Mahler - Symphony No 1 - A Walkthrough

[mn dave]

I owned the Naxos version for forever and just recently added Lenny/Concertgebouw. I've always enjoyed this symphony even though I don't consider myself a Mahlerite (yet). It has loads of personality. Or at least that's the overall impression for me. Here was someone who had something to say and said it in interesting and unique ways--unique in my symphony-listening experience anyway.

[Josquin des Prez]

If you guys want to try a decent recording of this work in good, modern sound i recommend Pesek Litton. A real surprise from such an obscure name.

[knight66]

As two names though, not nearly so obscure.

Mike

[(poco) Sforzando]

If you guys want to try a decent recording of this work in good, modern sound i recommend Pesek Litton. A real surprise from such an obscure name.

Sure you're not talking about this one?

Amazon.com
Don't sneer at these performances simply because the orchestras and conductors may not be the biggest names. They are both exceptionally fine. Litton's Mahler Symphony No. 1 is a fresh, impetuous performance in the grand Romantic tradition, played with tremendous gusto. Pesek's Ninth is one of the very best around. Not only does the orchestra play like their lives depended on it, the interpretation has numerous imaginative touches--particularly the rapt treatment of the third movement's quiet central section, with its foreshadowing of the melody of the great final Adagio. And best of all, both performances are captured in splendid sound. At budget price, this is a steal and a half. -- David Hurwitz

[Josquin des Prez]

As two names though, not nearly so obscure.

Mike

Erm, sorry. Andrew Litton is what i meant. I just copy/pasted the information from my hard drive because i had forgotten the name and also didn't remember that the CD contains two different names.

[Josquin des Prez]

Sure you're not talking about this one?

Yep. I don't know if the performance compares with the truly big horses. Not entirely familiar with this work, but it sounds pretty good so far and the sound quality is outstanding, which is important to enjoy the orchestration to it's fullest. Figured it was worth mentioning.

[mahler10th]

Yep. I don't know if the performance compares with the truly big horses. Not entirely familiar with this work, but it sounds pretty good so far and the sound quality is outstanding, which makes is important to enjoy the orchestration to it's fullest. Figured it was worth mentioning.

Thank you.  It's top of my list.

[DavidRoss]

Top of my list, among the few I have, is Boulez.  One of the first records I ever bought was Bruno Walter's recording of the First...after which I, too, became a teen-aged Mahlerite.  (A lot of water has passed under the bridge--and over the dam!--since then.)  I'm also fond of Kubelik's, which I had independently on CD before springing for the DG cycle.

[mahler10th]

Thank you.  It's top of my list.

Er...below I mean top of my "To get" list.  Top of my Mahler 1st List is...a very old recording by Dimitri Mitropolous and the NYPO - had it been recorded with modern equipment, methinks it would sweep the board, first only to Kubeliks take.

[M forever]

I rarely ever listen to this piece anymore since I have heard (and played) it way too many times, but when I do want to hear it, I usually reach for CSO/Giulini. Giulini brought out the best in the CSO while under Solti they usually sounded thin and blaring, under him, they sounded slender and warmly glowing. A very lyrical version of the symphony which doesn't underplay the many quiet passages in order to get to the next "highlight". But the big tuttis have impact and weight, too.

[The new erato]

I rarely ever listen to this piece anymore since I have heard (and played) it way too many times, but when I do want to hear it, I usually reach for CSO/Giulini. Giulini brought out the best in the CSO while under Solti they usually sounded thin and blaring, under him, they sounded slender and warmly glowing. A very lyrical version of the symphony which doesn't underplay the many quiet passages in order to get to the next "highlight". But the big tuttis have impact and weight, too.

Just want to thank you M for your contributions in a recently locked thread.

As for Mahler 1, my only disc is an old LP of Walter/CSO....which I havne't heard for 25 (I guess) years. I need a CD and ponder this thread.

[M forever]

Just want to thank you M for your contributions in a recently locked thread.

Which one?

[The new erato]

Which one?

Not that many locks here - thankfully. About a certain Korngold concerto.

