We all come to particular composers in different ways.
I became fascinated by Mahler’s music even before I had heard a note
of it. Though starting to discover classical music in my teens I had
not yet come across Mahler when I was taken by an entry in a book on
early twentieth century history. "Mahler’s vast symphonies sewed
the seeds for the destruction of Austro-German Romanticism that would
mature in the works of Schoenberg." I suppose it was the suggestion
that one man could apparently have such a decisive influence on the
history of ideas that so fired my imagination at the time and made me
want to investigate further. How true that bald statement is could provide
many hours for discussion, but I think that as a short synopsis of one
very important aspect of Mahler’s art it’s a useful beginning. With
the benefit of hindsight I can see that what I was reading about was
the crucially important matter of Mahler standing between two worlds
of thought as expressed in two different strands of musical history.
There was Mahler at the end of one tradition and at the start of another;
in the right place at the right time in one of those rare periods where
it’s possible to see and hear change take place over a short time. All
of this is germane to this review because you will see that Mahler’s
Sixth is not the only work contained in this set. The works by Schubert
and Berg are there as the result of a decision by conductor and company
to set Mahler in his historical context. So here is Schubert from before
Mahler; and Berg from after him; the First and Second Viennese Schools
with Mahler in the middle.
Berg’s Three Pieces almost choose themselves for this
purpose. Listen to passages in the Scherzo of the Mahler symphony where
the lower brass and woodwind explore the basement of his orchestra’s
sound palette to hear where Berg was coming from; likewise the nightmarish
introductory passage of the fourth movement. Berg also distorts dance
rhythms in his second piece (Round Dance) a device that Mahler spent
his life using to great effect. Then there are the hammer blows. Both
Mahler and Berg incorporate hammer blows into their last movements as
devices to signify negation, the progress of symphonic determinism cruelly
cut off in its prime. The Schubert link to Mahler is perhaps less easy
to hear but it is certainly there. Like Schubert, Mahler was a composer
of songs who then turned his symphonies into extended vehicles for song-like
material, especially to evoke nostalgia. The Andante movement realised
from Schubert’s unfinished Tenth Symphony has, as David Hurwitz points
out in his notes, a special nostalgic charge in the way major and minor
keys are strangely juxtaposed to suggest ancestry to the Andante in
Mahler's Sixth. Gielen gives a delicate and rarefied performance of
this rescued fragment with some excellent woodwind solos from the orchestra
and an air of mystery too.
Under Gielen, Berg’s tragic and haunted sound world
is given a performance of power and detail. The sustained melodic line
in the first piece (Präludium) is pitted against an especially
well reproduced bass end with lower brass leaving marks in the mind
like giant footprints in the sand. I’ve already referred to the second
piece (Round Dance) but note that though Gielen is very aware of the
shifting perspectives, the nightmare phantasmagoria, there is still
an underlying iron grasp on the material borne of intimate knowledge
that means the piece never becomes so disjointed you cannot follow.
The final piece (March) carries the tragic core and climax of the work
and the urgent pressing forward that Gielen employs allows the music
to seethe and boil with terrific, pent-up force that only finds partial
release with the hammers. Notice too the extraordinary bronchial-like
wheezing of the muted horns, a sound Mahler knew very well, but which
here is carried into a new dimension altogether. Example of the excellent
balanced recording quality right through.
Most people’s reason for buying this set will be the
Mahler symphony and it is to that I now turn. With Gielen’s perceived
credentials as an interpreter with head and heart set in the twentieth
century I have to say I was mildly surprised by some parts of his performance,
as it isn’t quite what I expected. There are certainly more examples
of what one might describe as personal involvement here than there are
in previous symphony recordings of Mahler that I have heard from him
- the Second (Hänssler Classic CD 93.001) and the Third (Hänssler
Classic CD 93.017) that I have reviewed here. In the first movement’s
the second subject, a portrait of Mahler’s wife, is buoyed along with
all the schwungvoll that Mahler could ask for but also by some
unashamed rubato that certainly raised an eyebrow from this reviewer.
However never let it be said I should base a review on what a performance
is not rather than what it is. What you get overall in the first movement
is a concentrated blend of very grim determination laced with yearning
nostalgia. Gielen’s overall tempo choice is slower than many colleagues,
nearer to Barbirolli than Scherchen at the two extremes, which certainly
gives him chance to make sure everything is heard very clearly but it
does lack something in energy. The exposition is full of incident, however,
and more than justifies the repeat. Along with the very moulded Alma
theme notice too the plangent high woodwinds and the very low brass.
