For an example of superlative
recording and immaculate orchestral
playing you could do an awful lot worse
than turn to this 1958 recording.
However for an example
of penetrating Mahler conducting you
could do an awful lot better. There’s
something Reiner says in his part of
the booklet notes that perhaps gives
an inkling as to why this may be so.
It’s not simply that he never heard
Mahler conduct, as did some of his slightly
older contemporaries, or that he came
rather later to his music than others.
That may be important or it may not.
But when speaking of Strauss, whom Reiner
of course knew well, he describes him
as the extrovert master of concentration
and Mahler as the introvert,
pregnant with premonitions and misgivings.
Reiner, to be fair, was not a misgivings
conductor, he was built in Strauss’s
mould, in conductorial terms a route
that derived from Nikisch - intense
concentration, very small beat, no extraneous
gesture. His Strauss was glorious but
his Mahler circumscribed by his tastes
and personality.
So, to be sure, this
is a reading of great virtuoso competence;
bass counter-themes in the first movement
are perfectly weighted – and perfectly
judged. The balancing of the string
choirs is meticulous and the winds have
been well drilled. Their solos are characterful,
the first flute especially so, the percussion
is marvellously clear, the strings lissom
without effusion, without over much
expressive gesture; certainly without
any special emotional pleading. There’s
a delicious rhythmic lilt enshrined
in the second movement and once more
superfine string playing. There’s a
certain objective distance in the slow
movement – not, it has to be said, detachment,
but a sense of remove. He has Lisa Della
Casa as an impressive soloist though
she’s not one to challenge the leading
exponents in this repertoire.
Ultimately the great
gift of his clarity sometimes obscures
ambiguity and duality in Reiner’s Mahler
and this is, I think, a classic case
of that weakness. That and an ambivalence
that he so plainly harboured for a work
he considered, even as he was recording
it, "uneven." Even without
his written comments one could judge
from the performance that he sought
to align its unevenness, to smooth out
its latent diablerie, that, in the end,
maybe inevitably, he failed to find
what he defined as the symphony’s searching
power.
Jonathan Woolf
Lisa Della Casa (soprano) 
