Valery Gergiev seems to
divide opinion more than any other conductor currently
active. I’ve seen his recent performance at the Proms of
the absolutely complete
Sleeping Beauty described
as one of the two or three highlights of the season and
dismissed elsewhere as under-rehearsed and directed as
if Gergiev were on auto-pilot, thinking only of his forthcoming
dash to South Ossetia. There are longueurs in any complete
Tchaikovsky ballet without the dancing, but I thought the
criticism of the performance unfair and unfounded; I shall
certainly keep my off-air recording as an adjunct to the
slightly less complete ‘complete’ Covent Garden performance
conducted by Mark Ermler - formerly on Conifer, currently
unavailable.
The same debate has followed Gergiev’s Mahler performances at the Barbican,
of which we now have two examples on disc. John Leeman
described the performance of the Sixth in terms with which
I thoroughly agree; rather than paraphrase him, I refer
you to his Musicweb ‘Seen and Heard’
review of
the Gateshead concert given the day before this Barbican
recording. I wasn’t at either concert, but I heard the
Radio 3 broadcast and was very impressed, finding Gergiev’s
approach very similar to the one which I have come to regard
as my benchmark for this work, a live performance by the
Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell; formerly on Sony
Essential Classics SBK47654, this appears to have been ‘promoted’ to
the higher-price Great Performances label on
88697 00813 2. Some
dealers are still listing the cheaper SBK version if you
hurry. Single-CD versions of the Sixth are quite rare,
with most conductors following Barbirolli’s example in
pacing the first movement very slowly, though Chandos even
manage to squeeze a short filler,
Todtenfeier, onto
their Neeme Järvi recording (CHAN8956).
Szell actually gets through
that first movement in under eighteen minutes, perhaps
slightly stressing the
allegro energico part
of the direction at the expense of the
ma non troppo which
Mahler added, but I have always preferred that to slower
versions of this movement. Judged by Szell’s standards,
therefore, Gergiev’s 21:59 is comparatively leisurely:
it’s closer to the tempo of most recent recordings and
it now seems to me just about the right compromise for
this movement. LSO Live already had a distinguished Mahler
6 in their catalogue, in the form of a 2002 performance
conducted by Mariss Jansons; at 81:52 overall it’s just
too long to fit onto a single CD, but the first movement
at 23:01 is not markedly slower than the new Gergiev.
Like LS, I’m pleased that
Gergiev, unlike Szell, places the
andante moderato second – Mahler
may have changed his mind about this, but that seems the
more logical arrangement to me.
If Gergiev can be accused
of being insensitive, it’s in the last movement, where,
at 28:44, he’s even a few seconds faster than Szell. Jansons
takes 30:43 for this movement, which allows the music a
little more time to breathe, whereas Gergiev presses on.
One advantage of pressing on is to make the transitions
less awkward – if he doesn’t wholly succeed, that is at
least partly Mahler’s fault – but it does mean that we
seldom have a chance fully to take in the beauties of the
scenery, as it were, and real beauties there are in this
movement. I’m happy to sacrifice some of these for the
energy which Gergiev finds here – after all, the closing
section is marked
allegro energico again, like the
opening of the first movement. If this movement is ‘about’ anything – and
I’m mindful of the Klemperer quotation in JL’s review,
expressing agnosticism about the ‘meaning’ of the symphony – the
hammer blows which fell the hero must have something to
do with it, and these are very effectively delivered here.
And, on second thoughts, there is both poetry and mystery
about the opening of the Finale in this performance.
In another ‘Seen and Heard’ review,
Jim Pritchard writes of the Barbican performance of the
Sixth as “a reign of terror” in which the audience were “beaten
into submission”. Perhaps that response was partly due
to Gergiev’s physical presence, something which, of course,
is absent from the CD; I really don’t hear the recording
like that.
Throughout the work the
LSO give everything that Gergiev asks of them and the same
is true of his version of the Seventh. Here my comparison
was with a Vanguard recording with the Utah Symphony Orchestra
under Maurice Abravanel.
Gergiev’s timings are
not very different from Abravanel’s: the difference between
his 71:55 overall and Abravanel’s 78:41 mirrors the timings
of individual movements. The main difference is in the
quality of the LSO playing: though Abravanel was a distinguished
Mahler interpreter, the Utah orchestra is no match for
the LSO at their best, as they are here.