This exploration by Gielen and his engineers of every register of the
orchestra will be a mark of the recording right the way through and
is certainly one of its plusses. Not least in the pastoral/mountain
interlude where the cowbells are perfectly placed to add a cold, unforgiving
air against the shimmer of the strings. The whole effect of Gielen’s
delivery of the recapitulation is then an emphatic statement that life
goes on in spite of everything and that clear impression carries into
a quite hedonistic treatment of the coda. Not one that has any hint
that there is tragedy bearing down on us. Alma Mahler remarked that
when he wrote the Sixth Mahler was "in full leaf and flower",
which is exactly the impression gained here from Gielen. True, there
are demons, forces working against our hero, but he is on top of them
at first and there really is nothing to knock him off course. Here is
a fully thought out performance by a conductor who understands only
too well the implications of this movement.
As should be obvious from the Berg, Gielen is good
at "ugly" and the Scherzo, correctly placed second, shows
this again. The overall tone of the movement, its general gait and delivery,
is as real counterpart to the first movement so what we hear is again
very grim and nostalgic at turns. The main scherzo material echoes the
first movement march and then the mood is lightened by the altvärterisch
trio sections that Gielen delivers with a halting, awkward quality that
is never grotesquely twisted out of shape as it can be and is under
Tennstedt and Levine. Indeed much of the effect of these passages is
achieved by a nice contrast in tempo between the interludes and the
main material. The tension doesn’t really flag and the movement hangs
together well mainly because again the detail in the score is attended
to well, but it’s a close run thing for all that. Anything slower than
this and there may have been a problem. As expected, those twentieth
century sounds, those Bergian "pre-echoes", are attended to
by Gielen, as also is the sinister descent at the close. Unlike the
close of the first movement, there is the feeling under Gielen that
the skies are darkening at last.
The Andante is then given a rhapsodic, free-spirited
performance that Gielen clearly sees as his last chance to show us our
hero in happy times before the great struggle that will ensue in the
last movement. In this Gielen tells us he is supremely aware of the
true nature of tragedy. That only by showing us what the hero is losing
do we appreciate his loss when it finally comes and placing the Andante
third has always seemed to me to be fully in line with that. When the
last movement immediately follows the restful dying away of the third
Gielen then manages to deliver such a devastating impression of "as
I was saying…" that he fully justifies this particular inner movement
order rather than the lesser played one of Andante second and Scherzo
third. Note in the opening pages, surely the most remarkable Mahler
ever composed, the almost chamber-like filtering of textures with lower
brass and percussion again impressing with the sense of looking ahead.
Gielen then attends to every mood and facet of this movement. Unlike
some he doesn’t stress the tragic at the expense of the few passages
of light that depict what is being taken away by fate as represented
by the hammer and so achieves just the right balance for the drama.
In fact it is a summation of all we have heard and felt in the previous
three movements. The two hammer blows are clear and definite. Though
they still sound like a very large bass drum being struck they have
the right impact to depict negation. In keeping with the score edition
he is using, Gielen rightly respects Mahler’s wishes and doesn’t restore
the third blow. In fact so well does he present the passage where once
there was a third blow that this is one of those performances where
I am certain a third would have been excessive, as Mahler concluded.
Is this fate playing a cruel trick on us, we ask? Just when we are expecting
it to batter us for the last time, it doesn’t. By now the damage is
done and the final, shattering verdict is saved for the very end.
You will gather that I rate this performance highly.
It is as if Gielen feels freer in this work than he usually does in
Mahler to involve himself more, to be a little freer with his interpretation,
more emotional. Hence the slightly larger-than-life Alma passages in
the first movement and the fiercer emotional contrasts inside the Scherzo
and between the ugly Scherzo and the beauteous Andante. The last movement
also has profound contrasts on display but I just wish there could have
been that little more sense of urgency here, a little more "do
or die" in the passages where Mahler finds himself propelled towards
the abyss. This would have turned an excellent performance into a great
one.
Clear and uncluttered studio sound with every detail
clear can be heard in all three works in the set. There are also detailed
notes by David Hurwitz whose essay on the Mahler can be read by those
who know the work well as well as serve as an excellent introduction
for those who may never have heard it before. The orchestra responds
to Gielen’s every demand too. They don’t have the heft and power of
New York, Amsterdam, Vienna or London with the brass especially stretched
though always accurate and perhaps that produces a tension of its own.
This is a Mahler Sixth to go into the collection of all those who recognise
this symphony as one of the profoundest statements on the human condition
in music. Where man meets fate and the nineteenth century meets the
twentieth. I still maintain my admiration for Thomas Sanderling (RS
953-0186), Mitropoulos (contained in the NYPO Broadcasts boxed set),
Rattle (EMI 7 54047 2) and Zander (IMP DMCD 93), but I will return to
Gielen often.
A well-executed and very absorbing Mahler Sixth placed
in fascinating musical context by Schubert and Berg, all well-recorded
and played
Tony Duggan
SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden
und Freiburg/Michael Gielen