You do well for your money here. For the cost of one full-priced CD, in addition
to the two containing the "live" performance of the symphony there's a third
containing a seventy-six minute illustrated talk by Zander entitled "Conducting
and Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony". Along with a liner essay by him
there's also a single sheet containing a reproduction of the first two pages
of the score (complete with the conductor's notations so you can follow the
major part of his talk on how to conduct the piece), a plan of the orchestra
layout, two "beat charts", some engravings of Mahler conducting and a note
from a little girl thanking Zander for his performances. Everything but a
stethoscope so you can listen to see if you have an arrhythmia to match the
composer's (rendered in music in the first bars of the work) and an appointment
with a Freudian analyst to see if your mental state matches Mahler's. Here
I jest. But it does raise the question as to how much the listener needs
by way of "support" before listening to Mahler's Ninth and why this recording
might be so special that it needs them. Is it not the case that listeners
have managed without such things and could in the future ?
Benjamin Zander is a teacher and, judging by all that comes with this set,
a good one. His work with the pro, semi-pro and amateur Boston Philharmonic
gives shining evidence of his virtues in this role too. He is also in demand
the world over as one of that current "flavour-of-the-month" gurus: the
Inspirational Speaker, called in by organisations to put lead into the emotional
pencils of employees and, in his case, never failing to use music and his
experiences performing it with "pros" and "ams" as part of his creed. So
it's clearly the teacher in Zander that has led to the unusual presentation
of this recording. But I wonder if he's in danger of making a rod for his
own back. From his notes and talk he understands the work superbly well and
can communicate his understanding clearly. The problem is, when we finally
get to listen to the performance the notes and talk have been us leading
to, will we hear one matching such a depth of understanding ? Is Zander as
good a conductor as he is a teacher ? Can he also get a leading professional
orchestra (as opposed to a semi-professional and student one) to live up
to what his intellect and emotions tell him is there ? I will say straight
away that on the evidence of this recording the answer is no, not when compared
with others who have recorded this work and done it without the luxury of
talks, notes, diagrams and tributes from children.
Because Zander has done himself no favours choosing this, of all works, to
record and present in this way. In order for a recording of Mahler's Ninth
to succeed it has to face competition that could not be stiffer. Harsh, but
that's the way it is when you're out buying CDs. Of course you could say
this issue is ideal for the newcomer because of the "extras" and the price,
and there would be something in that. However, even taking that into account,
I would still say a greater performance, one that lives up to all Zander
knows is there and more, will, even in the short term, serve better.
In his essay he sees the first movement representing a crucial dichotomy
at the heart of the symphony. He writes: "There seems to be two kinds of
music....music that is gentle, harmonious, sublimely beautiful, and resolved;
and music that is complex, dissonant, full of tension, and unresolved. And
the structure of the movement seems to set these two kinds of music against
each other." This dichotomy represents the duality in Mahler, Zander reminds
us, and the time in which he lived, looking back to the romantic, unified
past and forward to the dissonant, fragmented future. There is much to be
gained from seeing the work in these terms and Zander manages to illustrate
the two poles of the dichotomy quite well in his performance of the first
movement. But there are other performances which do it better, more profoundly,
and also recognise that a dichotomy is also the sum of its poles and the
area between. Further, if fixated on one idea and one aspect of it, a performance
is in danger of emerging as rather shallow and frankly that's how Zander's
performance sounds in the first movement. This also appears to have a knock-on
effect. The quieter passages between the more animated ones are interpreted
by Zander as very slow and very withdrawn, to the extent they're in danger
of becoming detached from the whole with little definition or focus, holding
up the forward momentum and any feeling of line. The impression is of just
marking time between crises. So there are "sharp oppositions" conveyed in
the first movement but it's as if they are seen from a great height over
large areas.
But Zander is very insistent in his recorded talk on the minutest attention
to detail, using the first two pages of the score and his notes over them
for us to see this. Yet, to take just one example, in the crucial climactic
passage between bars 314 and 322 he appears not to have noticed, or chosen
to ignore, that the two statements by the massed trombones of the opening
rhythmic motif of the work have different dynamic markings: fff the first
time and ff the second. Hear how Boulez gets his Chicago players to deliver
this. (Deutsche Gramophon 289 457 581-2).
I mentioned earlier Zander making a rod for his own back in being so detailed
in telling us what his aims are. A good example can be found when he writes:
"....in the first movement of Mahler's Ninth....there are virtually no
subservient voices. What appear to be accompaniments turn out to be independent
voices with a life of their own....The orchestra is no longer used as a tutti
instrument, but rather as a vast chamber group....The ideal orchestra for
the work would be one composed entirely of great individualists, each with
the courage to play exactly what he is given, regardless of what the others
are doing." This is all valid, but though the Philharmonia play very well,
they don't give the impression of achieving this effect. In fact they turn
in a very corporate account indeed.
