Nereffid vs Mahler 8: More Wayfaring

On, at last, to the orchestral recordings of Lieder eines Fahrenden Gesellen. The first one I listened to was Brigitte Fassbaender, Deutsches SO Berlin/Riccardo Chailly (Decca), and hearing it right after several piano versions required quite an adjustment. In fact I had a few doubts about whether the orchestral version was a good idea. Those stemmed, essentially, from the fact that your orchestra obviously has a much broader sound palette than your piano and I initially felt there was a little too much contrast between songs to produce a fully coherent cycle. Nonsense, of course, and nothing more than a reminder to have one's correct listening ears on. That said, this particular performance is high on contrast anyway, thanks to the high drama of Fassbaender's reading; even in the first song, the cheerful second verse is a world away from the sorrowful first - and then the third comes back to the start. I noted at the time "You wonder how she could go on, frankly", but on she goes to a joyful "Ging heut' morgen" that eventually sinks into sadness, and then a variously harsh, mysterious, and sinister "Ich hab' ein gluhend Messer". As for the final song, Fassbaender doesn't seem as accepting of her fate as the singers I've listened to earlier. In the end she goes peacefully, but with a sense of resignation - a much darker ending than I've heard before. Overall, Fassbaender and Chailly's approach to the cycle doesn't quite match what I like to get out of it, but it still impresses.
Second is Thomas Allen, English Chamber Orchestra/Jeffrey Tate (EMI). My first impression here was that there was a rather Wotanish sound to Allen's performance (though he hasn't done much Wagner, as far as I know) - which is to say, quite a bit of dramatic heft, and I felt there was a certain sense of detachment in the third verse (somewhat like Christoph Pregardien's performance) that in this case came across as a sort of godlike commentator on the situation rather than one personally involved. The music flows well here, but the sound of the recording isn't great, and in the second verse Allen's voice rather disappears, like he's up a tree! Again in the pastoral second song I hear a patriarchal quality to the voice, making the song sound like something from Haydn's Creation. But I noted "He does a lovely 'nimmer'" towards the end. There's a big dramatic contrast as we go to the third song, but the transition works well. Mrs Nereffid described the overall feeling of this one as "futile anger", while I heard Wotan returning for the last line. "Die zwei blauen Augen" has a valedictory start, and the second verse has a touch of hope as he sets off on his journey. Later he's quite sad but not despairing, and he drifts off at the end, like he has no more say in the matter. The orchestral coda is wistful. It's a shame about the recorded sound in this performance (I have it on a HMV Classics release; maybe there's another issue that sounds better), because Allen seems in fine voice; in fairness, though, interpretively I would wish for more.
Unfortunately Bernadette Greevy, NSO Ireland/János Fürst don't provide a huge amount of interpretation either. Not that I don't like the performance - I like her voice - but I could do with more characterization. The second song feels too slow, the third seems a little tepid, and I'm not convinced by the ending of the fourth, which seems more like enunciation of the words rather than anything deeper. In the olden days before cheap downloads, you could say that this was good value at the Naxos price without committing yourself to an actual recommendation. But Fassbaender wins easily in a direct comparison.
To be continued...

NvM 7: Songs of a Wayfarer

I see that four months have passed since the last "installment" of this series, and it was four months before that that I actually listened to the music under discussion here.
We're talking about Mahler's song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen - Songs of a Wayfarer. Or Songs of a Wayfaring Lad as some translations have it. Or indeed, Songs of a Driving Associate according to Babel Fish. This was his first proper song cycle. He wrote it with piano accompaniment around 1885 and orchestrated it nearly a decade later, but in fact he always had it in mind as an orchestral work. There are 4 songs, and I suppose you could call it a rather compact Winterreise.
The first song - they all have Mahler's words, by the way - is "Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht" ("When my love becomes a bride"), and it immediately sets a dark tone. It has a folksy feel to it, as does much of the cycle. Here the singer's contemplating his loved one's wedding day - not to him, obviously - and although he seems to find consolation in nature things don't work out that way: "spring is dead and gone./Singing's done for ever now".
By the second song, though, he's cheered up a bit: "Ging heut' Morgen übers Feld" he sings, describing the lovely things he saw on his morning jaunt in the countryside - which lasts almost all the way through the song before he realises that his life is still, at bottom, miserable.
"Ich hab' ein glühend Messer" is full of rage and despair, with plenty of "O weh!"s as he sings of the pain and torture he's being put through. It culminates in the singer wishing he were dead.
And does he get his wish? Perhaps. The final song, "Die zwei blauen Augen", sees him appear to pull himself together somewhat, as he leaves town in the dead of night. By and by he finds a linden tree, so beloved of Romantic poets, under which he lies down and... well, it really depends on who you listen to. Perhaps he has embraced death, or maybe it's just that, alone in the great world, he has finally found peace. Either one is possible, and it's fascinating hearing how subtle differences in performance can push it one way or the other.

