If you are serious about Mahler you cannot take him
a la carte. You either take all of him, every major work from
his composing life, or nothing. That’s my opinion, anyway. You think
it’s a harsh one? Let me explain what I mean. I once received a letter
from someone who had read my survey of Mahler recordings. My correspondent
displayed great knowledge and love of many individual Mahler works.
Then came the parting comment: "So I do love Mahler’s music, though
I never listen to the Seventh or Eighth Symphonies. I can’t take them
at all." I suggest that my correspondent has missed the point of
Mahler and so was consequently only possessed of a partial picture of
the man and therefore his work because Mahler’s symphonies are like
an eleven chapter autobiographical novel in music and to ignore two
of the symphonies is like ignoring two chapters in that autobiography,
leaving you with an incomplete portrait. Also, just like all great novels,
many of Mahler’s "chapters" carry significant references back
to previous "chapters" providing context and framing. None
more so than the Fourth Symphony which began life in the aftermath of
the completion of the Third. Crucially Mahler had originally planned
that his setting of the "Wunderhorn" poem "Das Himmlische
Leben" would be the final movement of that gigantic work. Hard
to believe, but there it is. As always, however, Mahler proved his own
best editor and perhaps responding to the subconscious urges that move
great creative artists he used the completed setting of the poem as
the starting point for his Fourth Symphony, even though he always saw
it as the last movement there also.
In the free discussion disc that comes with this new
release I found that Benjamin Zander lays the greatest stress on the
fact that in the Fourth Mahler’s end is also his beginning. However,
since I listened to Zander’s performance of the symphony before I listened
to the discussion disc I can honestly say that I knew this was his belief
anyway. Because, by some strange alchemy, Zander has managed to vividly
convey the last movement as the real culmination, the homecoming, for
the whole work and it is that that in the final analysis makes this
a satisfying recording to own. Indeed I have heard other recordings
where, in comparison to this one, it is almost as if the conductor is
rather embarrassed by such an apparently trite ending to such
a spacious work, especially following one of the greatest and most profound
slow movements Mahler ever wrote. As always with Mahler there is profundity
to be found in the most unlikely places and juxtapositions and it takes
a conductor who knows his Mahler intimately, as Zander does, to bring
this out emphatically. His soprano soloist, Camilla Tilling, is quite
charming. Far more the "tomboy" than many of her colleagues
and her contribution undoubtedly assists Zander in marking the performance
of this movement out as distinctive; though I’m sure she was also amenable
to Zander’s detailed coaching - something which might not have been
the case with a more established diva. Again, many otherwise
great recordings founder a little by casting a star soprano in the last
movement and by her conductor’s inability to really coach her into the
kind of performance Tilling gives. Not a definitive one of course, but
newly thought enough to make you hear the music fresh, both on its own
and in its correct context. As if to further prove he has thought very
deeply about how this movement should be presented, in his discussion
disc Zander plays an extract from a concert performance of the work
that he conducted in Vienna where he used a boy soprano for the movement.
This has been done a couple of times on record (by Nanut and Bernstein)
but I have never been in favour of it for all kinds of reasons. Not
least the fact that Mahler asks for a soprano and not a treble. So I’m
glad Zander resisted the temptation to cast a boy in the recording,
as it must have crossed his mind to do so.
It is hard to know precisely how Zander conveys the
impression of the last movement as true culmination so well as he does.
Perhaps time and repeated hearings will reveal more. Reviewing new recordings
is sometimes about giving interim reports, trying to arrive at the kinds
of conclusions one has reached already about recordings lived with for
sometimes thirty years. Some of what Zander achieves in this instance
probably stems from the way he treats the preceding three movements
which, I have to say, on their own I do not find as convincing. But
that may well be part of the reason why the last movement does shine
so brightly when it finally comes. Perhaps it’s all part of Zander’s
cunning master plan for the Fourth: stand back emotionally in the first
three movements so as to let the fourth blossom all the more. Or perhaps
the effect is arrived at more by luck than judgement, succeeding in
this particular instance in spite of everything. If that is so it isn’t
intended as a criticism of Zander. In fact it could be construed as
a compliment with his own response to the music in front of him perhaps
coming from depths of which even he knows not. Since music above all
the arts works at the very deepest levels of our responses, interpreters
especially must be all too susceptible to certain urges to do one thing
rather than another without quite knowing why. Conscious or subconscious,
it hardly matters. The art of performance is a delicate and ephemeral
flower at the best of times, so when something clearly works it’s not
essential to enquire too deeply into why it has come about. Let’s just
enjoy the result.
