This
might not have been the greatest Mahler Ninth
I have heard in the concert hall (that is
still an unsurpassable performance Karajan
gave in the early 1980s in Salzburg) but it
was still a formidable achievement, if not
an absolute one. If neither the humbling experience
one hears with latter-day Abbado, where every
performance might seem to be the conductor’s
last, nor as wrenching in its power as Bernstein
could be with the work, Haitink’s view seems
driven by a willingness to eschew emotional
extremes, sometimes limpidly dotting every
‘i’ and crossing every ‘t’ at the expense
of convincing rubato. Tempi have changed –
and not always for the better – but a stopwatch
is no measure of what Haitink achieves; at
slightly over 24 minutes, the symphony’s adagio
seems longer than it is but it is breathtakingly
balanced; at 17 minutes, the scherzo is interminable.
In one sense, this is a performance where
time can both stand still and pass with unnoticeable
speed.
What
is almost certainly the case is that if Haitink
had given this performance with any orchestra
other than the Wiener Philharmoniker questions
of interpretation would have been more clear-cut.
That this performance was so impressive is
almost entirely down to the orchestra. The
playing was simply superlative but
on a level that transcends technique (often
not always as perfect as it might have been
here). An evenness of tone – especially from
the strings – was spread throughout the work
reaching its apex in a performance of the
great Adagio that was just sumptuous; often,
and even with an orchestra like the New
York Philharmonic
who brought the work to London some years
ago, imbalances in string tone can be a problem.
Such blended tone in the Vienna strings reached
a synthesis of perfection just before the
final movement’s Tempo 1 molto adagio
marking (bar 122-127) where the unison in
the bowing, the sf markings and the
restraint Mahler asks for were as ideal as
I have ever heard live (with the New York
Philharmonic this moment was calamitous).
But
the greatness of the Vienna orchestra lay
in little touches spread throughout the work’s
epic structure. The first movement might not
be a vocal piece – even though the Ninth is
preceded by two Mahler works where song is
quintessentially the dominant force – but
listening to this performance one was aware
of how skilfully Mahler uses orchestral duets
and terzets to convey that sense of the voice
from within the orchestra. At the Plötzlich
sehr mäßig marking (Fig.7),
for example, sf horns, ppp basses
and ‘cellos (underpinned by the harp) were
remarkably melodic in their phrasing. If this
movement produced playing of uncommon feeling,
however, it proved short lived in their performance
of the Scherzo. There might have been an authentic
Viennese sense of counterpoint to the second
dance – a Rondo waltz – but at times it seemed
they were dancing it with twenty-holed boots
on so weighty was the playing (and to be frank
this most aristocratic of orchestras doesn’t
do peasantry especially well). In part, one
could argue that the pedantry was merely there
to preface the Burlesque but in essence this
movement was neither boisterous enough nor
sufficiently subtle and Haitink’s very pedestrianism
made it hang fire.
The
Rondo-Burlesque, in contrast, was the very
model of defiance, a fugato that embellished
itself with latent, Apollonian fury. Contrary
to some reports, the playing of the orchestra
was incandescently vivid with superlatively
toned horns and trombones filtering a sense
of impending catastrophe into their playing;
indeed, where normally the Adagio-Finale is
suggested by the second episode of the third
movement Haitink instead made the coda the
vortex around which the symphony’s final resignation
rested. Slower – more obstinate – than usual
its fury seemed unquestionably life affirming.
And indeed, this was exactly appropriate for
Haitink’s masterly conception of the Finale
itself, a performance perhaps more dynamically
unrestrained than usual but less death-haunted
because of that. The sumptuousness of the
strings throughout the movement – especially
the magnificent, Dantean double basses – proved
almost overwhelming, but in the symphony’s
closing pages they were more spectral and
softer than is normally the case, with pppp
markings audible only amongst the stillness.
If one
always yearned for less ambivalent cymbals
(rarely did these ever sound as Mahler scored
them) they were the only drawback in a performance
that showed this orchestra in its finest light,
even if not glowing as it always might in
the Barbican’s still troublesome acoustic.
Haitink himself might not be the most illuminating
Mahlerian but this performance had a will
to live too rarely encountered in the concert
hall. On its own terms, however, it was probably
as ideal as you will hear in the concert hall
today.
Marc Bridle
Further
Listening
Mahler,
Symphony No.9
New
Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, EMI
CMS5670362
Concertgebouw
Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein, DG E4192082
Osaka
Philharmonic Orchestra, Takashi Asahina, Tiger
(NLA)
Live
recordings which may be found through collectors:
Berlin
Philharmonic Orchestra, Claudio Abbado (Live
at the Proms)
NDR
Symphony Orchestra, Christoph Eschenbach (live
in Hamburg)
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