Mahler Mania, Rebooted

[André]

Just listened to the 8th with Kubelik (the commercial performance on DG).



Superb, almost ideal even as I quibble with a few aspects of the performance and recording. I see that Jens likes this version very much too. Funny that we feel so differently about Haitink in this work. Oh well, that's the whole point of listening, comparing and choosing  .

[vers la flamme]

In general, yes, I prefer emotional heat, even exaggerated heat, although I enjoy a variety of interpretive styles, e.g., my favorite Sixths are Solti and Bernstein (three hammer blows!), Chailly (slow and grim), Szell (classically restrained until the shattering final appearance of fate) and Karajan (sheer beauty); five very different approaches.



Detail driven and controlling (like Klemperer you feel a fist conducting) and mannered (often the music doesn't flow naturally but is distinctly guided), given to slow tempos and powerful climaxes. That reads like a series of negatives, but I love this quirkiness. In his Vienna cycle the only disappointment is his Fifth. He rushes the chorale, ruining the second movement for me. (I confess I prefer conductors in this symphony who make a meal of that moment, like Dohnányi, Chailly, Neumann, Boulez, Kubelik, Solti; dislike especially conductors who I assumed would shine here but fail to deliver, like Bernstein and Maazel and so many others. I bought 18 Fifths before I finally found a wholly satisfying chorale: Neumann/Leipzig.) If you sample just one Maazel performance, please make it the Fourth with Kathleen Battle. Simply gorgeous.

Yes we are usually in agreement (other than about Maazel, that is  )

Sarge

I just bought two 4ths (Reiner/Chicago & Bernstein/DG as part of the cycle); otherwise I'd pick up the Maazel right away. It's available dirt cheap and I want to see what all the fuss is about. But it's on the list of 4ths to check out, for sure, along with Abbado/Vienna.

I'm thinking about getting the Szell 6th too. I love his 4th and I've heard his 6th is just as good.

[Sergeant Rock]

I just bought two 4ths (Reiner/Chicago & Bernstein/DG as part of the cycle); otherwise I'd pick up the Maazel right away. It's available dirt cheap and I want to see what all the fuss is about. But it's on the list of 4ths to check out, for sure, along with Abbado/Vienna.

I'm thinking about getting the Szell 6th too. I love his 4th and I've heard his 6th is just as good.

I think so but I may be prejudiced: I was in the audience for the Saturday concert in 1967. My first M6. I don't know if that is the 6th that made it to the recording but I assume all three performances that week were uniformly great.

Edit: I don't know the Reiner 4th but I do dislike Bernstein's DG performance. Cannot stand boy singers.

Sarge

[vers la flamme]

I think so but I may be prejudiced: I was in the audience for the Saturday concert in 1967. My first M6. I don't know if that is the 6th that made it to the recording but I assume all three performances that week were uniformly great.

Sarge

Wow, that's great. I didn't even know it was a live record. Must have been a hell of a time!

[Sergeant Rock]

Wow, that's great. I didn't even know it was a live record. Must have been a hell of a time!

It was. I hadn't heard the Sixth before that evening. Didn't know what to expect. I was emotionally devastated by it. I remember thinking after that shattering A minor chord and the fading out, Why in the world is everyone applauding? Life has just ended!

Forgive me, I was only 18 

[JBS]

I don't know the Vienna recording, but found his first approach (with Chicago) utterly undistinguished. Perhaps good old Claudio didn't have much affinity with the work.

Now that I think of it, I have another recording of the Second conducted by Abbado (from Lucerne, included in "Claudio Abbado Symphony Edition"), but haven't listened to it. Hopefully,  "third time lucky" applies here. 

If I have the chronology right, the Vienna was his first, the Chicago his second attempt.  I liked the Chicago, in fact.  The Lucerne recording....I will keep my mouth shut on that one so as not to bias your ears.

[vers la flamme]

How many full Mahler cycles has Abbado recorded? At least two three, right? The first one w/ various orchestras (Chicago, Vienna, Berlin...?), a later cycle of live recordings with the Berlin Philharmonic (during or after his tenure as music director...?), plus the Lucerne Festival video cycle. Is there more?

[JBS]

How many full Mahler cycles has Abbado recorded? At least two three, right? The first one w/ various orchestras (Chicago, Vienna, Berlin...?), a later cycle of live recordings with the Berlin Philharmonic (during or after his tenure as music director...?), plus the Lucerne Festival video cycle. Is there more?

