane for brass, one for full orchestra – strings dominate, and one doesn't normally associate Mahler with the sound of strings. At least, I don't, remembering generally woodwind passages. For all that, the string writing is magnificent, and so 1 realizes that it really doesn't differ all that much from the string parts in Mahler'due south other works. Hither, Mahler lets it accept center stage.

The motility'south main idea comes from Kindertotenlieder, the song "Ofttimes denk' ich, sie sind nur ausgegangen" ("I frequently recollect they take only gone out"), at the lines "Wir holen sie ein auf jenen Höh'n / Im Sonnenschein! / Der Tag ist schön auf jenen Höh'n!" ("We become to run into them on those heights in the sunshine. The day is cute on those heights!"). The poet imagines that his children take non died simply are merely playing outside. This movement laments Mahler'south own children as much as anyone. Dohnányi and the Cleveland give a heart-breaking business relationship, all the more middle-breaking for its beauty and the apparent simplicity of delivery. 1 never feels that someone shoves an Estimation with a capital "I" downward one'due south pharynx. Information technology seems to break into spontaneous singing – a gorgeous stop to a great work.

Someone will surely ask whether Dohnányi's is an "essential" performance, rather than merely interesting. I can't respond except to say that it'southward essential to me. I say this having idea his account of the Symphony #4 nothing special, so I don't believe I qualify as a rabid fan. Still, along with (in no particular order) the Horenstein, Walter, Szell, and Haitink, I call up he provides a penetrating, individual take on the Ninth – elegant, but passionate as well in its way. It's also a performance incredibly well-played and recorded.

Following the Ninth'southward adagio with the Hartmann Symphony #two may constitute unusual cruelty to Hartmann. He is an heir to Mahler, but how many composers come upward with music as incisive and as individual as Mahler? Compared to the 9th'due south finale, Hartmann's cursory one-motion symphony comes over every bit but so much noodling around. I can easily capeesh the considerable craft and the seriousness of information technology, just I somewhen begin to wonder whether it will ever "break into flower." It always promises something, then steps dorsum or breaks off, without always communicable fire. Needless to say (I'll say information technology anyway), information technology receives as good and committed a performance every bit it's likely to get. I wish I liked information technology more. Hartmann is a genuine hero of our times, worthy of admiration, and a composer who patently knows his stuff. I just don't connect to the music.

Copyright © 2001, Steve Schwartz

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Source: http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/l/lon58902a.php

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