In an interview Zander says of rehearsing the work with the Boston Philharmonic:
"We were in there week after week and the only recorded performance I listened
to was Walter's magical live Vienna Philharmonic recording from 1938." (Dutton
CDEA5005).
So this invites one comparison to use because there WAS an orchestra of "great
individualists", including some who had played under Mahler himself. You
can also make a comparison with another orchestra of "great individualists",
the London Symphony of 1966 under Jascha Horenstein, (Music and Arts CD-235),
and the same conclusion is unavoidable. Two of the great Mahler conductors
working with two personality orchestras recorded live and conveying the very
sense of the orchestra as chamber group that seems to elude Zander, as he
puts it: "....encouraged not to compromise the sharp oppositions, not to
minimise the strangeness, even the ugliness that Mahler has written into
his score". If you want a passage to illustrate this, the closing pages of
the movement, from the duet of solo horn and flute onwards, would be as good
as any. Zander's insistence on veiled, withdrawn playing robs it of the chance
for the players concerned to show chamber-like qualities.
When it comes to the Scherzo Zander again appears in his accompanying material
to partly understand what Mahler is aiming for but either misunderstands
what he means the conductor should do with this or finds such a step beyond
him. Referring to Mahler's use of his favourite ländler, Zander writes:
"This dance is a grim parody of the dance. Mahler's indication at the beginning
of the movement, "Etwas tappisch und sehr derb" (somewhat clumsy and very
rough), shows that the true ländleris here stiffened and chained, deprived
of its characteristic lilt - a counterpart of the first movement's dissonance
and rhythmic complexity." That the ländler is profoundly changed by
Mahler here, there's no doubt. Compare it with that in the second movement
of the Fourth Symphony, as Zander tells us to. But I don't believe the change
effected is either what Zander says it is or what he delivers. Indeed I don't
think the performance bears that close a relation to what Zander says it
should either. I think what Mahler is doing here was well described by Neville
Cardus for whom the ländler is "ravished and made with child" and Leonard
Bernstein who said it was "a bitter re-imaging of simplicity, naiveté,
the earth-pleasures we recall from adolescence." With Zander what we get
is a little too precise and contained with none of the "clumsiness" and
"roughness" Mahler asks for and none of the parody Zander himself seems to
want - never mind Bernstein's "re-imaging" or Cardus's "ravishing". (Did
the Englishman perhaps have a coarser word in mind ?)
So, on a number of levels, there is much that is unsatisfactory in the second
movement. Listen again to Walter, Horenstein and Klemperer to hear how it
ought to go and to be in keeping with what Zander appears to want. Note the
coarse rhythmic sense and the heavier tread, reinforced by all three in foot
stamps on the podium at precisely the same moment as the dance gets underway.
To conductors from their backgrounds music like this, even under metamorphosis,
was "bred in the bone". I would also have expected Zander to make more of
the tempo changes in the movement so crucial that Mahler refers to them as
I, II and III. The changes, brilliantly realised in the Boulez recording,
are somewhat half-hearted, almost designed not to sound awkward. In his talk
Zander refers to how he has solved one tempo change that under other conductors
sounds awkward. Give me awkwardness any time in this movement because that
is what I believe Mahler wanted. The close of the movement where, as Bruno
Walter has it, we know "the dance is over" is one of the most grotesque and
disturbing passages in all Mahler and can be made to sound truly poisonous.
Under Walter in 1938 it does: his "great individualists" see to that. Under
Horenstein likewise, and note the prominence he gives to the contrabassoon.
Under Zander the close of the Scherzo is merely a mild irritation.
For Zander the most remarkable aspect of the Rondo Burleske is its contrapuntal
mastery and he is right to draw attention to this. But when he writes "at
first it may sound utterly chaotic, but gradually we realise that it is a
tour de force of controlled contrapuntal writing" I start to disagree and
believe he may be elevating this aspect above others with the result that
too much control is exercised where more abandon is what is demanded if the
world of feeling this movement represents is to be made clear. If anything
any sense of chaos at the beginning should be added to until the whole movement
is in danger of breaking up. But at least Zander achieves what he sets out
in his essay. His need for control also seems to be behind the fact that
he is marginally too slow, but that isn't the whole story. Klemperer is slower
and yet conveys a world of impending chaos.
