Mahler: Symphonies 1-10; Totenfeier; Das Lied Von Der Erde Blu-ray Review
When is a Mahler Cycle not a Mahler Cycle?
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, January 18, 2013
It never ceases to surprise me when some classical music aficionados, and even some professional music critics, refer to
Gustav Mahler's music as "an acquired taste".
Arnold Schoenberg's music might be an acquired taste, but
Mahler's? Mahler, of the gargantuan orchestral forces, the overwrought emotional content, and most of all the
supremely melodic, at times achingly lyrical, approach to his compositional craft might initially seem to be almost
intuitively accessible, even to those who don't have a particular interest in classical music. But there's obviously
something about Mahler that doesn't always speak to the masses. It may indeed be the sheer size of some of
his symphonic output, or the sudden changes in emotional tone, which can vary from tragedy to acerbic humor in the
space of one measure. But for those who
have acquired a taste for Mahler, the high definition era has been
paying some remarkable dividends over the past couple of years. Probably the most notable (no pun intended) of
these has been the remarkable Mahler cycle conducted by Claudio Abbado with his hand picked Lucerne Festival
Orchestra, which was released first in standalone offerings and then as
Mahler: Symphonies 1-7. Those of you who know
Mahler's symphonic output will immediately recognize that this is an incomplete set, for Mahler completed his eighth and
ninth symphonies before his untimely demise, and of course had also started work on his tenth, which has survived
largely via its
gorgeous Adagio, which Mahler
did more or less finish before his passing. Rather strangely, there doesn't
appear to be an Eighth available on Blu-ray conducted by Abbado,
though there are two performances of the Ninth available, one with the
Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester and another with the
Lucerne
Festival Orchestra. Lovers of the eighth have had to "make do" with the appealing performance by
Riccardo Chailly or the more recent
Mahler: Symphony No 8.
So this new box set of all of Mahler's symphonic output, as well as
Totenfeier and
Das Lied Von der Erde
offers the first inclusive collection available on Blu-ray. It can't really be accurately termed a "cycle", since there are a
number of different conductors wielding the baton throughout these performances, but the often magnificent playing of
the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in all of these outings does offer a semblance of continuity and consistency.
This set includes the following performances:
Symphony No. 1
Conducted by Daniel Harding
Performance Dates: September 30, October 1 and 2, 2009
This performance recorded live on September 30, 2009
Daniel Harding is a young British conductor who has risen incredibly fast in a rather short amount of time, helped along
by some felicitous mentoring by Sir Simon Rattle. Harding brings a youthful insouciance to his interpretation of Mahler's
First, often given the soubriquet "The Titan". Things don't get off to a particularly promising start, with some minor
synchronization issues in the "calm before the storm" opening which might remind some less classically inclined listeners
just a little bit of the opening motive of the original
Star Trek theme. But once the orchestra kicks into gear,
Harding marshals
the forces extremely well and his conducing of the almost lunatic
Ländler second movement is quite impressive.
The minor keyed
Bruder Martin (AKA
Frère Jacques) is another highlight, but the final bristling movement
proves to be this performance's true touchstone. Harding shapes the dynamics very well and the orchestra plays with
incredible vigor and precision.
Symphony No. 2
Conducted by Mariss Jansons
Ricarda Merbeth, Soprano
Bernarda Fink, Mezzo-Soprano
Performance Dates: December 3, 4, and 6, 2009
This performance recorded live on December 3. 2009
Mahler was preoccupied with extremely weighty matters throughout his compositional life, and his Second Symphony
(The Resurrection) deals with two interrelated subjects which were something of an obsession for the composer, death
and the afterlife. One of the nice bonuses of this box set is that it includes a performance of
Totenfeier
(
Funeral Rites), which is an early version of this symphony's first movement. That first movement is indicative of
what evidently distances the composer from some listeners, for it segues from brooding minor key ruminations to
sudden bursts of glorious major key passages at the drop of a veritable hat. But that's part of the dialectic that makes
Mahler such a compelling figure in modern music. Mariss Jansons is able to bridge these huge changes in tempo, style
and key with grace and élan, and this is in fact one of the better performances of the Second that I've heard recently.