I decided to start my listening with recordings of the piano version - this was the original version but the orchestral version from the early 1890s is seen as the "definitive" one.
Christian Gerhaher, Gerold Huber (RCA). Hey, this recently won a Nereffid's Guide Award! I was very pleased with that, as it's an excellent album, and Gerhaher's voice is a wonderful thing. I suppose this is a slightly low-key performance, certainly compared to others. In "Ging heut", for instance, he's cheerful rather than exuberant, and then towards the dark end of the song he hangs on to optimism for as long as he can, and there's a sense of sad acceptance in his realisation that happiness won't be coming his way. The third song's opening feels oddly like one of Schubert's "riding" songs - lovely clear piano from Gerold Huber - rather than a personal apocalypse. If this all seems like the performance isn't quite up to scratch, I should be clear that it very much is up to scratch, as it's full of character. The final song promises something valedictory as it opens, and as the wayfarer approaches the linden tree there's a touch of optimism, and the song ends in peace - and yet there's something unsettling about the final piano notes.
Janet Baker, Geoffrey Parsons (Hyperion). There's a tragic quality to Janet Baker's voice right from the start; though the second verse of the first song can have some cheer to it, here she sings plaintively, and there's a weary sadness through the whole thing. This sort of tone doesn't suit the second song, though, I think, and it feels rather undercharacterized. I like the third song, though, and the fourth does have character - but unlike Gerhaher, Baker seems to have given up. This one ends like a lullaby, but again that piano coda throws a spanner in the works - it gives the story an unfinished feel. I'll have more to say about Janet Baker later on.
Christoph Prégardien, Michael Gees (Hänssler). Having had a baritone and mezzo, we now turn to a tenor, which is not usual but isn't something that bothers me. It's possible that Prégardien and Gees's performance would bother some people; right from the start there seems to be a little messing with tempos and rhythms. Perhaps more worrisome might be Prégardien's style in the opening number - I wouldn't quite call it "detached" but he doesn't seem to be living the words. And the second song also appears mannered, as if he's reciting poetry about nature rather than actually being out in it - a touch of the drawing room to the whole thing. Yet I found the clarity of his voice rather made up for this apparent lack of engagement. Ah, but then... the final lines of this song seem to mark a major change, and the emotional level rises immensely - most certainly when they launch into "Ich hab'ein glühend Messer". Perhaps Prégardien did fail to be engaged in the first couple of songs, but it seems to me that the lack of engagement is deliberate. Here's a man who, as the cycle begins, simply doesn't realise what he's in for. Not quite Eugene Onegin, perhaps, but he comes across in the first song as someone who's quite prepared to get over this romantic setback. Song two, it's "See? For example, I can now go and appreciate Nature" - but suddenly everything hits him in the gut, and he's not OK. Song three is his explosion of pain, and song four - well, song four is where he finds a way out. He gathers his dignity but he's no longer the same person. He takes his leave, almost like a soldier (and indeed Gees's accompaniment is rather reminiscent of other of Mahler's songs that have a military component). The singer has embraced his fate, and at the linden tree he finds great peace. But there's a slightly more intense pulse to this than we've heard in the other performance, like he's being dragged willingly forward to his end. Here, the final piano notes sound like a memory. I really like this recording.
Angelika Kirchschlager, Helmut Deutsch (Quinton). Of the four voice-and-piano recordings here, this is by a long way the most beautiful to listen to, as Kirchschlager has a lovely clear voice that really rings out. On eMusic, from which I downloaded this, someone has reviewed the album saying "these songs were created by Mahler and Angelika's singing morphs them into the perfect Lieder", and actually I think that praise highlights something that's unfortunately not quite right about the performance, to my ears at least. In a way, these four songs aren't lieder - the cycle is rather more than the sum of its parts, but my impression of Kirchschlager's performance is that these are, indeed four individual lieder. It doesn't feel like a journey, basically. Everything is pretty much in its right place, but to my mind a lot of it needs a little tweak - darker, usually but not always - if the whole thing is to hang together. I suppose the problem is that it sounds so lovely, but there are moments when less loveliness is required. For all that, though, I do like it. I mean, it is so lovely! But for something more, I must stick with Gerhaher and Prégardien. And... but let's wait for another day before we get to the orchestral versions.

