Esa-Pekka Salonen became the Philharmonia’s Principal Conductor
and Artistic Advisor in September 2008. In his first season
with the orchestra he devised an ambitious exploration of the
music and culture of Vienna between 1900 and 1935 under the
title City of Dreams. Though I can’t see it stated explicitly
in the booklet, I imagine that the concert at which this recording
was made took place as part of that nine-month-long festival.
Salonen has impressive credentials as a conductor of the music
of that period – and not just Viennese music – and, indeed,
he really made his mark as a conductor back in 1983 when he
stepped in at very short notice to conduct the Philharmonia
in Mahler’s Third Symphony. The Ninth is a very different proposition
from the huge, all-embracing Third and I was very interested
to hear how Salonen would approach it.
I have some twenty recordings of this magnificent symphony in
my collection and this is different to all of them in what I
think I should call its lightness of touch. I should say straightaway
that those who want this symphony to sound angst-ridden
should probably look elsewhere. Salonen has a very different
perspective on the work. In the booklet there’s a quote from
Alban Berg, who had this to say. ‘The first movement is the
most glorious he ever wrote. It expresses an extraordinary love
of this earth, for Nature; the longing to live on it in peace,
to enjoy it completely, to the very heart of one’s being, before
death comes, as inevitably it does.’ In the hands of many interpreters
much of this ambitious, searching creation is an anguished outburst,
though, of course, it has more tranquil stretches too. Salonen
adopts a fairly flowing tempo at the start and in the first
few minutes he brings out a gentle lyricism in the music. He
also cultivates a transparency of texture that permeates much
of the performance as a whole.
All this is well and good but as the movement progresses and
we come to some of the more emotionally charged passages I began
to feel a lack of grit in the interpretation. In some ways it’s
a refreshing change not to hear the music delivered – or, by
some conductors, over-delivered - with white-hot emotion but,
well though the Philharmonia plays, I missed the requisite degree
of bite in the playing. I suppose the clinching thought for
me as the movement drew to a close was that it had lacked the
appropriate intensity. I don’t want hysteria in Mahler but here,
though there was much to admire, I felt somewhat short-changed
emotionally.
The author of the booklet note, Julian Johnson, has a wonderful
phrase for the opening pages of the ländler, which he
describes as a “rustic cartoon.” But Salonen’s rather cultured
way with the music doesn’t really bring out any exaggerated,
humorous element in the music; it’s rather polite. His tempi
are often fleet and often I felt a lack of bite – that word
again! – and weight.
Should not the Rondo-Burleske snarl? I think it should
and I’m afraid it doesn’t here. The playing is precise and,
despite the often-teeming detail on the orchestral canvass Salonen
achieves an admirable clarity of texture. But I missed what
Julian Johnson aptly refers to as the “sense of distortion and
exaggeration”. The slower nostalgic, trumpet-led episodes are
beautifully played but, because what has gone before hasn’t
been as intense as one is used to hearing, Salonen doesn’t achieve
sufficient contrast when he gets to these nostalgic pages. From
10:20 the final whirlwind appearance of the rondo material has
more bite but even so it lacks the venom that many other conductors
have found in these pages.
It is in the final great adagio that Salonen’s cultivated approach
pays dividends. I hear a nobility in his reading – though perhaps
not as much nobility as there is in Giulini’s Chicago recording
for DG – and he could not be accused of wearing his heart on
his sleeve. The extended climax, from 13:10, is powerful though
I have heard more intensity from others in these pages. The
end of the movement, from 17:41 – and especially after 19:30
– brings calm acceptance and the playing here is very beautiful
and controlled. Gradually the music dies away on ever-diminishing
threads of sound and, even through headphones, the sound at
the very end is on the edge of audibility. That’s most impressive
in a live concert performance. Signum include a lengthy period
of silence after the music has died away and, rightly on this
occasion, there is no disturbing applause.
Salonen offers an interesting perspective on the symphony, though
it’s far from a complete view, I’d suggest. Whilst I may return
to it once in a while for its different approach I think that
the likes of Barbirolli, Bernstein and Rattle (his Berlin recording)
to name the conductors of but three rival versions, deliver
far more and a much more rounded picture of this unsettling
and profoundly moving symphony. The recorded sound is good.
John Quinn
See also review of this concert by Geoff
Diggins
Philharmonia Orchestra/Esa-Pekka Salonen
