Review of the Blu-ray versionAround the time that I
was studying this recording of Mahler’s Fourth for the purpose of reviewing
it I read a
review of a live performance in
London by my Seen and Heard colleague, Jim Pritchard. This was by the LSO
led by the now 86-year-old Bernard Haitink. I was struck by the fact that
for Jim the key attribute of Haitink’s direction of the score in 2015 was
the serenity that he brought to the music. As he put it, “Haitink brought an
overwhelming sense of serenity to the music and where others might find more
anxiety and tension, everything was tranquil and nostalgic.” A rather
different picture of the score emerges from this Amsterdam performance,
given some 29 years ago; maddeningly, Arthaus are very vague about the exact
date.
Haitink would have been about 57 years old when this performance was given
and he appears very sprightly, not least when he negotiates the long descent
from the conductor’s entrance door in the Concertgebouw down to the podium.
There’s plenty of energy in his conducting and his interpretation strikes a
nice balance between the rustic charm of much of the music and the frequent
darker undertones. I like very much the way the first movement flows in his
hands; there’s a pleasing open-air feel to the music. From the outset, and
generally, Haitink’s empathy with Mahler’s music and in particular his
natural way with rubato is much in evidence. The second movement is lively,
the playing pithy and sharply articulated. The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
plays expertly throughout but in this movement especially the solo work by
many of the principals is full of character. With its long Mahler tradition
this orchestra knows instinctively how to colour and articulate Mahler’s
music and they are being conducted by a maestro who by now was steeped in
the Mahler idiom and who had been their principal conductor for over twenty
years.
After the second movement there’s a pause while the orchestra re-tunes and
it’s at this point that Maria Ewing makes her discreet entrance. The slow
movement is beautifully handled by Haitink. He and the orchestra judge
Mahler’s sweet lyricism to perfection; the music sings and is never
overdone. The great climax is powerful yet not overbearing and then the
pacific wind-down to the movement’s close is achieved with great
sensitivity.
The finale is something of a challenge for both the conductor and the
soloist in that, Janus-like, it faces in two directions. On the one hand
there’s the surface innocence, naivety even, of the song from
Des Knaben
Wunderhorn. On the other, parts of the poem, and Mahler’s setting of
it, have elements of darkness and
grotesquerie – the latter quality
very apparent in the orchestral interludes between stanzas. Leonard
Bernstein controversially used a boy treble to sing this setting in his DG
recording of the work (
review ~
review). That’s one Bernstein Mahler
recording that I’ve not heard but I must say I find it hard to imagine that
a young singer would have the intellectual maturity to understand fully the
emotional range of the setting and, in particular, to know how to strike the
balance between childlike innocence and sophistication – goodness knows,
many adult sopranos don’t get it right.
The American soprano, Maria Ewing, is pretty successful, I think. She’d
performed the work before with Haitink and this orchestra: she’s the soloist
in a 1982 live performance that was included in a boxed set of Christmas Day
performances of most of the symphonies. This set was
admired by Tony Duggan, and rightly so. Sadly, I don’t think it’s
available any longer but if you ever come across a copy snap it up because
there are some very fine performances in it. In t
his 1986 performance Miss Ewing sings very well. She
invests the music with just the right amount of character – mercifully, she
never overdoes it – and her singing offers much pleasure. Haitink conducts
expertly. Everything resolves into a magical rendition of the last stanza
where a touching sense of peacefulness and quiet rapture is achieved.
This is a fine performance of Mahler’s Fourth which deserved the standing
ovation it received. The picture quality is satisfactory if a little dated.
The sound is decent enough but on my equipment I had to turn up the volume;
perhaps this was why high frequencies tended to distort slightly.
Nonetheless, this Blu-Ray is well worth acquiring as an example of Bernard
Haitink’s prowess in Mahler and as a souvenir of his long and distinguished
tenure as principal conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
John Quinn
Another review (DVD version) ...A
satisfying, middle-of-the-road performance for all the right reasons. The
Fourth is as approachable as anything Mahler wrote. There is only one proper
climax, that in the slow movement, but it is of such searing beauty that it
stays in the mind long afterwards. Mahler does do some consciously clever
things, like introducing an out-of-tune, or more accurately a differently
tuned, violin in the scherzo and he makes the finale an intentionally
anti-climactic movement. It is also the shortest of his symphonies since the
First, and the quietest of any of them. The playing of the Concertgebouw is
absolutely magnificent, especially the horns and woodwind. The camera loves
the lady first horn (whose name I cannot determine) and she does make a
difficult part seem easy. The Concertgebouw has always been one of the top
handful of orchestras in the world, if not
the top, and their
understated virtuosity still astonishes. Haitink does what he usually does,
gives us an exemplary reading of the score which sounds so
'right' that there is nothing to say; one just listens to
Mahler, a point made in the interesting accompanying note. Maria Ewing sings
beautifully in the finale, the words of which seem so naïve when given in
subtitles that one needs to remember that Mahler used them as part of a much
larger vision involving not just the Fourth, but also the Third
symphony.
The reason I cannot get excited about this disc is technical. The picture
is poor by current standards. 1986 is a long time ago in video terms. We are
talking pre-high definition and pre-widescreen. The only nod towards
modernity is that it is in colour. This is what television looked like
thirty years ago. Perhaps the more serious problem is the sound. The dynamic
range is narrow and much worse the woodwind especially are afflicted by
constant low-level flutter so that they seem to be playing under water. I
have not seen or heard the Blu-ray issue of this performance but I imagine
it too has these same problems because they must come from the analogue
master tape, flutter not being a digital artefact.
With top class modern recordings from multiple other conductors available
in high definition pictures with surround sound this seem to be an entirely
redundant issue unless one specifically wants to hear and see these
performers, particularly Maria Ewing. Sir Bernard has made several
recordings of the work in much, much better sound. He has not however, to my
knowledge made a video. That would be the sole reason for purchasing this
issue.
Dave Billinge