Nereffid vs Mahler 6: Philosophical Interlude

It's been quite a while since I did one of these. My simple excuse is that I have been listening to Mahler's music instead of writing about it, which I think we can agree is a better use of my time. But the original idea had been to blog my impressions of the many (many) recordings pretty much as I listened to them, rather than (as has now happened) listen to a huge amount of music and then somehow marshall my thoughts on the whole lot. It wasn't my intention to produce anything resembling Tony Duggan's very useful "synoptic survey" of the Mahler symphonies ("Mrs Kensington, we've performed a synoptic survey of your husband's liver and I'm afraid the results are not good...").

But what this delay in writing about the music has achieved is to give me a chance to consider the nature of what I'm trying to do, why I'm doing it, and what the end result could be. I've never been one to worry about whether recording A is better than recording B, except on the basic practical level of "will I enjoy this as I listen to it?" I trust the critics en masse if not necessarily individually to point me in the direction of excellence but by and large, assuming the performers are technically up to the task, I don't fret over whether my recording of a particular work is "the best", or, if I like a recording, whether I might enjoy another one more. So it's not in my nature to sit down and listen to many (many) recordings of the same piece of music and judge them against each other. That, however, is exactly what I'm doing with Mahler.

It's been fascinating, entertaining, and sometimes baffling. Of course comparing and contrasting recordings isn't just about picking a favourite, but also about learning more about the music. One conductor chooses this tempo, another chooses that tempo, and the question isn't so much which is the right tempo, but does this tempo make sense? Or one conductor's brass is prominent, another focuses on the strings, and the result for me is that I learn more about the work as a whole. Perhaps some sort of Platonic ideal of the music exists in my mind, constantly being subtly refined. The problem there is that it becomes easy to fall into the trap of thinking the music "should" sound a certain way, and if it doesn't then it's "wrong". The best critics don't think that way, but still I suppose everyone has their "did you even listen to the same CD?" moment. The question I'm learning to ask myself at this stage is, "so this recording doesn't necessarily match my concept of the music, but can it be a valid alternative?" And yet... ultimately it all comes down to personal preference, and some alternatives get rejected. Some time ago I formulated Nereffid's First Law of Music Criticism, which is that there does not, nor will there ever, exist a Mahler recording that every Mahler fan will like. From my own listening so far, I know this is true. I'm certainly out of step with Tony Duggan on a few things, and while I will defer to him and any other respectable critic (define "respectable"!) on matters technical and musicological, well, there it is: we disagree.

Sometimes I wonder should anyone even dare to compare one recording or performance against another. Is that what music is for, at all? Obviously if you hear a piece of music you already know well, you can't help but compare it to your previous listening experiences. But maybe we hear music too often, and can no longer live in the moment when we listen. After all, I've heard 13 different conductors and 12 different orchestras in recordings of Mahler's 1st symphony over the last few months. How many different performances did Mahler himself, or anyone living at that time, hear? It would be nice to be able to reset the switch before listening to another, and feel the music anew.

But then I put another recording in the player, and that mysterious seven-octave A shines forth on the strings, and I'm there again...

