Gustav Mahler needs no introduction
to the readers of this music journal,
but perhaps to the supporters of Manchester
United FC, who are the stars of this
25 year-old recording, a few words of
introduction might be needed. He was
born in Austria in 1860, the same year
that Lincoln became president of the
United States, linoleum was discovered
by Walton (not Sir William), the first
innerspring was invented for seat cushions,
and campari was discovered in Milan.
Mahler got round to writing his first
symphony when he was 28, a time many
of us – including football supporters
– are turning towards child rearing
rather than symphonic birth. More progressive
symphonies followed: the pantheistic
Third, premiered when he was 42, the
Visconti-influenced Fifth, finished
when he was 44, the desperately grim
Sixth, written during one of the happiest
periods in his life, and completed when
he was 46 and, in a rather busy year,
1906 again, the Eighth symphony spun
off the drawing board in just six short
weeks.
By the time of the
Eighth Symphony’s appearance on the
musical map, linoleum had been replaced
by Bakelite, a synthetic plastic invented
in Belgium almost to the day Mahler’s
Eighth was published, but it was not
until 1910 that the vast Eighth – played
at the premiere by 1029 musicians and
singers – saw the light of day, coincidentally
in the same year that Campfire Girls
were founded in the United States. A
popular success for the composer, the
symphony has been recorded by most of
the great Mahlerians of the Twentieth
Century, including the conductor on
this disc, Simon (currently Sir Simon)
Rattle, who now has a brace of recordings
of the work to add to his ever-growing
Mahler CV.
Merely a boy when this
recording was made, Rattle brings to
his performance a Faustian fire and
cosmic force, a conception ideally suited
to the open-air acoustic of Manchester’s
Old Trafford stadium. The scene of many
football triumphs, this may well be
its first musical one, although it is
sheer delight to have so many of the
great football team’s supporters taking
part in this recording. Their enthusiasm
is simply infectious. If not a full
house, it certainly sounds as if the
choral contributions (from the mainly
male choirs) raised the roof.
Lasting slightly longer
than one full first half, and half a
second half, Rattle’s speeds are brisk
in the extreme. Some blurring of diction
is inevitable, but what the listener
does not catch is hardly missed when
the power of the performance remains
so persuasive. The acoustic of Old Trafford
comes into its own at the work’s final
climax, a moment of shattering and cumulative
sonority that Rattle ratchets up with
all the tension of a penalty shoot off.
Some of the solo singing might sound
on record more like the banter between
players on a match day, but the extroversion
of the contributions pays off.
Rattle’s first recording
of Mahler’s Eighth may well have been
superseded by his recently released
EMI performance [review]
from a very different gladiatorial home,
Symphony Hall, but the gut-wrenching
theatricality of his Old Trafford performance
is a plausible alternative to the epic
dimensions of the Birmingham recording.
At full time, and at a very low price,
it’s an irresistible bargain, though
the music itself just squeaks home as
being in a class of its own: Mahler
3, Manchester United Supporter’s Club
2.
Marc Bridle
Orchestra, Soloists and Choruses of Manchester
United Supporter’s Club, Simon Rattle (conductor)
