Mahler’s Ninth has
been a fortunate symphony on record.
From Bruno Walter "live" in
Vienna in 1938, only days before the
Nazis marched in, to this new recording
conducted by Simon Rattle in post-cold-war
Berlin in late 2007, this work has always
brought out the best in conductors and
orchestras when the microphones were
on. It is a work that seems to challenge
them to reach deep, find new ideas,
new ways of referencing the life of
its composer, his time, its place in
musical history and the responses it
can provoke in we the listeners. Perhaps
it is the profundity of the work itself
that taps into something profound in
players and listeners and inspires them,
or perhaps it is just luck all along.
What ever it is, this has always been
the hardest of all the Mahler symphonies
of which to recommend one recording,
so spoilt for choice is the buyer. When
I first wrote my Mahler recordings survey
for this work some years ago I ruthlessly
concluded that there were five absolutely
outstanding versions on record, the
crème de la crème,
that address the work in slightly different
ways but none of which I would ever
wish to be without. These were great
recordings conducted by Walter (Sony
SM2K 64452 his second version), Klemperer
(EMI 5 67036 2), Horenstein (Vox CDX2
5509 his only studio version), Barbirolli
(EMI (72435679252) and Haitink (Philips
4622992). The most recent of these was
Haitink’s from the 1970s and whilst
there have been other excellent recordings
of the Ninth released since then (Boulez
and Abbado on DG spring to mind as superb)
there have been none that I would quite
place among what I consider to be the
five elect. Until now.
This is Simon Rattle’s
second recording of the work. His first
was a "live" performance with
the Vienna Philharmonic recorded for
broadcast by Austrian Radio which EMI
then issued in 1998. I had this to say
about it in my survey of Ninth recordings:
"Simon Rattle's
version on EMI (5 56580 2) also records
"live" a first appearance with one of
the great European orchestras, in this
case the Vienna Philharmonic. It shares
the same thought world and general approach
as the Bernstein but doesn't, I think,
quite convince in its own way. Another
problem I have is the wide dynamic range
of the recording. In order to hear the
softest sections you have to endure
the loud ones at a volume setting that
could loosen the slates on your roof."
Let me say straight
away that this new recording addresses
every aspect of the Vienna one that
I found ruled it out. The wide emotional
extremes that Rattle indulged in, for
me unconvincingly, like someone wearing
borrowed clothes, have been banished
for an ideal medium of head with heart.
The wide dynamic range that I found
so troubling has likewise been replaced
by ideal balancing all round both by
the conductor and the engineers. It
is not often that a conductor’s second
recording of a Mahler work results in
an emphatic improvement but that is
triumphantly the case here. So for the
duration of this review I shall not
mention Rattle’s first recording again.
Suffice to say that if you have it then
you need to replace it now.
After reaching the
end of the new recording for the first
time, among the strongest feelings I
had overall was how it miraculously
seemed to have in it all the elements
that I admired most in my five elect
recordings, pointing me towards a remarkable
thought that I might even be in the
presence of an ideal recording of Mahler’s
Ninth. Here is the clarity, the honesty,
the "Brueghelesque" primary
coloured toughness, the Stoicism of
Klemperer, promoting the work as precursor
of Modernist musical thought. But this
is tempered by the definite old-world
mellowness of expressive legato that
recalls Walter at his most persuasive,
especially where the emotional core
calls for it. Then, when needed, the
"dark night of the soul" that
Horenstein brings throws its broad shadow
across the landscape and threatens to
trouble the waking hours. The extra
emotional charge of Barbirolli runs
through it like a rich vein of feeling
too but, as with Sir John, it never
threatens to overwhelm and preserves
that crucial head/heart balance Barbirolli
was so good at in Mahler. If this wasn’t
enough, Rattle also seems to share Haitink’s
ability to simply let the music speak
for itself overall. A feeling that the
music is playing itself, that there
is minimal intervention, a superb care
for score inner detail that lets you
hear aspects that, even after decades,
you had not noticed before. This last
is an extra plus to the new Rattle recording
for me. It is as if every bar has been
rethought and with an orchestra that
clearly knows the work intimately we
the listener can experience something
genuinely new that moves the work into
another era. Where Haitink’s was the
Mahler Ninth of the late 20th
century, this new Rattle is the Mahler
Ninth of the early 21st.
