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SEEN AND HEARD UK CONCERT REVIEW
Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
Symphony No 9 in D
There was a very short first half to this concert but it was a
significant one: having recently sat through the worst performance of
the 'Songs of a Wayfaring Lad' I am ever likely to hear, given by
Wolfgang Holzmair, I was privileged to hear Christopher Maltman
singing the best one at which I may ever be present.
I am constantly trying to encourage people to consider Mahler's music
as fundamental 'operatic' and the many rather 'precious'
interpretations of his Lieder can argue against this because
it is perceived to be the necessary 'Art' of a Lieder singer
to internalize them and rein in their emotions as a result. Maltman
brought out the meaning of Mahler's poetry through his expressive face
and voice and, with a bitingly sardonic early 'Schatz', it was obvious
this was going to be a unique account of these over-familiar songs
about the misery of a lost love. Each one was treated as a mini-aria;
'Ich hab' ein glühend Messer' was sung with clenched teeth ferocity
and an almost psychopathic fervour, as though Maltman was auditioning
for Alberich - a role he could do well. The wonderful range of
Maltman's voice was never better revealed than in the last lines of
the final song as it descended from 'alles' to 'Traum' ('alles, Lieb
und Leid, und Welt und Traum!'). He was quite brilliant and even
though Mahler utilises a fairly large orchestra I luxuriated in the
spaciousness of Christoph Eschenbach's accompaniment of these rather
lightly-scored songs.
Mahler's Ninth Symphony was composed in 1909 and 1910, and was the
last symphony that he completed. Probably as a result of that it is
the one that might be heard most in 2011, the centenary of the
composer's death. Whether it needs three performances in a week - with
two to be conducted by Valery Gergiev with the LSO in coming days - is
perhaps overdosing the restricted audience for Mahler a bit too much
and may explain the rather less than full Royal Festival Hall.
Having recently learned of the infidelity of his wife Alma, Mahler he
was suffering a deep personal crisis and this symphony is considered
to be the most intense, self-pitying - possibly neurotic - of his
symphonic works. Although the symphony has the traditional number of
movements - four - it is unusual in that the first and last are slow
rather than fast.
The work opens with a hesitant, syncopated motif (which some
commentators - most notably Leonard Bernstein - have suggested
represents in music Mahler's irregular heartbeat) which is to return
at the height of the movement's development as a sudden intrusion of
'death in the midst of life', announced by trombones and marked within
the score 'with the greatest force'. Moreover, the main theme also
quotes - through three descending notes - the opening motif of
Beethoven's Les Adieux piano sonata. Les Adieux
means 'farewell' and Mahler wrote that word at this point in the
sketch for the music. This piano sonata coincidentally marked a
turning point in Mahler's early musical career as he performed Les
Adieux during his graduation recital in college.
The second movement is a dance, a ländler, but it has been
distorted to the point that it no longer resembles a dance. It is
reminiscent of the second movement of Mahler's Fourth Symphony in the
distortion of a traditional dance into a danse macabre
- a 'dance of death'.
The third movement, in the form of a Rondo, displays the
final maturing of Mahler's skills in using counterpoint. It opens with
a dissonant theme in the trumpet which is treated in the form of a
double fugue. The addition of Burleske (a parody with
imitations) to the title of the movement refers to the mixture of
dissonance with the Baroque counterpoint with which we are familiar
from Bach. The autograph score is marked 'to my brothers in Apollo'
and the movement is no doubt intended as a sarcastic and withering
response to the critics of his music at the time.
The final movement, marked 'very slowly and held back' (zurückhaltend,
literally meaning reservedly), opens for strings only. There
is a great similarity in the opening theme to the hymn Abide With
Me but most importantly it is a direct quote from the Rondo-Burleske's
middle section, where it was mocked and derided: here it becomes an
elegy. After several impassioned climaxes the movement increasingly
disassembles and the coda ends quietly, albeit affirmatively. On the
closing pages, Mahler quotes in the first violins from his own
Kindertotenlieder: The day is fine on yonder heights; in
other words the ultimate destination is somewhere beyond life.
Because Mahler died not long after the completion of the Ninth
Symphony - and did not live to witness its première - this ending is
sometimes interpreted as being a self-conscious farewell to the world.
However, as Mahler was already working on his Tenth Symphony before
his Ninth was completed, this is rather unlikely.
So with this symphony Mahler seems to question and subvert the very
forms and traditions that he had shown he had completely mastered in
his other symphonies. By turns the Ninth Symphony is lyrical and
brutal, mixing music that is superficially mundane with some that is
ethereal and exalted. To be sure Eschenbach's account was languorous
and, as always, the huge outer movements (here as 'huge' - i.e. long -
as I have ever heard them, I think) provided the biggest challenges.
The first movement was rather episodic with its succession of
juddering crises; Eschenbach just about managed not to lose momentum
in the post-climax - or possibly post-coital - sections,
where the music seems to be piecing itself back together.
In the last movement, impassioned outpourings from the strings argue
with a more reflective second melody and these lusher passages are
underpinned by the double-basses. The violins slowly wind down and the
final pages fragment; under Eschenbach the texture thinned and the
music almost stuttered to a halt as Mahler seems wearily to give up on
life at times. At last, the strings whisper the final transcendent
phrase … and then nothing happened. Eschenbach kept his arms raised
and the members of the excellent LPO held their instruments in place.
I suddenly realised I had forgotten to breathe and even for once - and
only this once - the coughers were silent! Then, quite deliberately,
Eschenbach lowered his hands; the musicians put down their instruments
and soon joined in the ovation for their conductor. A very memorable
Mahler Nine, though not the best I have heard.
Jim Pritchard