Deryck Cooke’s historic analysis of Mahler 10
Via Norman Lebrecht's Slipped Disc blog, Deryck Cooke discusses his performing edition of the 10th Symphony, left unfinished by Mahler and completed by Cooke.
It's almost two hours of discussion and played excerpts, and well worth it.
Schoenberg Conducting Mahler 2nd
One commenter proclaims that it sounds the way Boulez would do it? Do you agree?
Via Norman Lebrecht:, Arnold Schoenberg conducting the second movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 2.
Mahler: 15 Questions
Has Mahler’s time come and gone? Or are all times Mahler times?
1. Does Waldmaerchen belong in performances of Das Klagende Lied?
2. The conductor Otto Klemperer calls the Finale of the First Symphony weak. Is it?
3. Is the Second Symphony especially indebted to predecessor symphonies (by Beethoven and Mendelssohn, for example)?
4. What’s Mahler’s best song(s)?
5. How important is the program of the Third Symphony? Is the work too heterogenous?
6. I think it was Paul Bekker who said Mahler’s symphonies are “finale symphonies.” How does this apply to the Fourth Symphony?
7. The conductor Erich Leinsdorf says Mahler is easy to conduct because you don’t need a steady tempo and the works are structural potpurris. Is this true?
8. Is it fair to accuse the Fifth Symphony of disunity?
9. What is the proper order of movements in the Sixth Symphony?
10. Is the title (not Mahler’s own) “Song of the Night” appropriate for the Seventh Symphony?
11. What is the significance of the tonalities in the Ninth Symphony?
12. Are the Eighth Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde really symphonies?
13. How viable and/or necessary is the Tenth Symphony?
14. If I love Mahler, does that mean I’m supposed to love Schoenberg and Berg as well? How about Britten and Shostakovich?
15. Has Mahler’s time come and gone? Or are all times Mahler times?
Last Night's Mahler Sixth: a Real Review
Some Guy irately complained about my irrelevant, sophomoric, and esoteric “non-review” of last night’s performance of Mahler 6, and requested — nay, demanded — that I write a “real” review. To this reproach I can only say “Touche.” So, here is my Official Review, translated into Standard Written Criticalese
Some Guy irately complained about my irrelevant, sophomoric, and esoteric “non-review” of last night’s performance of Mahler 6, and requested — nay, demanded — that I write a “real” review. To this reproach I can only say “Touche.” So, here is my Official Review, translated into Standard Written Criticalese:
MAESTRO Haitink led a LUCIDLY INFORMED READING of the Mahler Sixth Symphony last night at Symphony Center. IT WAS WORTH THE WAIT, as the ERSTWHILE Concertgebouew leader AMPLY DEMONSTRATED. Classical RESTRAINT was combined with romantic ELAN in a performance that combined URGENCY with METICULOUS PRECISION. KUDOS to the fine playing of Concertmaster Chen, principal horn Clevenger and especially to that finest of trombonists, Jay Friedman. But if I take my hat off to them, I put it back on again when I consider the antics of that percussionist who kept walking on and off the stage. We go to the concerts to see the music as well as hear it, you know!
The tempi were SPACIOUS, but not OVER-BROAD, while the articulations ADMIRABLY combined FINESSE and a sense of stylistic APPOSITENESS with a POWER that NEVER SEEMED FORCED. VELVETY LEGATO GAVE WAY WHEN NECESSARY TO BRUTAL FORCE, and the extreme emotional states evoked by this TRAGIC LANDMARK [Actually this is only too true. -JG] CONFRONTED the listener WITH A SENSE OF HIS OWN MORTALITY. [True, again. -JG]
Anyway, this is the way criticism oughtta be written, pal. And to my irate interlocutor, may I pose the immortal question first posed by the eminent critic Carl Showalter from the movie Fargo: “Happy now, A———?”
Here are some favorite Mahler 6 recordings.
Mahler's Popularity? He's the Antidote for Medieval (and Modern) Anonymity: the Sixth at Symphony Center
by obsessing about himself, about Gustav Mahler, personally —and for 80 glorious minutes at a time as Haitink was in no hurry — Mahler gives us, by proxy, some of our dignity back.
Originally, my plan was to review the October 19, 2007 performance by Haitink and the Chicagos of the Mahler Sixth Symphony for these pages. But I decided (to borrow a phrase from one of the psychopathic hillbillies in Deliverance), “That river don’t go to Aintree.” My reviews of particular performances tend to end up like this:
Of course it was great. It was Mahler’s Sixth. It was Haitink and Chicago.
Others are welcome to recount how Haitink’s expansively paced tempi allowed for stentorian (yet plush) sounds from the brass, and other ephemera that you really had to be there to appreciate.
So, let’s talk about something else. How about, “What does Mahler mean for the intellectual and emotional life of a human being in 2007?”
Mahler said, “My time will come.” If he meant that lots of smart people who love music will come to venerate him, he was right on the money. If he meant that his music was ahead of its time or a vision of the future, he was mistaken. We have yet to realize Mahler’s vision of the future: the “Long 19th Century” may have ended with the First World War, but the twentieth century is still, sadly, with us. America is still in “Viet Nam”, the Russians (Soviets) still have a “Czar”, genocide still reigns in too many places, Nuclear weapons are still all the rage, etc.
In a sense, the Twentieth Century is a Medieval epoch. In Medieval times people were largely anonymous, like the characters in Die Frau ohne Schatten: the dyer, the dyer’s wife, the lame brother, the one-eyed brother, etc. All but the wealthy and powerful were so much at the mercy of nature that they, rightly, feared such things as being eaten by wolves.
The twentieth century has alarming similarities. People have names, but technology has made them anonymous (when it isn’t taking away their privacy). Even our “celebrities” have achieved a strange kind of anonymity due to their ubiquity. They’ve become an undifferentiated set of cute nicknames, completely interchangeable. (Was it Britney or Lindsay that got arrested last week?) Some don’t even merit a cute nickname of their own, but must share with a (statistically temporary) partner, a la TomKat, Brangelina, or Bennifer (one Ben, two successive Jennifers). They might as well be The Anorexic Supermodel, The Globe-trotting Humanitarian Actress, or The Former Bodyguard Baby-Daddy. Anonymous, anonymous, anonymous.
Fear of wolves has been replaced by fear of dirty bombs and climate change, but we’re still at the mercy of nature (science), because most people don’t understand it, and too many of those that do only want to deny it, abuse it or exploit it. And have you compared the virulent strains of faith propounded both by some American politicos and their unspeakable “fundamentalist” adversaries with their Dark Age counterparts lately? This is a Medieval epoch. There are Torquemadas, Savonarolas, and Sultans all over the place.
Well, by obsessing about himself, about Gustav Mahler, personally — and for 80 glorious minutes at a time as Haitink was in no hurry — Mahler gives us, by proxy, some of our dignity back. And he gives us the Nineteenth Century back, all over again. Hammer blows of fate doom the victim! The universe cares about us, even if its attitude is malevolent! And the unutterable hearbreak of Alpine beauty in the third movement! Nature is there to awe and move us, and furthermore, to co-operate with our emotional states. Our feelings matter! The third movement is so fabulously, extravagantly, jaw-droppingly beautiful that it verges on the unlistenable.
Arnold Schoenberg was right, as usual, when he flatly stated “Gustav Mahler was a saint.” But let’s not kid ourselves, he is our past, not our present. We can only hope that his vision will become our future.