The singing by Bernarda Fink (a mezzo taking the role typically assigned to an alto) is especially lovely. Jansons'
handling of the potentially unruly final movement is also very impressive, with finely nuanced transitions between the
many contrasting moods and themes. Keep your eyes peeled for some brief but fun looks at the brass contingent out
in an antechamber during this movement, helping to create one of Mahler's "spatial" effects. (Also note the somewhat
comical sight of a clarinet player back
in the concert hall putting in ear plugs before a particularly tempestuous moment.) One odd thing
about this performance: the audience applauds between the first and second movements. That's a definite "no no" in
the hoity toity world
of classical music.
Symphony No. 3
Conducted by Mariss Jansons
Bernarda Fink, Mezzo-Soprano
Performance Dates: February 3, 4, and 5, 2010
This performance recorded live on February 3 and 4, 2010
The Third Symphony is a not piece for the faint of heart or the tender of posteriors, for even a "quick" performance of
this incredibly huge masterpiece typically runs well over an hour and a half (for the record, this performance clocks in at
a somewhat lengthier than usual 103 minutes, including breaks). Mendelssohn was famous for writing music for
A
Midsummer Night's Dream, but Mahler envisaged this symphony as a sort of Summer's Midday Dream, a walking if
not waking fantasy that incorporated the composer's rather eclectic religious sensibilities by invoking everything from
Pan to Nature in one hugely disparate piece of orchestral writing. Once again Mariss Jansons forges a uniquely
consistent approach to all of the roiling content which can make this incredibly long piece often seem inchoate to the
point of chaos. The orchestra plays with fine luster, including some gorgeous solos by the concertmaster in the first
movement. Once again the audience applauds between movements, but in this case it's a bit more understandable,
since Bernarda Fink (once again taking a role typically assigned to an alto) makes her entrance between the first and
second movements (though she doesn't sing until the fourth). Also once again we get a brass player in the
antechamber watching the proceedings on closed circuit television and offering his contributions from a distance. I
personally wish Fink had been mixed a little higher, something that afflicts many of the sung moments in this set, but at
least part of this imbalance issue may be due to the peculiar layout of this hall, where the soloists in several of these
outings are placed in back of the orchestra, just slightly in front of the larger choral masses.
Symphony No. 4
Conducted by Ivan Fischer
Miah Persson, Soprano
Performance Dates: April 22 and 23, 2010
This performance recorded live on April 22 and 23, 2010
Mahler's Fourth is an often ebullient and uncommonly melodic piece, and as such it's the perfect place to start for those
wanting to test the Mahler symphonic waters. The Fourth makes a perfect companion piece to Prokofiev's Classical
Symphony, for both traffic in a sort of Haydn-esque musical vocabulary, albeit one highly colored by chromaticism and
odd orchestral effects. What's so pleasant in this interpretation helmed by the great Ivan Fischer is how malleable the
phrasing is in what is at times an almost Neoclassical symphony. The first movement is especially notable in this regard,
with wonderfully drawn out cadences and other "give and take" that makes this rather remarkably facile in terms of
trundling down a symmetrically organized structure with a rather elastic approach to time and phrasing. Opera
superstar Miah Persson offers a wonderfully heartfelt and lyrical "The Heavenly Life", one of Mahler's most effortlessly
melodic offerings. (As an aside to those of you who are familiar with it, listen to how similar some of the musical content
and orchestral flourishes are to Prokofiev's later
Lieutenant Kije Suite.
Symphony No. 5
Conducted by Daniele Gatti
Performance Dates: June 23, 24, and 25, 2010
This performance recorded live on June 25, 2010
There's little doubt that Mahler had at least a little Beethoven on his mind as he wrote his Fifth. The opening trumpet
motive seems almost like a topsy turvy version of Beethoven's iconic opening motive for his Fifth Symphony. Instead of
Beethoven tracing of a minor triad from the fifth to the minor third, Mahler (literally) inverts that idea, starting on the
tonic, then tracing upward to the minor third, fifth and ultimately the octave. There's the same "fatalistic" content to
Mahler's Fifth as has often been ascribed to Beethoven's, but the two obviously couldn't be more different in terms of
size, scope and ultimate musical content. Conductor Daniele Gatti may be one of the lesser known leaders to some
coming to this set, but he has been a champion of Mahler's music for some time and has conducted a Mahler cycle of his
own with his Orchestre National de France. He does a commendable job for the most part with this gargantuan piece,
though the orchestra seems occasionally a bit timid on some entrances, leading to some minor collisions and intonation
problems, mostly with the brass. I personally would have preferred a bit more precision to the playing in the second
movement,
which Gatti invests with a lot of energy if not a lot of nuance.