Nereffid vs Mahler 5: Songs and Songs

Mahler's first volume of Lieder und Gesänge comprises 5 pieces, but which of them are lieder and which are gesänge? Deryck Cooke begins his commentary on this collection rather dispritingly, saying "Only three are of real interest", and Donald Mitchell remarks that "The five songs... are not of equal importance". They both agree that the 3 decent ones are "Frühlingsmorgen", "Erinnerung", and "Hans und Grete", the last of which we've already encountered as one of the songs Mahler wrote for Josephine Poisl.
I'm not going to go into the details and relative merits of the various recordings of these songs that I've been listening to, as things would get very bitty. Suffice to say I've heard Janet Baker and Geoffrey Parsons (Hyperion) doing all 5 songs; 2 each from Christianne Stotijn/Julius Drake (Onyx) and Christian Gerhaher/Gerold Huber (RCA); and the mixed contributions on the EMI and DG "complete Mahler" sets.

"Frühlingsmorgen" ("Spring Morning") is charming; in it, the singer is encouraging a "sleepyhead" to get out of bed - "the bees and beetles are buzzing, and I've already seen your lively sweetheart". The song itself is rather sleepy, and you suspect the singer's rather sympathetic to whoever it is that's cosily tucked up. Some singers more than others highlight the lullaby nature of the ending.
"Erinnerung" ("Remembering") is, as its title might suggest, a nostalgic number, the singer thinking about some lost or failed love and how it inspires songs. It rises to a passionate climax before sinking down into sadness and finally a very dark conclusion on the piano. Donald Mitchell points out that this song provides an early example of progressive tonality in Mahler's music - it begins in G minor and ends in A minor - and cites Schumann as an influence.
And, indeed, the first song in Schumann's Der arme Peter begins with the line "Der Hans und die Grete tanzen herum", which brings us neatly to Mahler's "Hans und Grete" - which, as I've said, we've already encountered. I suppose I can interject here that the DG Mahler edition includes, rather oddly, 2 of Luciano Berio's orchestrations of these songs ("Frühlingsmorgen" and "Hans und Grete") at the expense of the original piano versions. I'm not sure what the thinking was there. Berio's versions are certainly worthwhile, though the orchestra seems unnecessarily large. But it did help me notice a little bit of accompaniment in "Frühlingsmorgen" that shows up in the second-movement trio of the Symphony no.1.

The two unloved songs here are "Serenade" and "Phantasie", both using texts taken from Tirso de Molina's Don Juan. Go on, admit that you don't know who Tirso de Molina is. There's no shame in it. But why are Cooke and Mitchell so dismissive of these two songs? Well, with "Serenade" it's pretty obvious. There's nothing wrong with it as such, but it just doesn't sound like Mahler at all. You could fancy that there's a few notes of accompaniment that prefigure the Symphony no.9, which would I suppose open up a whole critical can of worms, but by and large I think it's possible to love every single thing Mahler wrote except this one.
Poor old "Phantasie", though. It's a short ballad about a "fisher-maid" who "traps hearts" but whose own heart "reflects no love". It starts with a tune that makes me think of one of those fanfares from the Knaben Wunderhorn songs, although Mahler's instruction was that the piano should try to sound like a harp (it also reminds me of a guitar). Like "Serenade" it can be regarded as insufficiently Mahlerian, but I must say I like "Phantasie" a lot. It helps to have heard Christian Gerhaher's recent recording - he invests it with a darkness I don't hear elsewhere that moves it away from being a lied and into the realm of folk song. As I noted in my comments on the Piano quartet, there's a constant tension between what the professionals may consider good music and what your humble listener thinks.

And that concludes "Mahler: the early years". What will happen next? Will Mahler mature into a great composer who produces magnificent symphonies encompassing all of human emotion, or will he just spend the rest of his life writing incidental music to second-rate plays? Join us next time to find out!

