GUSTAV MAHLER Symphony Nr.6 in a-minor (1903 – 1906) performed in the Piano Arrangement for 4 hands by Alexander von Zemlinsky (1906) by MARIALENA FERNANDES and RANKO MARKOVIC at the Austrian Cultural Forum, Kensington, SW7 on Sunday 30 October. Reviewed by Jim Pritchard.

 

In Vienna in 1904 Alexander von Zemlinsky and Arnold Schoenberg founded the Vereinigung schaffender Tonkünstler (‘Alliance of Creative Musicians’) to encourage new forms in music and an outcome of that was that in 1906, in the presence of Schoenberg, that Gustav Mahler and Zemlinsky played Zemlinsky’s own piano arrangement for four hands for the first time and so it may, therefore, claim to be an authorised version. Schoenberg may have realized by hearing this that with care the original orchestral version is not compromised and possibly as a direct result of that performance he attended he subsequently founded his Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen (‘Society for Private Musical Performance’) in 1918. Accordingly, it was the same piano arrangement of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony which was performed twice at the Society (by Eduard Steuermann and Ernst Barich). Mahler’s biographer Erwin Ratz has noted: ‘The performance of the Symphony No.6 by Gustav Mahler arranged for piano for four hands by Alexander von Zemlinsky was a highlight in the concerts of the Society. In about thirty rehearsals Schoenberg had prepared the performance with loving care. In retrospect it may be said that the four-handed rendition bears equal comparison with the performance of the original version.’

 

On Sunday 30 October in the elegant chandeliered salon of the Austrian Cultural Forum in Kensington the atmosphere of that first hearing of Mahler Sixth Symphony was somewhat recreated by Marialena Fernandes and Ranko Markovic and the impact on the audience (however familiar they were with the original orchestral version) seemed by their prolonged applause to be in agreement with Erwin Ratz’s comments above. The distinguished conductor Bernard Keeffe who was in the audience noted differences between the published score and the arrangement which was another intriguing insight into Mahler’s performing practises and the subsequent revisions he made to his scores.

 

Mahler's Sixth Symphony is possibly quite authentically nicknamed the 'Tragic'. Also quite realistically the composer commented that in the absence of a definite 'programme' for this enigmatic work, it could not be fully 'understood' until audiences were fully familiar with his first five symphonies. It was composed during Mahler's summer vacations in 1903 and 1904 at Maiernigg in Carinthia, Austria, during one of the times of greatest happiness in his life. He was seemingly contentedly in post as music director of Vienna Opera (though other accounts suggest he considered himself as slave to the Court Opera), he was seemingly blissfully happy with his wife of 2 years, Alma, and their daughters, Maria (born 1902) and Anna (born 1904). (Undoubtedly he actually worried he was too old for his young bride). Perhaps he was just not worrying about things as much as he once did because it was definitely this 'eye in the storm' of Mahler's life that brought forth a work encompassing the inexorable path human life takes through life towards death. 1907 as most must know was to be a very bleak year for Mahler!

 

This concert was the first official musical collaboration between the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Mahler Society. The performers are both based  in Vienna, Marialena Fernandes was born in Bombay, studied at the Wiener Musikhochschule and has built up an extensive repertory in concerts all over the world, in TV appearances and recordings on CD as a soloist and member of chamber ensembles. In addition to classical and romantic music, she performs contemporary and experimental works with improvisation and jazz elements. Fernandes holds a teaching assignment as professor at the University for Music and Performing Arts. Ranko Markovic, who came to Vienna from Zagreb via Graz, Salzburg, Moscow and Linz, after graduation from the Mozarteum Salzburg his concert activities as soloist or member of chamber ensembles have taken him to, among other places, the Wiener Musikverein and the Camerata Salzburg. He is currently the Director of the Vienna Conservatory.

 

 

While Fernandes and Markovic do not form a permanent piano duo, they have already given several very successful concerts with works by, among others, Samuel Barber and Sergey Rachmaninov in Vienna and New Delhi. It was Thomas Christian who invited them to present the Zemlinsky piano arrangement of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, at his Musikalische Sommerfrische 2003 (Musical Summer Holidays 2003) at Payerbach, Austria. The response was so surprising and positive that the two pianists decided record the Symphony (Extraplatte PEP 05029 from www.extraplatte.at), and to go on tour with it. They also recently performed this work as part of the 50th Anniversary of the International Gustav Mahler Society in Vienna.

 

In a introductory talk before the concert a short section from the opening of the first movement had been played in the full orchestral version and so for me it was difficult to get this altogether different sound world out of my head for the first few minutes of the four-handed version; also, to be honest, the pianists took a short while, understandably, to relax. Once they did their virtuosity shone through with exceptional attention to piano articulation, phrasing and dynamics. Rarely with the orchestra does the second subject of the first movement (the ‘Alma Theme’) intrude part-romantically, part-plaintively with such eloquent, yet simple, lyricism. Alma's theme then continues to drift in and out as do the cow-bells (surprisingly effectively played here and also in the Andante and the Finale) seem to provide a sound-world redolent of idyllic reminiscence and this seemed well-suited to the single piano. As we know any moments of optimism in the final movement are cut down by the famous hammer-blows as the 'fate' confronts Mahler's 'hero' ... or us all ... that we are born and then we die … and never in the concert hall -even with orchestral forces of 100 or more - has the reverberations for the symphony’s final chord had such a bleak emotional emptiness.

 

After their well-deserved ovation Fernandes and Markovic left the audience on a happier note with a witty and spirited rendition of Schoenberg’s own arrangement for four hands of the overture to Rossini’s ‘The Barber of Seville’. From darkness to light then … I believe Mahler would have approved!  

 

© Jim Pritchard