Symphony No. 6
Conducted by Lorin Maazel
Performance Dates: October 20, 21, 22 and 24, 2010
This performance recorded live on October 20, 2010
Former
wunderkind Lorin Maazel has carved out a rather formidable career as a conductor and he does an
admirable job with what is often seen, rightly or wrongly, as one of Mahler's more "problematic" symphonic opuses.
What's odd about this perception is that in some ways the Sixth remains Mahler's most conventional piece of symphonic
writing, albeit in the case of Mahler "conventional" is of course a decidedly relative term. There are still the astounding
leaps of emotional content, and even the more formal supposed peccadilloes of not clearly delineating what "key" the
piece is in (the first movement makes a mockery of keys, with a main motive which repeatedly ping pongs back and
forth between A major and A minor). This is also the symphony that has had a somewhat muddled history in terms of
how the movements should be ordered, but Maazel and the Royal Concertgebouw follow the now more or less
conventional approach of placing the Scherzo second and the Andante third. This symphony is also notable for its use
of percussion, including a lot of tympani, glockenspiel and, in the final movement, a hammer! (You might be forgiven in
you think that's Gallagher wielding the huge "weapon", as the percussionist brings it down with so much force little
pieces of wood go flying every which way.)
Symphony No. 7
Conducted by Pierre Boulez
Performance Dates: January 20 and 21, 2011
This performance recorded live on January 20 and 21, 2011
Not to be too cavalier about bandying about soubriquets, one might understand if this symphony's subtitle
Song of
the Night (given to it by others, not the composer) might be slightly reworked, with a tap of the hat to Mozart, as
A Big Night Music. Yet another gargantuan piece that spans five movements and runs for close to
eighty minutes, the Seventh continues several ideas that were put forth in the Sixth, including tempestuous changes in
tempi and pure musical content, as well as an intentional ambiguity in tonal centers, fostered once again by parallel
major and minor triads. It's notable that erstwhile
provocateur Pierre Boulez conducts this piece, for in many
ways this is one of Mahler's most "in your face" symphonies, one which completely confused audiences and critics at the
time of its premiere and remained one of the composer's least appreciated pieces for decades afterwards. Part of this
is no doubt due to the symphony's almost halting, stuttering introduction of various motifs which on first (and perhaps
even second) listen don't have much to do with each other, but there's certainly a wealth of inspiration running
throughout the work, perhaps most apparent to uninitiated listeners in some of the gorgeous, more relatively quiet and
lyrical, writing for solo brass. Also note the use of such atypical instruments as the acoustic guitar in the fourth
movement.
Symphony No. 8
Conducted by Mariss Jansons
Christine Brewer, Soprano
Camilla Nylund, Soprano
Maria Espada, Soprano
Stephanie Blythe, Mezzo-Soprano
Mihoko Fujimura, Alto
Robert Dean Smith, Tenor
Tommi Hakala, Baritone
Stefan Kocan, Bass
Performance Dates: March 4 and 6, 2011
This performance recorded live on March 4 and 6, 2011
In many ways Mahler's Eighth is my favorite among his symphonies, if for no other reason than the astoundingly
sumptuous choral opening movement, which I have often referred to as
Ode to Joy: The Next Generation.
Veni, Creator Spiritus is among Mahler's most supremely melodic achievements, and here under the formidable
baton of Mariss Jansons, it becomes a surprisingly rhythmic offering as well. Jansons quite artfully shapes the dotted
rhythms that are inherent in the opening phrase, drawing a more pointed syncopated interpretation than I personally
am used to hearing. The orchestral and choral forces of this immense piece can be overwhelming, but Jansons shapes
everything very intelligently, letting the symphony "breathe" in appealing moments of ebb and flow. The one qualm I
had with this particular performance is in the sound mixing. The soloists are almost completely subsumed by the
orchestral forces at times, to the point where they almost seem to be mute, simply moving their lips with no sound
emitting. Otherwise, though, this is a glorious performance of an almost immaculately conceived symphonic
masterpiece.
Symphony No. 9
Conducted by Bernard Haitink
Performance Dates: May 11, 12, 13 and 15, 2011
This performance was recorded live on May 13 and 15, 2011.
My introduction to Mahler came courtesy of a boyfriend of one of my elder sisters, a man who back in the day ran a
classical music record shop out of his spacious apartment. My sister had taken me over to meet him one day, and the
guy took one look at me and handed me an LP box set, stating, "You need to go home and listen to this.
