Comparison Recordings:
Abravanel, USO, Vanguard [AAD CD] 086
1797 1
Chailly, Concertgebouw Orchestra
Decca 467 314-2
Chailly, Concertgebouw Orchestra [DVD-Audio]
Decca B000 1498-19
Davis, Bavarian Radio Orchestra BMG
09026-68348-2
Sinopoli, Philharmonia Orchestra DGG
435 433-2
Tennstedt, LPO EMI 5 75661-2
Horenstein, LSO BBC BBCL 4001-7
Solti, CSO Decca 414 493-2
Bernstein, LPO [complete] and
Bernstein, NYPO [Part I only] both included
in Sony box SX12K 89499
Mahler’s First Symphony
(Mitropoulos), the Fourth Symphony
(Walter), and the Song of the
Earth (Walter 1936) I learned in
my youth from 78s. They were all that
was available at the time. When I got
to college — it was a technical college
— naturally somebody had had a by-modern-standards
primitive tape recorder and a record
cutter so there was a pirate LP copy
of the Stokowski NYPO broadcast of Symphony
of a Thousand circulating in the
dorms. The sound was, of course, all
but impenetrable, probably worse than
nothing, but it suggested wonders to
come. Gradually the Mahler discography
bloomed during the hi-fi LP years, and
we had the 1953 monophonic outdoor windblown
live recording from the Holland Festival,
complete with boat whistles in the background,
to give a further hint of the legendary
Symphony of a Thousand. In 1960
when I was DJ at a coffee house in Los
Angeles and wanted to play all the Mahler
symphonies on successive Sunday evenings,
I was just barely able to do so by borrowing
from several collectors.
When the Abravanel
stereo LP recording appeared, I bought
it at once, put side one on the machine,
and with the first notes abruptly went
into a semi-conscious state of what
I have come to call "aesthetic
orgasm". When the first movement
was over I staggered to my feet, left
the room, wiped my soaking wet face
with a towel, applied first-aid to my
swollen eyes and throat and realised
that I remembered nothing from the previous
25 minutes. When my respiration and
heart rates returned to normal I put
the record away and listened to no music
at all for days. This situation* repeated
with decreasing intensity during my
next listenings to the disk, and I began
to seriously consider the idea of listening
to sides 2 and 3, which eventually turned
out to be so much of a let-down that
I forgot all about it until quite recently.
When I referred to the Mahler Eighth
Symphony then I always meant the
first movement only.
Over the years I avoided
over-listening to the work, but found
as I prepared this survey that I can
listen to the music and enjoy it and
even adopt a critical, evaluating attitude,
and not wear it out. In a class with
Bach’s Mass in b minor and Rimsky-Korsakov’s
Scheharazade, it is among the
most durable music there is.
The Abravanel/USO DVD-Audio
features excellent choral performances.
This is not exactly the fabulous Mormon
Tabernacle Choir, but in a small town
one can be sure that many of the best
singers are in both that group and the
university choirs heard here. The soloists
are apparently all drawn from the chorus
and given special coaching for the recording
(as one friend pointed out cattily,
obviously by an Italian who loved Verdi),
so the sense of ensemble is exceptional
with the soloists rising out of the
chorus and sinking back into it effortlessly
with no sense of competition. They are
all excellent but do not have the enormous
voices nor the star consciousness of
the soloists in the other recordings.
The recording location is not given,
but knowing that Alexander Schreiner
is the organist of the Mormon Tabernacle
and there can’t be many large halls
with organs in Salt Lake City, one presumes
that the recording was made in the Tabernacle
and that religious discretion prevents
them from mentioning it.
The drama in the first
part is better than Davis and the pacing
good, but disappointing in the bass
range — in fact, nothing at all below
about 90 Hz and rolled off above that.
The CD issue has more bass, to the extent
that by turning up the bass control
one can make the harmonic foundation
line audible, but some odd thumps here
and there may be the reason (not a good
enough one!) that the engineers removed
the bass from the DVD-Audio edition.