Bernstein knew what this music meant: "....a farewell to the world of action,
the urban, the cosmopolitan life - the cocktail party, the marketplace, the
raucous careers and careenings of success, of loud, hollow laughter." I would
only add it's also the music of a world about to go smash. Listen to the
Walter recording with the Vienna Philharmonic of 1938 (playing when the world
was on the verge of going smash for a second time) and the manic, almost
unhinged frenzy with which they tear into this movement, not letting up until
the end and so making the blissful interlude in the centre even more moving
in its nostalgic power, is unforgettable. Or, only slightly less manic,
Horenstein and the LSO where Gervase de Peyer's solo clarinet keeps squealing
like Till Eulenspiegel strangling on the gallows. Such concepts seem miles
away from Zander's stated aim of control which, to give him his due, he does
achieve.
The last movement under Zander is well-proportioned. By that I mean the overall
tempo and pacing across the movement is fine and it balances the long first
movement. Something that isn't always the case when the symphony's
"top-heaviness" can be accentuated. (It is worth saying that, though I am
rather underwhelmed by this whole performance, it's at least a consistent
approach and delivers a performance that has much structural integrity.)
But when Zander writes of the last movement: "....the textures are rich and
full, the counterpoint astonishingly opulent" it's a pity to find the strings
are rather spare in volume and I'm worried by Zander encouraging the same
emphatic lunges in the strings that disfigure the first movement too and
which here have the effect of dissipating any opulence rather than aiding
it. Even though it does have the effect of linking the first and last movements
in our minds. The Philharmonia strings cannot match the "saturation-quality"
or nostalgic yearning of their counterparts in the old Vienna Philharmonic
even in a 1938 recording, and seem to scramble the opening. Whether it's
the gut strings, the old-world style of playing, or a trick of the balance,
the sound of the old VPO riding every climax shows again what is missing
in Zander's account of the same passages.
Zander also writes: "....there are moments of extreme withdrawal - those
bleak, passionless passages that Mahler marks to be played 'ohne Ausdruck'
(without expression) and that are often scored for just a handful of
instruments." Zander takes Mahler at his word and the effect, as in the first
movement, is to accentuate the divide between louder, more animated passages
and the passages of "extreme withdrawal" which are here again so withdrawn
they're in danger of detaching themselves, becoming longueurs. This becomes
a major problem in the remarkable closing pages which under Zander reminds
me more of the closing movement of Vaughan Williams's Sixth Symphony where
a completely different effect is aimed at. I wonder if Zander is being too
literal in interpreting what Mahler is asking for. That when Mahler writes
"without expression" he's writing in terms of what "expression" meant for
him rather than what it means for us and an adjustment is needed, one that
most conductors have managed to make as part of the continuing performing
traditions of this piece. I cannot believe Mahler meant the closing pages
to come over quite as cold and dead as they do here, to the extent that the
thread becomes indistinct at times. There should be some degree of feeling
otherwise we are not going to care about the music and its place in the whole.
Zander writes of the ending: "It has none of the nihilism and cold sense
of futility which is found in so much contemporary art. On the contrary,
there is a deep attachment to joy. Despair and knowledge of suffering are
turned into a discovering of the meaning of life." Indeed. So why play it
as though the opposite were the case ?
This is the part of the 1938 Walter recording that also disappoints somewhat.
For some reason he keeps a sharpness of focus to the end, refusing to slow
down even to the extent that he does in his later stereo recording. Maybe
he felt his audience were getting restless, maybe understanding of the work
wasn't so complete then. Horenstein stretches the music on the rack, so does
Bernstein, so do most other conductors to a greater and lesser degree and
they keep their sense of the humanity that this most human of composers invests
it with. In my experience only Zander (and possibly Karajan) give us such
coldness and lack of feeling.
In all a disappointment, more pronounced in comparison with other recordings.
The sound recording is good, though not great: close-in but, conversely,
recorded at a lower level so needs to be played back higher. Zander makes
great play of dividing his first and second violins to left and right as
Mahler did and is to be congratulated for that, as are the engineers for
letting us hear it. But Klemperer does that too. The orchestral playing is
good, but there seems a too much of the routine about it, as if the players
have listened to their conductor's copious instructions, nodded, and then
just played the music as they normally would. Did he perhaps blind them with
science in rehearsal so that they just lost patience? Should he have talked
less and just let them play ? Can you rehearse a great professional orchestra
in the same way you rehearse a semi-pro or student one ? A rehearsal CD would
have been interesting.
I don't think there is anything new for seasoned Mahlerites here. It's a
performance you would be perfectly happy to hear in the concert hall but
in a recording you need something that will benefit you over time and repeated
hearings. For newcomers to the symphony there is the extra CD, the notes
and the price. But even newcomers would benefit from something more profound:
Walter (1938), Klemperer, Barbirolli and Horenstein (1966) are "hors concours",
with Walter (1960), Haitink, Boulez and Rattle to name just a handful of
more recent, or better recorded, versions following closely. There are others.
We are spoiled for choice and new recordings have a lot to live up to.
Reviewer
Tony Duggan
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Philharmonia Orchestra
conducted by Benjamin
Zander.
