SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Schoenberg and Mahler: London Symphony Orchestra Valery Gergiev (conductor) Barbican Hall London 7. 3.2008 (GD)

Schoenberg - Chamber Symphony No 1
Mahler – Seventh Symphony


It is quite depressing how many conductors seemingly fail to recognise or understand Schoenberg’s new (at the time) concepts of harmony and tonal/textual relatedness. After all,  Schoenberg and his disciple Theodor W Adorno did write quite extensively on these innovations and about how they should be achieved in performance. Schoenberg’s key notion of ‘Klangfarbenmelodie’ is central to this understanding. As Adorno notes, although there are still traces of Mahlerian melody (but none of Mahler’s schmalzy portamento effects) Schoenberg condenses and refracts these melodic elements to make them both cohere and conflict with the more dissonant and contrapuntal elements found in the work. As Boulez learnt from Hans Rosbaud, the Chamber Symphony No 1's new acerbic texture must certainly make its textural effect, but must also totally integrate (on a new level) with a sometimes anamorphic tonal structure. Schoenberg here produces what sounds like a homophonic texture throughout.

The trouble with Gergiev’s rendition of the First Chamber Symphony tonight was that it was difficult to discern any level of overall structure, anamorphic or otherwise. His initial tempo was far too fast and his rhythmic accents too jerky to allow the clear dialectical flow of harmony, lyricism, and tonal contrast to make their proper effects. It was also difficult to discern clearly Schoenberg’s trenchantly fused and contrasting four movements. After rushing so much with some inevitable lapse in ensemble, Gergiev predictably allowed the tempo to sag in the recapitulation, losing all its harmonic relatedness to the adagio section. The finale itself, as a free recapitulation of the exposition and the adagio, did not cohere as it should and the final cadence on the horns was rushed,  thus losing all its effects of quasi-harmonic/tonal resolution and mock heroism.

It might sound like a question about the obvious, but is it not a fact that Mahler is a little over-played, and over recorded - to the extent that the initial novelty and originality in the music is wearing a bit thin? Every conductor worthy of the name is expected to produce some Mahler, if not a whole Mahler ‘cycle’ as with Gergiev’s much publicised attempt. If Mahler was performed a little less often would this not leave a space open for other symphonists who are lamentably neglected in our concert programmes? I am thinking here, among many others, of  Ernst Krenek, Egon Wellesz,  Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Allan Pettersson, Vagn Holmboe, Lepo Sumera, and our own late Robert Simpson. All of whom composed fine symphonies.

Gergiev’s Mahler cycle with the LSO has received quite a lot of critical attention; some very negative, some positive. The Seventh is in some ways Mahler’s most loosely structured symphony; it is one of his longest and most difficult to cohere as a symphonic structure in performance. Gergiev’s opened quite promisingly with a sustained (‘langsam’) tempo subtending the throbbing march rhythm on lower strings punctuated by clearly delineated triplets on the bass drum, to initiate the first main theme on the dark tones of the plangent tenor horn. But by the time we arrived at the main ‘Allegro con fuoco,’ Gergiev was conducting in a curiously one dimensional manner. Adorno in particular noted how hetero-glossic this symphony is in compositional innovation and imagination. This diversity was increasingly diminished by Gergiev who seemed to be fixated on delivering as forceful and loud fortissimos and sforzandi as possible, losing any idea of Adorno’s 'widely spaced, disconnected rhythms/chords based on diatonic principles.' Indeed it was Mahler’s profusion of varying tonal/harmonic registers and (especially) rhythms which fell sadly short in this performance. Gergiev found no connection with Mahler’s ‘inner diatonic spaces’ as it were. The first movement's approach to the coda, which recalls the martial rhythms of the Sixth Symphony, was shorn here of any sense of parody, or indeed, any sense of the sustained build-up to the coda in which Mahler sets up a contrasting dialogic structure between the finely graduated earlier lyrical passages and some newly developed dramatic and declamatory music. All were lost in this performance.

The first ‘Nachtmusik’ second movement with its highly original cadenza for woodwind and brass and slow march in C minor complete with two contrasting trios,  was phrased in a rather deadpan, even four-square manner. I heard none of Adorno’s ‘fluorescent glow’ shed by the memory of the earlier ‘Wunderhorn’ songs. Again Mahler's carefully graded rhythms and mock martial timpani solos were too loud and intrusive. Even where Mahler’s specific marking is mezzo-forte the timpani and percussion were bashed out fff. And Mahler’s ‘distant’ cowbells sounded anything but far away tonight.  As with the performance as a whole,  this movement about contrast in moods/ tonalities simply lacked any sense of contrast and as a corollary irony.

The same problems continued the D minor ‘Scherzo’, one of Mahler’s most inspired creations. But here these problems were compounded by some generally messy orchestral ensemble. The opening off-beat figures in pizzicato string bass and timpani, answered in parodying fashion by staccato woodwind, were simply not together and I did not hear some important woodwind writing (although it is possible that this was due in part to the rather restricted Barbican acoustic). It is not simply that Gergiev took the movement too quicly; he did, but he also failed to incorporate the right degree of contrasting rubato both in the trio for instance,  and also in the diatonic contouring of the movement's ghostly parody of Viennese waltz and upper-Austrian  landler themes.

The 2^nd ‘Nachtmusik’ fourth movement, which acts as a kind of serenade-like intermezzo contrast between the Hoffmannesque grotesqueries of the scherzo and the blazing finale, was played (once again)  too fast and all at one level,  with little space left for the darker elements lurking beneath the benign surface. Hans Rosbaud understood this so well, and turned this ‘smiling' interlude into something much more complex.

Many, myself included, see the dynamically charged, stamping finale as the weakest part of the symphony. It has its moments; its parodies of Wagner’s ‘Meistersinger’ overture which are merged in diatonic rondo form with Viennese classical dances in pastiche syle. Gergiev never managed to fuse or incorporate any of these seemingly disparate stylistic elements. His relentless emphasis on violent dynamic accents and orchestral explosions simply became excrutiatingly loud and made a mockery of anything approaching triumph even in a parodied form. At one point towards the coda, the brass played so loudly and stridently that one had the impression of noise rather than anything approaching symphonic music.  The coda' s riotous triumph, which for Adorno is underscored by a tone of panic, degenerated tonight into a wash of loudness which left an unpleasant ring in my ears for a good fifteen minutes.

Geoff Diggines 


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