In the first movement Zander appears suspended on the
cusp between neo-classical restraint and zeal to deliver surface lustre.
It certainly seems as though he is wary of crumbling the music’s petals
so that the movement emerges in a rather patrician fashion: all symphonic
and score details superbly attended to but lacking degrees of fallibility,
approachability. I don’t think Zander is helped by the recorded
sound that I find a little too general and bass light to make a great
impact and deliver the music’s character. Contrast this with the Kletzki
recording on EMI or Royal Classics, for example. Even after all these
years this is still an object lesson in how to balance this work with
bags of detail in perfect proportion. The second movement is more persuasive
in both cases with Zander, though. Here he and his violin soloist, Christopher
Warren-Green, really have gone to some trouble to project the particular
fairy tale evil lurking behind "Friend Death". I liked too
the character-filled chuckling of the clarinets and the effortless way
the music segues into the Upper Austrian trios. You can almost see the
orchestra members, exemplary throughout, smiling at those points. In
the discussion disc Zander makes the inspired connection between the
solo fiddling in this movement and that in Stravinsky’s "A Soldier’s
Tale" which was, let us remember, just eighteen years away when
Mahler completed this symphony. There’s a thought. I always find connections
like that send me back to the music with new ears and that, as always,
is the great value of the discussion disc which I suggest you listen
to after you have heard the symphony.
The great slow movement receives a luminous, seamless
performance from Zander and the orchestra with great line that just
fails for me to penetrate beneath the surface beauty. Here I see Zander
as a collector and connoisseur of Dresden china who has taken down a
much-loved piece from his shelf that he knows every inch of and wants
you to know every inch of too and come to love just as much as he does.
As fine a guide to the movement than you could ask for but, as with
the first movement, he is rather afraid of dropping his much loved ornament
and smashing it to bits. Zander the patrician once again. Don’t get
me wrong, I like patricians, even in Mahler. There is a certain streak
of the patrician in Jascha Horenstein and I admire his Mahler conducting
above most. But I do wonder whether, over time, the extreme care Zander
takes over the first three movements will mean that this recording won’t
endure, won’t really endear itself to the listener in the way
others have and that is a serious matter in this most potentially endearing
of Mahler’s works. Again, only time will tell on that and it would be
nice to be proved wrong. Certainly in the great "collapse climaxes"
in the centre of the slow movement the music opens out wonderfully,
the great vistas as impressive as ever, and the gates of heaven burst
with a real surge of energy. It is then that the last movement enters
and is able to make the effect I so much admire. The tempo here is relaxed,
some might say too relaxed, but I enjoyed it on its own for the way
all the myriad details are allowed to emerge and, of course, as that
"beginning as ending" that is at the cornerstone of this work
and Zander’s realisation of it. For that aspect above all this version
earns its place in the discography.
Top recommendations remain Horenstein (Classics For
Pleasure 5748822), Kubelik (Decca Eloquence 4696372), Szell (Sony Classics
46535), Kletzki (Royal Classics DCL706722), Mengelberg (Grammofono2000
78844) and Abravanel (Everyman 08616471). The latter is well worth seeking
out for a more "chamber-like" feel to the work and another
remarkable soprano soloist in Netania Dervath.
A patrician and thought-provoking guide to Mahler’s
most approachable symphony casting the last movement in its correct
perspective.
Tony Duggan
See also
review by Terry Barfoot
Camilla Tilling (Soprano)