Comparison recordings:
Hermann Scherchen, VSOO, Westminster LP
..DG/Westminster 471 263-2; also [1953
mono ADD] MCA Millennium Classics MCD
80082; also [96/24 re-mastering] DG/Westminster
Hermann Scherchen, VSO ["1960"
(1950?) live, mono ADD] AS Disk AS 302
James Levine, Chicago SO RCA RCD 24581
Pierre Boulez, Cleveland SO DGG 447 756-2
Leonard Bernstein, NYPO [ADD] Sony SMK
60564
Bernard Haitink, Royal Concertgebouw SO
[live] PHILIPS DUTCH MASTERS 50 (9 CDs)
Mahler’s Seventh
Symphony is generally regarded as
his most difficult to conduct, the most
difficult to listen to, and hence the
least popular.
The form of the Seventh
is, typically, somewhat strange. Depending
upon your viewpoint, it’s either a five
movement symphony, or it’s a three section
symphony with the combined functions
of the scherzo and the slow movement
served by a "scherzo" flanked
by two "nachtmusik" movements,
the three together totalling nearly
40 minutes in this recording. It was
with these two "nachtmusik"
character-pieces that the work was conceived
and with which composition of the work
began, from the middle out so to speak.
After their composition, they were "framed"
by the first, middle, and last movements.
Then in the finale Mahler writes some
elaborate musical jokes satirizing Meistersinger,
(there are odd moments from Bruckner
and Mozart and his own Second Symphony,
as well as his Eighth Symphony
which he hadn’t written yet) which have
led some to think he was incompetent,
others that he was mad, cynical, or
just plain vulgar. Some describe the
whole symphony as a nightmare, the complete
opposite to the exultant optimism of
the following Eighth Symphony,
and also quite different from morbid
but concrete tragedy of the preceding
Sixth Symphony. And parts of
the Seventh are just plain spooky.
Having written the
two "nachtmusik" movements,
Mahler came to a complete stop in the
composition of this symphony, unable
to proceed. Then one day it occurred
that he was rushing about, late for
an appointment, and hired a boatman
to row him out to an island in a lake.
As he relaxed into the boat, with the
first dipping of the oars the first
movement of this symphony first began
to play through in his imagination.
It was probably equally the idea of
the island in the lake as well as the
repeated motion of the oars which were
suggestive. Within weeks the full symphony
was sketched out and composition was
under way again. Whether Mahler though
of the complete symphony as two islands
or five islands in a lake, of all of
Mahler’s symphonies these movements
lean on each other the least. There
are virtually no themes, motifs or structures
in common among them. It’s almost as
thought Mahler wrote five unrelated
orchestral pieces and programmed them
to be played in order on one night.
But Mahler conducted
this symphony several times and made
some slight revisions so we may assume
that he said just what he intended to
say. The interpreter’s problem is to
allow each of these disparate elements
to find its full expression while conveying
a sense of logic and wholeness. Obviously
Mahler felt these elements related to
each other, belonged together. A conductor
who cannot convince us of this has not
done his job. However, it is very difficult
to find words to analyze why a performance
of this symphony succeeds or fails.
All one can say is, "it works"
or "it doesn’t work."
Hence we might expect
that opinions would be more diverse
than usual as to which are the best
performances of this particular Mahler
Symphony. However it turns out that
this is not necessarily the case. The
Scherchen and various Haitink performances
are have been very widely admired and
for many years, while partisans of Bernstein
naturally admire his performance. More
recently the Boulez and, now, the Michael
Tilson Thomas performances attract attention
partly because this symphony makes the
greatest use of the widest possible
palette of symphonic sounds and the
most modern high definition recorded
sound is of great advantage.
James Levine’s was
the first performance to be issued on
CD, and his unerring dramatic instincts
and the superb playing of the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra carried them through
with great credit. It is not surprising
that Scherchen and Boulez should be
particularly successful at playing Mahler.
Both have had extensive experience in
twelve tone music, music where tonality
is only one of many ways of vertically
organizing notes. The twelve tone system
is said by some to have been made inevitable
by Mahler’s music. Many conductors are
at some level still uncomfortable with
Mahler’s innovations, whereas Scherchen
and Boulez view Mahler as no more startling
than Schubert or Mozart, and can concentrate
on playing the notes just as written,
avoiding facile solutions and approximations
that other conductors might have required.