I’ve seen the opening
of Gergiev’s Seventh at the live concert described in pretty
uncomplimentary terms, which surprised me as I listened
to the finished product. Like Mehta’s reissued version
of the First and Third Symphonies which I recently reviewed
(Decca Eloquence 480 1133) Gergiev’s account of this movement
seemed to me to tick all the right boxes in terms of Mahler’s
markings. I suppose that the reason why there is so much
disagreement about performances of Mahler’s symphonies
is that there are so many apparently contradictory sides
to his character – he gave Nietzsche’s
Nachtlied a
prominent place in the Third Symphony, yet he told Alma
to burn her copy of his works, for example – that no one
performance can ever be ideal.
Stephen Johnson’s programme
notes on the LSO web-page refute Schoenberg’s view of this
symphony as harmonious, arguing that the first two movements
hark back to the tragic Sixth and that the Finale looks
forward to the optimism of the Eighth. Within such a view
of the work, the infelicities which some find in Gergiev’s
performance become instead part of an interpretation which
makes a great deal of sense. Add the further statement
in those notes that the whole symphony is emotionally highly
charged – again, certainly a defensible point of view – and
Gergiev’s performance makes even more sense. If the performance
as a whole leaves more questions asked than answered, so
does the work itself.
JL concluded his review
of the live performance of the Sixth with the prophetic
words:
"
No doubt there will be
plans to record and market the [Gergiev] cycle in its entirety.
When this happens it will deserve to be regarded as a major
recording event."
What he perhaps didn’t
foresee was the very mixed reception which the CDs would
receive: the Sixth was Editor’s Choice in one magazine
and the Seventh is Recording of the Month in another, but
there has also been much adverse comment from those who
find that Gergiev misses the poetry and, therefore, the
point of one or both of these works. I understand what
the critics are missing, but I listened several times with
considerable enjoyment to these performances of both symphonies.
I may well make the Seventh my version of choice.
I shan’t be getting rid
of my Szell recording of the Sixth, but the Abravanel Seventh
has passed its sell-by date by comparison with what Gergiev
has to offer. I wouldn’t say that either CD had yet become
my benchmark in the same way that Kubelík’s First, Szell’s
Fourth and Bernstein’s DG Fifth certainly are – only time
will tell. With a recording of a mainstream symphony, one
can be pretty sure very quickly whether one likes the interpretation
or not. Szell’s version of the Fourth immediately had that
effect on me when I first heard it long ago on CBS Classics,
but Gergiev’s Sixth and Seventh are still to a certain
extent in my pending tray. It took me nearly forty years
to decide finally that I preferred Klemperer’s Mahler Second
to Bruno Walter’s and I haven’t got another forty left.
I’ve been slightly dismissive
of Barbirolli’s Sixth, so let me make amends by recommending
his version of the Ninth, another recording which struck
me as right from the first time I heard it (EMI Great Recordings
5 67925 2). And, as much for Janet Baker’s contribution
as Barbirolli’s,
Kindertotenlieder,
Lieder eines
fahrenden Gesellen and
Rückert Lieder on EMI
GROC 5 66910 2.
Being impatient to hear
these Gergiev performances and make up my own mind in the
light of such a degree of disagreement, I downloaded both
symphonies from eMusic. The Seventh is certainly more than
acceptable – three movements at 192kbps, the last two at
224k – but I was less happy with their version of the Sixth,
at bit-rates ranging from 176k to 256k. The Finale in particular
makes severe demands on any recording medium and here I
thought eMusic’s mp3 download slightly too thin. LSO Live
have cut the applause – a mistake I feel – and the ending
sounds abrupt at eMusic’s fairly low bit-rate. I usually
find 192k perfectly adequate but here even 224k didn’t
seem quite up to it.
I also sampled the 320kbps
version of the Sixth from Chandos’s theclassicalshop.net
and was much happier with this version all round: I’d still
like a little more reverberation at the end, or, better
still, the applause, as on the Szell recording, but the
fuller 320k sound reduces the abruptness. The eMusic versions
are incredibly inexpensive – four tracks for the Sixth
works out at less than £1 and the Seventh comes out at £1.20
on the 50-tracks-per-month programme, but I think the Chandos
version of the Sixth is very definitely worth the extra.
Downloading doesn’t, of
course, bring the booklet of notes but the programme notes
for the LSO performances are available on their web-site.
More seriously for SACD aficionados, of course, the downloads
come in stereo only – and mp3 stereo at that, not lossless
wma or flac. Whichever way you obtain these recordings
is not going to cost a fortune, since the CDs are competitively
priced. Mahlerians and budding Mahlerians should certainly
give them a try.
Brian Wilson
London Symphony
Orchestra/Valery Gergiev 
[77:11] 