Nereffid vs Mahler 4: The Singing Bone

Das klagende Lied (The Song of Lament) was completed in 1880. It's a "dramatic cantata" for soloists and chorus based on a folk tale - or rather, on two similar folk tales. In one collected by Ludwig Bechstein, a prince and princess compete to succeed the queen, who has decreed that the winner will be whoever finds a particular flower in the forest; in the Grimm brothers' tale, it's two brothers who are competing for a wife. In both cases, one murders the other and wins the prize, but later someone (a child or a minstrel) discovers a bone in the forest and carves it into a flute. When he plays, a voice emerges from the bone, telling the whole sorry tale. In Mahler's cantata, two brothers are competing to win the queen's hand in marriage, and the bone is discovered by a minstrel, who brings it to the castle on the day of the wedding and simply ruins everyone's day.

Mahler was 20 when he finished the work, and by now much of the groundwork for the Mahler we know has been laid. You can have fun playing "guess the influence", though - a mix of German romantics from Weber to early Wagner and Bruckner. Das klagende Lied has an odd compositional history, in as much as Mahler wrote it in 3 parts but subsequently dropped the first part entirely. How could he manage that? Part I tells the story of the brothers and the murder, and then in Part II the minstrel discovers the bone and learns the story; so there is a certain amount of dramatic repetition (Part III covers the minstrel's appearance at the wedding). Part I remained out of sight until 1969 (according to Wikipedia), and I think it's been essentially reinstated - aside from whether it's good music, the point is it's nearly a half-hour's worth of Mahler and so can't be ignored.

And yet, when listening to it for the first time in years, in the recording by Simon Rattle/City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (EMI), I could see why Mahler chose to drop Part I. For all its musical qualities - already he's a master of the orchestra - the dramatic pacing's not great. He really shouldn't need 25 to 30 minutes to tell this story. I suspect he was enjoying himself a bit too much, revelling in the use of the orchestra to paint the tale. But then again, a couple of months later I heard for the first time the recording from Riccardo Chailly/Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (Decca) and found that I enjoyed it a lot more, and time seemed to pass much quicker. Was this just a case of increased familiarity, or is Chailly's performance better than Rattle's? Probably just the former; dramatically speaking there's not much to choose between them, I think. So yes, we could in theory dispense with Part I but then we'd be missing out on so many wonderful moments, not least the intriguing depiction of the murder itself. The relevant verse is His eye gleams with savage joy, Its look has told no lie; A sword of steel hangs at his side, Now he has drawn it! The elder laughs 'neath the willow tree, The younger smiles as in a dream. (This is from Eric Mason's translation with the Rattle disc). The big climax here is on the last two lines - and on the word "smiles" (lächelt), the choir descends in a weird, well, laughing phrase that we can assume is also the sound of the sword descending. Almost immediately, the music becomes serene and beautiful and gradually transforms into something that is recognisable as the ending of the song "Die zwei blaue Augen" from the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, where again it's associated with a death-like sleep or sleep-like death (more on that ambiguity when we get to those Lieder). This is the sort of psychology we Mahlerians love - death, happiness, murder, and peace all mixed up together. And indeed in Part III we get another such juxtaposition, when Mahler uses an off-stage wind band as part of his depiction of the wedding festivities. After the minstrel has revealed the terrible truth, and everyone is stunned to silence, the band strikes up again, completely unaware of what's going on. It's a wonderfully twisted moment.

Although in terms of story-telling there may not be much to choose between Rattle and Chailly, I much prefer Decca's sound to EMI's, which is a little too close up and doesn't allow the orchestra much delicacy. This might well have been a contributing factor to why I was happier with Part I once I heard Chailly. A more pertient fact is that overall I prefer Chailly's soloists - Susan Dunn (sop), Brigitte Fassbaender (mez), Werner Hollweg (ten), Andreas Schmidt (bass) - to Rattle's - Helena Döse (sop), Alfreda Hodgson (mez), Robert Tear (ten), Sean Rea (bar). (The score calls for a baritone, not a bass, but I've written them as they appear on the discs. I just compared the 2 singers in one passage and I'd have said Rea was the bass and Schmidt the baritone. Go figure.) One key piece of casting I've omitted here is the singing bone itself. Mahler's original idea was to have a boy soprano and boy alto, the alto combining with the contralto when the flute begins to sing. He dropped this idea, but Chailly reinstates it, or rather has a boy alto (Markus Baur) without the contralto. The effect is ghostly - he's not an ethereal child soprano but is still not quite in the world of the regular singers - and certainly adds to the drama.