Be very clear, however, that this apparent
bar by bar rethinking does not result
in the kind of strangling "micromanagement"
that spoilt Rattle’s recording of Maher’s
Fifth with the same orchestra. Rattle
never puts a foot wrong in delivering
for us a complete view of this work
that satisfies at a very deep level
indeed.
The opening does not
emerge from the usual dreamy silence
it does so often. Those fragmentary
motifs are remarkably delineated here,
not dreamy at all, and appear in this
way as a statement of the intent of
a creative clarity that will not flag
until the end. The close balancing of
the woodwind recalls Klemperer again
and the clarity of the inner string
parts in particular point to a regard
for the contrapuntal texture of the
work that is absorbing from the start.
You find you want to listen hard for
tone colours that you might not have
appreciated before. Rattle also observes
with rare precision the variations in
tempi in the Exposition that inform
the opening pages of this movement and
which, observed as they are each time
the material returns, has the effect
of knitting together the vast movement
at the level of deep structure. All
flows, though. There is nowhere an episodic
feel, so carefully has Rattle thought
the movement out and how closely his
orchestra follow him. In the Development
up to the first collapse climax at 201-203
again I was taken by the clarity of
the counterpoint but also by the sense
of forward momentum at what is a near-perfect
Andante comodo. Notice the keening
solo flute and also the tolling harp
at the bass end, often not usually heard
as well as this. The harp part is especially
well served in this recording and I
promise you will hear it in a way you
have not heard it before. Following
the first collapse climax, in the section
marked Leidenschaftlich (Passionate)
hear how the lower strings really dig
into the music with terrific verve.
The clarity of the string parts makes
a Bergian feel to the music which is
perfectly appropriate and it is also
worth pointing out here how the lebwohl
motif gets delivered with a spine-tingling
sense of portent, the brass players
absolutely at one. After this the way
that the disparate material is gathered
together from silence is masterly and
the main climax at 314-318 is built
to with an unerring sense of momentum
so that when it comes there is a fearsome
inevitability. The trombones roar out
the opening rhythm but now they are
in proportion to the rest, part of the
texture rather than detached from it.
At 319-346 Rattle catches absolutely
the marking Wie ein schwerer Kondukt
(Like a solemn funeral procession)
just as Barbirolli did with the same
orchestra back in 1963. In the Recapitulation
the episode of the flute and horn solo
is another passage that seems to have
been thought through again so as to
sound new and strange. It is certainly
played superbly by the Berlin players.
In this final part of the long movement
the impression of the lyrical and the
ugly being held together in the same
music is very strong. This may be the
music of long remembrance but it is
a muscular lyricism, the memories of
a man of the world, and so the whole
first movement is summed up in this
way. The heart and the head and held
in perfect balance from first bar to
last, lyrical and ugly, old world and
new world, reality and dream.
Rattle correctly sees
the two central movements as the ugly
side of life, the most vicious music
Mahler ever wrote, is how he described
them in a recent interview. The second
movement is everything you hate about
the countryside, the third is everything
you hate about the city, he tells us.
I wouldn‘t wildly disagree with that
as an interpretation, even though Mahler
himself might baulk at such programmatic
thoughts. In the second movement the
separate dance episodes are well marked
out for us by a careful attention to
the three different tempi. In the opening
landler I liked especially the
really ethnic digging in of the strings
as they swing into the main material
Too often this is allowed to pass by
the conductor with hardly a nod. The
waltz material has a backward glancing
lilt but does not dilute the feeling
that right through Mahler is dancing
to death before us. The response of
the orchestra is absolutely faultless
with whip-crack precision and ensemble
but never sacrificing soul, the feeling
of a story being told and the sound
of woodwind against strings in perfect
balance is a special joy. The Berliners
are also remarkably unbuttoned at times.