Now."
It turned out to be the (even in those days) old Columbia set of Bruno Walter conducting Mahler's Ninth and
Das
Lied von der Erde. Some might consider this jumping head first into the deep end of Mahler, but for me personally it
was a transcendent listening experience and though I was initially in those days more immediately drawn to
Das
Lied than to the Ninth, I've realized in the (many) ensuing years that the Ninth probably had a more profound
impact on my developing musical consciousness and overall psyche. The Ninth has often been termed Mahler's farewell
to the world, and it has an elegiac, almost resigned quality to it a lot of the time. That said, it is among Mahler's most
supremely meditative pieces (even in its more raucous sections) and the final movement is certainly among the greatest
orchestral achievements of all time. Bernard Haitink, the conductor many of us who grew up listening to the Royal
Concertgebouw Orchestra most associate with the troupe and who is now its
Conductor Laureate, effortlessly
leads his longtime home orchestra through their paces, exacting a wealth of emotionally nuanced content out of the
score while never sacrificing overall architecture. There's a really fine balance Haitink achieves between the almost
lethargic slow sections and the more vividly energetic dance elements, like Mahler's favorite, the
Ländler, which
in the Ninth becomes almost a demonically inspired orgy of sound.
Symphony No. 10
Conducted by Eliahu Inbal
Performance Date: June 30, 2011
This performance recorded live on June 30, 2011
Mahler's Tenth is easily his most problematic symphony from a number of standpoints. From a purely technical
perspective, Mahler left the symphony unfinished at the time of his death, with only the first movement, a haunting
Adagio, in a completed enough form to warrant easy performance, and in fact it was
only the Adagio that most
people heard for some time after Mahler's death. A number of high profile composers were enlisted by Mahler's widow
to get the short score and orchestrated passages into some sort of workable condition, but it fell to musicologist Deryck
Cooke to come up with the version which is most often used for performances and recordings today, and which is in fact
used for this performance. To get back to some of the problems inherent in this symphony for a moment, though, on an
emotional level, Mahler was in a complete state of personal disarray during the composition of this piece, and it shows
quite clearly in the often halting, dissonant tenor of the piece. Mahler was more than aware that his health was failing
and his days were numbered, but perhaps even more debilitating was his discovery of his wife's infidelity. The Tenth is
therefore a troubled and troubling listening experience, full of aching quandary and a roiling musical subtext. While
Cooke's efforts were no doubt well intended, I've personally always had an issue with them, for they seem like
someone
pretending to be Mahler, especially with regard to orchestral effects that seem lifted from other,
completed, Mahler symphonies like pieces assembled for a patchwork quilt. Eliahu Inbal does a formidable job of
knitting all of the trauma and turmoil together into a mostly satisfying whole, however, and despite what one may think
of Cooke's efforts, there's always that ravishing Adagio, which is almost entirely Mahler's own doing.
Totenfeier and
Das Lied von der Erde
Conducted by Fabio Luisi
Anna Larsson, Alto
Robert Dean Smith, Tenor
Performance Dates: May 18 and 20, 2011
This performance recorded live on May 18 and 20, 2011
This "bonus" disc of sorts gathers together two pieces which aren't formally part of Mahler's actual symphonic
oeuvre, but which are in their own way inseparable from it. As discussed above,
Totenfeier serves as a
sort of "first draft" for the opening movement of Mahler's Second Symphony, and as such offers a compelling window
into the composer's redevelopment of already existing material for other uses.
Das Lied von der Erde was in a
very real way Mahler's true Ninth Symphony, having been composed directly after the Eighth and featuring a subtitle
which overtly describes it as "A Symphony for Tenor, Contralto and Large Orchestra", though perhaps only too aware of
the so-called "curse of the ninth" refused to number the piece and include it as part of his more formal symphonic
output. (That "curse" proved to be only too true for Mahler, who expired before he could finish his Tenth Symphony.)
Das Lied von der Erde is a gorgeously lyrical "song symphony" which includes Oriental motifs as a sort of musical
homage to the texts, which were culled from ancient Chinese poetry. Mahler protégé Bruno Walter considered
Das
Lied to be his mentor's most personal musical composition, an opinion evidently shared by Mahler himself. This is
an often stunning interpretation, with incredible color coaxed from the orchestra by conductor Fabio Luisi, though I once
again wished that the singers had been mixed a little bit more forward.