Conclusions, then: we're not quite at mature Mahler, and indeed the handful of songs that we'll look at next may even be regarded as a step backwards, but pretty much all the elements are in place by now. Hopefully Das klagende Lied's appearance in DG's and EMI's Mahler editions (the two recordings above, in fact) will prove an impressive surprise to those who haven't yet encountered it.

Nereffid vs Mahler 3: Three songs

In 1879 the still-teenage Mahler fell in love with the postmaster's daughter in his home town of Iglau, and the following year he began to write 5 songs for tenor and piano, to be dedicated to her. He only managed three - Im Lenz, Winterlied, and Maitanz im Grünen - and these weren't published until 1990. Unlike the piano quartet movement, you can hear quite a bit of Mahler in these pieces, specifically the Mahler of the Knaben Wunderhorn, folksy in theme and/or style.
Im Lenz alternates happy and sad verses, the latter of which quote the cantata Das klagende Lied (see next episode!). Winterlied seems to be painting a cheerful picture of a cottage, a fire, and a spinning wheel before turning to a reminiscence and then pivoting to sadness on the last line, though - real Freudian Mahler stuff - the spinning wheel keeps spinning happily. Maitanz im Grünen pretends to be a real folk tune, with its exhortations for dancing and kissing, and its calls of "Juchhe!". Mahler seems to have particularly liked this song, as it shows up again in his next batch of songs, this time under the title Hans und Grete. The fact that it's in the Ländler form does make it the most Mahlerian-sounding of the three songs.

I suppose their long absence from publication has held these songs back from being popular; if you want to use the phrase "minor Mahler" then I'll allow it, but they're all enjoyable little things. They show up in the recently released "complete editions" from EMI and DG, performed by, respectively, Ian Bostridge and Antonio Pappano and Thomas Hampson and David Lutz, and Janet Baker and Geoffrey Parsons recorded them for Hyperion back in 1983, on an album of "Mahler's Songs of Youth" (now on the Helios label). Yes, I know: only one tenor among them. I believe Hampson's recording is an old Teldec issue, whereas Bostridge's recording is brand new, done for the EMI edition; in fact the recording was made last February, a mere 8 days after I began my listening for this Mahler project. On first audition I wasn't sure Bostridge had the right voice for this music - it's pretty simple stuff, and he sounds a little too sophisticated perhaps. But he brings a wonderful Puckishness to Maitanz im Grünen, and the speed with which he takes Winterlied, even in the nostalgic bit, brings an added sense of sudden tragedy to the ending. As for Hampson and Baker, I'll be saying more about them when we get to the song cycles. After Bostridge they sound a little slow, but then nobody records anything with the express purpose of having it heard immediately after someone else's recording. There's plenty of room for everyone here.

Whatever happened Josephine Poisl, the postmaster's daughter, anyway?

Nereffid vs Mahler 2: It begins!

The only extant chamber music by Mahler is the Piano quartet movement in A minor, written in 1876 when he was a student in Vienna. It doesn't display much of the mature composer, aside perhaps from the general intensity of the music and a slightly incongruous salon-like cadenza for violin near the end that anticipates Mahler's tendency to make good use of less-exalted forms of music. Unsurprisingly it carries the influence of Brahms. Donald Mitchell was snootily dismissive of the work: "The movement's themes, in fact, though not unshapely and not even without some genuine impulse behind their rather ordinary formulation, are innocent of gripping character, actual or potential... their strongly contrasted characters... have too little in common, to the detriment of the movement's unity. But it is not, on the whole, the movement's melody which is its prime weakness; it is, rather, its organization which is defective" (Gustav Mahler: The Early Years). I suppose this is why Donald Mitchell is a musicologist and I'm not; if I had the technical knowledge I probably wouldn't hold the view that he's completely talking out his arse. If I were to characterize this movement then one of the first words I'd use would be "gripping", and as for the organization - well, that depends what you want from the music, I guess. Me, I'm not concerned with formal structure as such because that's simply not what I get from Mahler's music: the sense of flow I've always heard there is to my mind a natural process rather than one based on a given structure - the symphonies as a product of evolution rather than intelligent design, if you like. Obviously the fact that there is a structure is crucial to the success of the music, but all I'm saying is that with Mahler my ears aren't drawn to it in the way they are with, say, Beethoven. Anyway, the point of relevance here is that I really love this piano quartet movement, and for the same reasons that Mitchell dismisses it: "For eighty-five bars it conscientiously and somewhat tediously shuffles interlocking combinations of short motives subtracted from the movement's principle themes... the patterns and formulas are relentlessly pressed home long after their interest qua invention has been exhausted." That must be my inner minimalist responding. I suppose if pressed I'd say this is one of my favourite pieces of chamber music. Ever!