Here would be a good use for a subharmonic
synthesiser while listening.
Chailly and the Concertgebouw,
one of the most widely praised of the
new recordings, and available on DVD-audio
(I have listened only to the CD tracks
but have trusted my imagination to supply
the remainder), was a bit ponderous
in style in the first part, with well
delineated drama in the choral parts,
but the soprano was awful. The bass
sound was excellent. In the excellent
second section I got as far as the first
big soprano aria and had to stop — she
could not find her pitch and I couldn’t
put up with it any more. The tenor sounded
like he was wearing a tight corset and
was about to explode, odd because the
same tenor sings beautifully for Sir
Colin Davis. Anybody can have a bad
day. With so many good Mahler recordings
we don't have to put up with this.
The Sir Colin Davis
recording with the Bavarian Radio Orchestra
on CD is similar in tempo to the Abravanel
recording, but the mood is cool in Part
I. Bass range sound is good, the soprano
good, scooping her notes a little annoyingly
at times (she recovers greatly for the
final arias). In fact the soloists as
a group are excellent, especially the
men. Ironically, Heppner also sings
on the Chailly recording, but doesn't
sound good there, but here he is Siegfried
incarnate! Baritone Lieferkus has sung
everything but has never sounded so
good as he does here.
The Solti version doesn’t
use the fabulous Chicago choirs but
imports choirs from Vienna and a star
roster of European soloists who clearly
have a proper aristocratic attitude
towards their noble status as opposed
to the chorus rabble. The perspective
is distant and cool, but the bass response
is excellent if a little unstable. The
final conclusion is thrillingly massive.
Overall I get an impression of size,
grandeur, dignity, but little sense
of mystery or expectancy. Abravanel
by comparison has a cohesion and, believe
it or not, intimacy — even at the most
furious moments one can hear individual
voices. The Utah children’s chorus have
a quality of innocence and naïveté
to their sound whereas the Vienna Choir
Boys do not let you forget for a second
that Schubert and Haydn once sang in
their ranks. In fairness, the Viennese
choirs were a long way from home and
may have been suffering from jet-lag.
Actually the first
stereo recording I had on LP was by
Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic
Orchestra with a star roster of soloists,
taken live from the inaugural concert
of the new Lincoln Center Philharmonic
Hall. It was of Part I only and was
pretty straightforward, although as
I described one hearing of the Abravanel
recording was enough to wash it completely
out of my memory. In this first Bernstein
recording we are not made aware of the
bad acoustics which forced the early
remodelling of Philharmonic Hall financed
by, and hence renamed for, millionaire
Avery Fisher. Bernstein’s second and
complete recording features the odd
distortions and exaggerations of phrasing
for which his Mahler is famous and which
I find unendurable even for short periods
of time. If you particularly appreciate
his approach then you probably don’t
like anybody else’s approach and will
be perfectly delighted with the complete
Bernstein Mahler set on Sony, and consequently
will choose to ignore most if not all
of what I’ve said here. I’ve had no
opportunity to hear Bernstein’s later
Mahler set on DG except small sections
of it on the radio; in general I admire
his later recordings with the VPO of
other music, particularly the Sibelius
Symphonies, but doubt he reformed his
Mahler conducting completely.
You may feel that the
Abravanel performance, considering my
nearly psychotic reaction to it, has
irrevocably upgraded my firmware and
that I am incapable of judging fairly
any other version. But my advice is:
to assemble a perfect version, take
Abravanel for the first section (with
your subharmonic synthesiser connected),
Chailly for the beginning of part two,
and Davis for Pater Ecstaticus
to the end.
*Apparently the young
Donald Francis Tovey had similar experiences
which lead his guardians to think he
was unstable and liable to physical
collapse. Thus they forced him to rest
excessively and avoid exercise during
his life, perhaps fatally weakening
his heart and leading to his early death.
Praise the Gods I never let on to anybody.
Paul Shoemaker
Utah Symphony Orchestra/Maurice Abravanel
CLASSIC
HDAD 2001 [75.36] 