[mahler10th]

I would like to know what the OP (or anyone else) has to say about the very last two notes of the symphony - that unison octave drop D to D. I have my own theory about its role in the composition, which I'll post a little later when I'm fully awake. But how about performance? Should the last two notes be taken strictly in tempo (which accelerates towards the end, to a greater or lesser degree depending on the conductor), or should there be a slight stentando? Should the downbeat receive a stronger accent than the second beat (a trochee), or should both notes receive more or less equal accents (a spondee)? I think I've heard it all these ways.

What is your take on this Sforzando, a very interesting question.

[M forever]

There is no musical point in slowing down at the end. When the last bars are reached and both sets of timpani and the percussion rumble, the movement is already at its musical end. The last two notes just cut that off with a dashing gesture. The first note should, and normally also is, a little stronger because it's on the bar line. Mahler had probably experimented with all the typical endings, single chord, long chord etcetc and found this brief but affirmative gesture to be the most effective. There is no point in reinterpreting that with ritardandi, accents on the second note etc.

[(poco) Sforzando]

There is no musical point in slowing down at the end. When the last bars are reached and both sets of timpani and the percussion rumble, the movement is already at its musical end. The last two notes just cut that off with a dashing gesture. The first note should, and normally also is, a little stronger because it's on the bar line. Mahler had probably experimented with all the typical endings, single chord, long chord etcetc and found this brief but affirmative gesture to be the most effective. There is no point in reinterpreting that with ritardandi, accents on the second note etc.

Yes, but if you check your score (I can't find an online copy, and I'm feeling too lazy to scan a JPG into this post, but will do so if requested), Mahler has given the identical strong accent ^ and staccato mark to both final notes. (In the winds, that is. The staccato marks but not the accents are written for the strings.) He also writes "Drängend bis zum Schluss" starting 12 bars before the last unison. Hence I don't support a ritardando, but I can see the accent on the final note as legitimate, even if a stronger accent will probably fall on the downbeat.

One thing I consider important M10 is missing in his analysis is a discussion of how the symphony is unified by a few dominant melodic motifs, the primary ones being a descending perfect 4th and an ascending half scale. A chain of these perfect fourths is heard at the start of the introduction* and a single p. 4 in isolation becomes the little bird calls heard frequently in the upper woodwinds. The p. 4 plus the ascending half scale is heard first when the exposition proper begins in D major: D A | D E F# G | A. The p. 4 dominates the big horn chorale midway through the movement, and, being the natural tuning for the timpani, is also heard in the timpani solo notes in the coda of this first movement.

You do hear how the p. 4 motif is used in the scherzo: "The birdcall theme is picked up again, but this time not by a delightful clarinet, but by ominous cellos and basses." But the half-scale is used again in the main melody: E | A C# E | A__ E | A A B C# D | E____ .

The slow movement takes these two motifs up again: first the timpani thudding D+A D+A over and over; then the solo bass taking up the half-scale, slightly disguised, in the minor: D E F E D | D E F E D | F G A | F G A.

The allusion to Handel's Hallelujah Chorus in the finale is convincing for me, but you seem to miss the more important point that the big horn theme is a transformation in major of the chain of p.4's first heard in the introduction to the symphony. And the countersubject in the trumpets picks up the rising half scale!

As for that descending octave unison at the end, I can't think offhand of any ending exactly comparable. It sounds definitive and inevitable, but does it relate to anything else in the symphony? For me, it is the final, definitive expansion of that important perfect 4th motif into a perfect octave.


-------
*I have a private theory that the composer of the Star Trek theme - the slow section when Shatner intones "Space, the final frontier" - had this moment in his ear when writing that bit of music.

[Bonehelm]

There is no musical point in slowing down at the end. When the last bars are reached and both sets of timpani and the percussion rumble, the movement is already at its musical end. The last two notes just cut that off with a dashing gesture. The first note should, and normally also is, a little stronger because it's on the bar line. Mahler had probably experimented with all the typical endings, single chord, long chord etcetc and found this brief but affirmative gesture to be the most effective. There is no point in reinterpreting that with ritardandi, accents on the second note etc.