And I only heard it for the first time on the 11th of February of this year (I take notes), the recording in question being one from Christoph Eschenbach and members of the Philadelphia Orchestra (Ondine), a filler for their recording of the Sixth Symphony. I was struck immediately by the hushed opening, which emerges out of nowhere and soon becomes more lyrical and passionate. It's very evocative, but of what, exactly? It's yearning for something, but those "interlocking combinations of short motives" seem to suggest that no relief might be forthcoming - the relentless "patterns and formulas" can never resolve themselves, and despite much drama and that odd violin cadenza, the music eventually fades back to nothing. Maybe it's an unimaginative use of sonata form; or maybe this "failure" is the point. Perhaps an answer would be forthcoming were there further movements (there's a fragment of a Scherzo but I haven't heard it). This was an impressive introduction to the work, and I was bowled over, but one drawback here is the recorded volume, which renders the music rather quiet.

No such fears for the recording by (most of) the Prazak Quartet and Sachiko Kayahara (Praga), which fortuitously appeared on the Shutter Island soundtrack not long after I heard Eschenbach's version (see post). This is a much more vivid recording, you might say a very "in your face" one, and the performance itself is at times very fiery. About half way through there's a strong emphasis on a repeated rhythm that you hardly notice in the Eschenbach; it's an obsessive three-note motif that sounds like it could be a distorted folk dance - am I projecting, or is this also what the Prazaks think of it? Although the music itself may not sound Mahlerian, the concept of folk music bursting in on proceedings most certainly is. Perhaps there's more of the mature composer in here than might be expected. Anyway, the Prazaks' performance overall elevates the piece even higher in my estimation.

At first the performance by Domus (EMI) seems like it may be even more vivid again. (As for the provenance of this recording, it's part of EMI's recently released "Complete works", which I got my hands on from Qobuz - mere moments after discovering they give a 20% discount on almost all new albums for 10 days after their initial release. Deutsche Grammophon's complete Mahler followed a few weeks later - happy times for those of us planning insane projects to listen to lots of Mahler). But the feeling I get from this at the start is that it's perhaps a bit too rushed. It's a good performance and is quite similar to the Prazaks, but the Prazaks really put their souls into it. Comparing the two side-by-side I felt at the time that the Domus was a little bit "just the notes", but in retrospect that's unfair. Comparative reviewing is something I've not done much of, so I must be careful not to fall into the trap of disliking a performance just because it doesn't quite match my preferences. We see this occasionally with some critics, who splutter about how pianist X completely botches the first three semiquavers of bar 43 by playing them too fast, thus ruining the whole movement, the whole album, and indeed the critic's entire afternoon if not week. So, well done, Domus, but no cigar as such.

Finally, there's Gidon Kremer, Veronika Hagen, Clemens Hagen, and Oleg Maisenberg (DG), whose performance is quite different from the other 3. Like Domus, they seem a bit too keen to get started, but it soon settles down. What's perhaps most noticeable here is the recorded sound - there's a bit of space round the instruments, which makes the sound rather more delicate. I wouldn't call the playing itself delicate, but it seems a rather more poised performance. Perhaps you could say Kremer et al. are playing to an audience, and want everything to be clear, whereas the Prazaks are in it for themselves. The odd "folk dance" rhythm I mentioned is rather pointed here too, and in fact rather more dancelike - not as obsessed as the Prazaks' version, which has a touch of the nightmare to it. Kremer et al. seem to run out of steam after this though, or at least don't seem as interested in delving down into the darkness again.