Michael Tilson Thomas also has extensive
experience with modern music; in particular
he is one of the finest Stravinsky conductors
of all time and no slouch at Villa-Lobos
and Ives either.
Scherchen’s 1953 recording
with the VSOO was sold as a hi-fi demo
disk, but many consider it the finest
performance ever recorded. It wasn’t
really until Kubelik and Bernstein embarked
on complete cycles in the late 1960s
that the work was widely recorded. Scherchen’s
live recording on AS disk is listed
as "1960" on the disk packaging,
and as 22 June 1950 in René Trémine’s
Scherchen Discography; apparently
this recording was also available temporarily
on the Orfeo label. A third recording
by Scherchen from 1965 made with the
Toronto Symphony was available briefly
without authorization of the Scherchen
family and is no longer in print. Since
evidently Bruno Walter never recorded
the work, these Scherchen recordings
are our clearest window into Mahler’s
contemporary world, since Scherchen
was in some ways as close to Mahler
as Walter was. The interpretation is
monumental, but unfortunately they are
not among Scherchen’s best rehearsed
or best played performances.
I think of my knowledge
of the German language as being quite
limited, but if I’m starting to think
in terms of German puns perhaps I know
more than I think I do. Mahler’s description
for two of these movements is nachtmusik.
We know what Mozart’s definition of
nachtmusik was, a translation
of the Italian serata or serenata,
music of the evening, that is, relaxing
music suitable for the background of
pleasant diversion. But what Mahler
has written is more like "nachmusik."
There is no such word in German, but
if there were it would mean something
like "almost" music, or something
beyond music, meta-music. This idea
is not so far fetched as one might imagine
when one considers that Viennese dialect
is very careless, very slurred. I’m
convinced Mahler heard Mozart’s work
referred to over and over again in Vienna
as "Eine Kleine Nach’musik"
and possibly the idea of nachmusik
began to roll around in his imagination.
Another "night music" precursor
might lie in Verdi’s music at the beginning
of Aïda, act III, music
suggestive of crickets and insects,
setting the scene of a tropical evening*
full of portent. Indeed, there are passages
in these movements of Mahler’s which
resemble insect sounds, or demented
bird sounds, or some mad combination
of both. But that is only a small part;
the music moves on into bizarrerie
of the most profound. After this music
the next step, twelve tone composing,
is all but inevitable. Is it then a
coincidence that Schoenberg’s first
twelve tone composition (also including
mandolin) was his Serenade?
In addition to his
excellent Haydn and Sibelius, most of
those recordings by Leonard Bernstein
which I admire are of modern music;
his recordings of Nielsen, Honegger,
Stravinsky and Milhaud rank among the
very finest. Since the Seventh is perhaps
the most "modern" of Mahler’s
symphonies I hoped this would be the
exception to my general dislike of Bernstein’s
Mahler Symphony recordings. Unfortunately
I was wrong. I found his approach, as
with the other symphonies, so unpleasant
that I could listen to no more than
a few minutes of each movement before
I was forced to remove the disk from
play. When I attempt to express just
what is the problem, my first clue is
given by the cover of the disk. Stokowski
once said that conducting is "all
done with the eyes." Bernstein
has his eyes closed, his face in a rapt
ecstatic expression. He is obviously
having a wonderful time. But another
conductor stated the very essence of
conducting is that the conductor not
feel emotions, that he remain objective,
alert and in control, so that the emotion
is produced mostly in the audience,
not necessarily in the musicians. Recall
when Kathleen Ferrier apologized to
Bruno Walter for her "unprofessional"
conduct when she broke down in tears
while singing Mahler.
To my ear, Bernstein’s
performance of this work has no temporal
relationships; the notes are just played
one after another with no apparent reason
or structure. It’s somewhat like some
of Glenn Gould’s slow staccato Bach
performances where each note is detached
from all the others and there is no
flow. It’s no wonder Gould and Bernstein
didn’t get along personally, at times
they both tried to do the same thing
the same way and, like two chefs, got
totally in each other’s way. But if
you like Bernstein’s approach to Mahler,
you probably already have those recordings
and you will probably not like anybody
else’s approach, so you aren’t likely
to care for Michael Tilson Thomas either.