I think the first of the two last notes should be heavier/stronger not only because of the reason you mentioned, but also because it's the "cuck" of the "cuckoo" so dominant in the symphony (especially the first movement). At the end of the entire piece Mahler resolved all the drama and tension of the piece with one final, huge CUCK-KOO!.

[mahler10th]

Thank you for your very interesting notes below Sforzando.  This kind of feedback is great.
The essay is presented a certain way without too much technical stuff to make it easily understood by the layman (or even the wayfarer), so it was not my intention to make it any more technical than it is (if technical at all.)  However, it is precisely this kind of feedback which something like this NEEDS, so bona fide musicians etc can connect and asess with their ideas of the Symphony.
Lots of good points.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

*I have a private theory that the composer of the Star Trek theme - the slow section when Shatner intones "Space, the final frontier" - had this moment in his ear when writing that bit of music.

Possibly. I made the connection myself, too.

[knight66]

Thanks sfz, that was very interesting and it brought to the surface some things I had heard, but not consciously. I can hear some of those passages in my head, though I had not connected the dots.

It is certainly packed with verdant nature sounds and this sets the tone for those first four symphonies. He was a deeply sophisticated man, he moved in the artistic circles of the time. But he was clearly rooted into the countryside, folksong and beyond folksong, art-song. So much sounds like melody for singing out loud, even when that melody is chopped up. The first symphony also has allusion to Klezmer near the start of the third movement. Roots in the countryside, in what he heard as well as what he saw and in his culture. I don't think that anyone has so far mentioned in this thread that every Mahler symphony seemingly has a funeral march in it. Here, it is at the start of the third movement, then it returns two thirds of the way through. His preoccupation with death is therefore in his symphonic literature right from the start. It also indicates that his music is not utterly abstract, it contains ideas about life...and as often, death. The nature sounds may be about more than simply the obvious. Innocence is certainly invoked. 

I have now just started listening again to the Gergiev.....I did suggest that timings are deceptive.

Here they are:

Kubelik: 14.31   6.56   10.37   17.40
Gergiev: 14.40   8.14   10.32   19.15

So any feeling of rush is not because he goes at the whole thing headlong, there clearly must be some passages that have been taken very fast, others leisurely. In the first movement things seem to me to go very well until about a minute before the end, when he speeds up and the music rushes by as though there was a train to catch. It is an astonishing ending to a movement and I feel he trivialises it with this approach. But, for my ears, most of the movement was beautiful.

The second movement is over-rusticised and the opening peasant dance is too clodhopping....I wonder what the markings are here?

Again, it does not sound fast until he really speeds up at the end, but it is a 30 second burst of speed.

The third movement is very beautiful with gentle, graded dynamics, especially round about the six minute mark the strings are so tender. The opening march sounds at the right tempo and after the ecstatic interlude I mention above, when the opening returns sounding like a slow marching funeral procession, the woodwinds are especially piquant. There is plenty of ebb and flow, it does not sound like there are sudden gear changes.

We hear the material he subsequently used in his orchestral songs. Here and in the Second symphony, he mined them assiduously to produce his song cycles. So we need to think of the cycles and the symphonies as handing battons of thought back and forth. He was not merely picking up on songful tunes and reusing them, his song output germinates within the symphonies. The symphonies are part commentary on the songs.

The forth movement is more of a problem, at around the two minute mark, it becomes very hectic, exaggerated I think, but that is transitory. Later in the movement the contrasts are also too hectic. There is a difference between tempestuous and hysterical. I think the interpretation mauls this movement too much. Nervy and neurotic.... we perhaps impose these aspects of Mahler on pieces where it is not really evident. It is often exciting music making though and very well played. Around the 13 minute mark, the music making sounds dull, nothing is happening, stasis and here is where time is bought to allow for the speed changes. I also think he sledgehammers some rhythmic passages, vulgar.

Then we move towards the peroration, galloping heaviness, Kubelik is transcendental here. It becomes dramatic rather than uplifting. The final two notes are taken quickly, with a slightly greater accent on the downbeat.

So, a mixed result for me and not quite what I had expected. Overall, I enjoyed it and was engaged with it. I don't think it is a maverick interpretation, I still prefer Kubelik, but there is a lot I enjoyed about Gergiev's fix on the piece.

Mike