So, does this mean it was a great pity that Mahler never wrote any more chamber music? It's hard to say. After all, his mature compositions don't sound much like this quartet, and - aside from the fact that his symphonies are filled with chamber-like textures - it's hard to imagine what mature Mahlerian chamber music might sound like. Could it all have been as atmospheric and thrilling as this? Would it have been like the symphonies, only smaller? Or something very different? The question of course is moot, and given the circumstances of Mahler's composing career it made sense for him to stick with the large forms that said what he needed to say. Would a Mahler who wrote in as many genres as, say, Brahms be the Mahler we love? Probably not. The piano quartet movement thus stands as a lovely bit of paving on the road not taken.

Nereffid versus Mahler. Episode 1: Prologuey thing

I first heard the music of Mahler 25 years ago in what are probably not typical circumstances. I was the proud owner of a Sinclair ZX Spectrum and was diligently going through the user's manual when I came to the chapter on how to produce sound. The BASIC command was BEEP (duration, pitch) - basic stuff, indeed. Well, the example tune they gave was the opening theme of the third movement of Mahler's Symphony no.1. Of course this is just a minor-key version of "Frere Jacques", as I soon realised. Exotically, though, the manual described the music as "the bit where the goblins bury the U.S. cavalryman". To this day I don't know what that's supposed to mean - is it maybe a reference to Ken Russell's film? As a further exercise, the manual offered the tongue-in-cheek suggestion "Now program the rest of Mahler's First Symphony". I hope that somewhere, someone did.
I thought no more of Mahler for some time, although the ZX Spectrum did have a significant impact: the theme tune to "Manic Miner" was Grieg's "In the hall of the mountain king", which I found in my father's record collection, which led on to the rest of the Peer Gynt suite and the piano concerto, and then Tchaikovsky's piano concerto, and then, and then... Things, as Rich Hall once said, snowball.
Our story resumes some years later, when I was browsing in the college music library and found Mahler's 1st. "Hmmm, I wonder what this sounds like coming from an actual orchestra rather than a beeping computer..." I was instantly hooked, and sought out the rest of the symphonies. Mahler very rapidly became my favourite composer, and remains so today.
But why? Oh, he just is. Presumably when you listen to your favourite composer's music, your mind creates all these images, associations, feelings, and stories that make it seem much more than just music. Maybe with Mahler it's more than that; I don't know. But his music instantly fitted me like a glove. It's got that just-right quality that Leonard Bernstein memorably talked about with Beethoven, but for me Beethoven's just-rightness and wonderful inevitability are purely musical in nature - the consequence of key relationships, decisions about tempo, note choices, etc. Whereas with Mahler I hardly hear the formal musical concepts at all, just as when you're watching a great film you tend not to notice that its overall story structure is probably pretty much the same as most other films you've seen. Mahler's symphonies are stories, a combination of narrative and idea that I've never heard anywhere else.
I haven't listened to much of Mahler in recent years, and with 2010 being the 150th anniversary of his birth (and 2011 the 100th of his death) I decided it was high time to renew our friendship. But this couldn't be just a case of taking out my faithful recordings (generally, one of each symphony) and listening to them again to remind myself of all the things I love about Mahler. No, that would be way too easy. Instead I decided to take advantage of the fact that my eMusic subscription allows me to get any of Mahler's symphonies (except maybe the Eighth) for little more than, and often less than, one euro. Over the last several months I've been vastly expanding my Mahler collection through eMusic, supplemented with various recognised classic performances that I didn't own. And so begins a lengthy project to listen to many recordings of each of the symphonies and songs, not in a vain quest to find "the best" but to look at Mahler from as many angles as I can, to find new ways of listening and understanding, and to work out what it is I like about the music in the first place.
So join me as I blog intermittently about my Mahler experiences over what will probably be a couple of years (I've ended up with far more recordings than I anticipated). Nereffid versus Mahler: come get some!