"How potent cheap music is,"
as Noel Coward once observed. Again,
compliments to the engineers too here,
but also to Rattle for the excellent
balancing. The same applies to the Rondo-Burleske
third movement. This is Mahler going
to the limit of expression and is a
logical development from the second
movement and so it sounds here. Under
Rattle it is a controlled environment
to begin with, all kinetic energy in
a slightly held-back tempo, but the
significance of this does not become
clear until the end. In the wonderful
lyrical interlude Rattle makes the crucial
tempo choice with ease - neither too
slow that if seems detached from the
rest, nor too fast that we miss its
lyrical power. And just listen to the
nostalgia in the high trumpet solos.
When the Rondo Burleske does return,
Rattle conducts it like Horenstein does
in his "live" recordings.
Gradually screwing up the tempo as the
coda approaches so that, when the end
comes, by then the whole movement is
going to hell like a juggernaut out
of control, justifying the controlled
tempo in the first part.
For Mahler’s stoic
elegy on life and approaching death
in the fourth movement Simon Rattle
adopts an appropriately stoic demeanour.
Not for him a mawkish, drawn out, emotionally
over-heated outpouring that satisfies
on just a surface level. In keeping
with the rest of the work’s emotional
mapping, he gives a reading that balances
the great depth of feeling written into
the music with a sharpness of focus
that burns into the mind in its own
terms. The strings at the very start
are powerful and questing. They draw
the melodies with a confident tone of
voice and a timbre that again recalls
Klemperer. Whilst Rattle conveys the
power of the emotions present, by his
unwillingness to indulge them with overt
emphasis he keeps an intellectual frame
which gives point to the emotion and
makes for a more human response. So
the man of the world we met at the end
of the first movement reflecting on
times past now reflects on mortality
as he had pretty well for all of his
life but now in the knowledge that his
own end may be closer. Mahler was not
at this point in his life, as you still
wrongly hear, terminally ill. He was
still firing on all cylinders where
life and career was concerned. But he
was more than ever aware of his own
mortality at this point and able descant
on it, carry on the theses he had explored
previously in "Das Lied Von Der
Erde." In the central section of
the movement the intimate details are
woven here into a timeless tapestry
with a degree of chamber-like playing
by the orchestra that is breathtaking.
Here are players who are really listening
to each other. The main climax, where
the high violins rear up and then usher
in a full-throated noble assertion of
the primacy of life, emerges naturally
from the rest and is delivered with
a wonderful, full but firm tone that
prepares for the long, soft coda. The
long close of the work itself has seldom
been played so well as it is here. The
many silences are perfectly observed,
the fragments of themes delivered with
breathtaking quiet, but they are never
allowed to merge into those silences
and become comatose which they can sometimes
do. It is a careful judgement but one
that Rattle succeeds in. I was reminded
that here was a conductor of Mahler’s
Ninth who knows Vaughan Williams’s Sixth
with its own very particular soft and
fragmentary close. Vaughan Williams
quoted Shakespeare’s "The Tempest"
at the same point in his symphony and
that quote appears absolutely appropriate
in Rattle’s closing of Mahler’s Ninth:
"We are such stuff as dreams are
made on and our little life is rounded
with a sleep."
So much depends on
how you believe this work should be
played and interpreted. I am certain
there will be many Mahlerites who will
find what I call Rattle’s excellent
"head and heart balance" here
leaves them short. People who want the
Ninth to be an excuse to climb on to
the couch and pour out the angst by
the shovel need to go to conductors
like Bernstein, Tennstedt or Levine
for that. But I believe conversely that
it is in fact recordings like that which
leave us short. This work is far deeper
and more rounded than those which just
operate on a high-octane emotional level
and leave no room for the kind of Stoicism
shot through with intellectual rigour
of a Rattle or Klemperer. Returning
to the recordings I listed at the start
of this review as being, for me, the
outstanding ones I would not say this
new recording supplants any of them.
However, I am convinced that it joins
them as one of the finest recordings
of the work that I have ever heard in
terms of conception, playing and recording
.
If someone who was
contemplating buying a Mahler Ninth
for the very first time were to ask
my opinion I would reply without hesitation
that this is the one to have. As a first
recording it is near ideal in delivering
Mahler‘s Mahler Ninth as opposed
to that of the conductor on the rostrum
and it deserves the highest possible
recommendation.
Tony Duggan
Berliner Philharmoniker/Sir Simon Rattle