Tilson Thomas may have taken some lessons
from Bernstein, but is utterly unlike
him in style.
Immediately after listening
- or more correctly attempting to listen
- to the Bernstein I put on the Haitink
recording. The difference was night
and day even though the tempi were virtually
the same. Each note in the Haitink performance
is a word of a sentence in an eloquent
narrative; you are pulled along, gradually
lifted up, settled down, stopped for
a minute then started up again. The
virtuosity of the orchestral playing,
their ensemble and sense of commitment
are breathtaking. This is not surround
sound but what a good four channel decoder
is able to do with this two channel
master is extremely credible. The music
moves inexorably along its appointed
course to a shattering conclusion, at
the end leaving the Dutch audience on
their feet shouting. Even in SACD sound,
can Tilson Thomas surpass this? No.
Michael Tilson Thomas
gives us a very, very fine performance
of this symphony and his engineers deliver
a brilliant wide range low distortion
recording. This is an excellent performance,
a very fine performance, an astounding
performance, particularly in the third
movement. But in every way the Haitink
is just a tiny bit better**. The problem
is that to get the Haitnik performance
you have to buy 9 CDs of "Christmas
Mahler Concerts," or would have
to buy if the disks were still available
commercially, but the only way to buy
the set now is directly from a website
in Holland. If all this is too formidable
for your collector’s mania, settling
for the Michael Tilson Thomas performance
will be an extremely comfortable second
best. You will never regret buying this
recording.
So far the Michael
Tilson Thomas San Francisco Symphony
Mahler cycle has done all of the completed
symphonies except the Eighth.
In this series the purely instrumental
works have come off best, the Sixth
best of all, with some sort of problem
in each of the works with solo vocal.
Choral performance was excellent in
the Second symphony, so I look
forward to their recording of the first
movement of the Eighth. It is in part
two of the Eighth where I would
be concerned. But I hope that my fears
turn out to be completely unfounded;
I hope to be overwhelmed.
I am grateful to Professor
H. F. Redlich of the University of Manchester
Faculty of Music for valuable insights
expressed in his essay to accompany
the Eulenberg edition of the miniature
score. I do however disagree with his
characterization of the distant cowbell
sound in Mahler’s Sixth and Seventh
Symphonies as describing "extreme
loneliness." The image I receive
from this sound is of a view from a
high place overlooking a verdant valley
with farms, cows, crops, streams; and,
in the distance, high snow covered mountains.
But — no humans except the observer.
In other words, the sound of the distant
bells symbolizes the overwhelming spaces
and grandness of Nature perceived in
solitude. It reminds me of a time when
I sat on the edge of the Grand Canyon
in Arizona with no one else around***
and listened to the very quiet sounds
of the birds flying by, a snake crawling
by, tiny sounds which all but masked
the distant roar of the mighty river
a mile below me. To me this is solitude,
yes, but not loneliness. This is as
close as one can get to the sense of
participation in the natural world,
and I felt the presence, perhaps even
the companionship, of the living nature
spirits. And Mahler was at least as
crazy as I am.
*A Doctor of Music
friend insists that this evening music
is the greatest music Verdi ever wrote,
that it shows true creativity, whereas
he considers merely writing tunes is
a vulgar pastime barely worthy of note.
**It turns out that
the first recording review I ever published
was of Haitink’s very first recording
on the strength of which I predicted
that he would one day be reckoned among
the great conductors of our age. It’s
nice to be proven right. (When he let
me go, the editor complained of me that
I was afraid to take risks.)
***Solitude at the
Grand Canyon is a generally impossible
condition as this is one of the most
crowded places in North America. It
happened that in 1963 I managed to slip
into the park’s North Rim section before
official opening when the staff were
assembling prior to opening the hotel,
and someone had left the main gate ajar.
Paul Shoemaker
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra/Michael Tilson
Thomas 
SAN
FRANCISCO SYMPHONY 821936-0009-2 [78.11] 