I think the Lucerne Second is the one used to complete the Berlin cycle. But I may be wrong. I didn't know he had done a video cycle.

As for video cycles, the two installments of Chailly's Gewandhaus on Accentus that I have are very good (2 and .  I think that cycle is complete.

[vers la flamme]

I think the Lucerne Second is the one used to complete the Berlin cycle. But I may be wrong. I didn't know he had done a video cycle.

As for video cycles, the two installments of Chailly's Gewandhaus on Accentus that I have are very good (2 and .  I think that cycle is complete.

Now that you mention it, I don't know whether the Abbado/Lucerne videos covers the whole cycle. There's this:



... and also a 9th. Can't seem to find an 8th.

And you're right, the Berlin cycle includes the 2nd with Lucerne. Did he not record the 2nd in Berlin during that time?

[ritter]

If I have the chronology right, the Vienna was his first, the Chicago his second attempt.  I liked the Chicago, in fact.  The Lucerne recording....I will keep my mouth shut on that one so as not to bias your ears.

Not that it's of any importance, but the CSO Abbado Resurrection (with Marilyn Horne and Carol Neblett) was his first studio recording, from 1977. The Vienna recording (with Cheryl Studer and Waltraut Meier) is from the ca. 1994.

There is a much earlie bootleg recording with the a very young Abbado leading the VPO, and vocalists Stefania Woytowicz and Lucretia West, live from Salzburg in 1965.

[Jo498]

The 70s/80s "Feather covers" lacks the 8th, I think. It's Chicago in 1,2,5,6,7 and Vienna in 3,4,9 and 10 (adagio). I think this 9/10 is also already a live recording.
For some reason (maybe to represent the Berliner with more than one symphony?) the DG Klimt cover box replaces 1 and 5 with Berlin and 2 with Vienna and adds the Berlin 8th.

[SurprisedByBeauty]

How many full Mahler cycles has Abbado recorded? At least two three, right? The first one w/ various orchestras (Chicago, Vienna, Berlin...?), a later cycle of live recordings with the Berlin Philharmonic (during or after his tenure as music director...?), plus the Lucerne Festival video cycle. Is there more?

Funny you should ask. (As I'm working on my Mahler Cycle Survey.)

The answer is: 1

The second cycle overlaps with the first (1, 5, 8 )
and the third cycle (Eurovision) lacks an 8th, overlaps with the second (2), and needs a 9th from Accentus to be even reasonably complete.

[ritter]

A friend of mine once interviewed Abbado for a local magazine, and in that conversation the conductor didn't even remember that the (live) Eighth had been released to complete the second cycle. It seemed clear that Abbado didn't care much for the work...

IIRC, he was going to perform it in Lucerne in 2012, but a couple of months before the concert the program was changed "for artistic reason" to the Mozart Requiem and some other piece. Again, friends  mine had bought tickets, and were quite disillusioned. They also had tickets that summer for Parsifal in Bayreuth, and when I told them the festival had cancelled those performances "for artistic reasons", and would offer Die Fledemaus instead, for a split second they thought I was being serious. 

[vers la flamme]

IIRC, he was going to perform it in Lucerne in 2012, but a couple of months before the concert the program was changed "for artistic reason" to the Mozart Requiem and some other piece. Again, friends  mine had bought tickets, and were quite disillusioned. They also had tickets that summer for Parsifal in Bayreuth, and when I told them the festival had cancelled those performances "for artistic reasons", and would offer Die Fledemaus instead, for a split second they thought I was being serious. 

Oh, come on; that's hardly fair to Mozart. 

Thanks for clarification, everyone. I was looking at the DG "Klimt cover" cycle as well as the later "Abbado Mahler" DG cycle, just out of curiosity, because I think Abbado's Mahler is worthy of greater representation in my library. But I'll stick with single issues for now.

I'm getting hooked on Lenny's Mahler recordings again. The NY/Sony cycle is what I imprinted on when I first got into Mahler about this time last year, and no one does it like him. I'm listening to his New York 5th now and I think it's better than some folks give it credit for.

Thoughts on Bernstein's London 2nd for Sony/Columbia, w/ Janet Baker & Sheila Armstrong? I didn't know it existed until now.

[vers la flamme]

Cross-post from "What are you listening 2 now"...:

Gustav Mahler: Symphony No.10 in F-sharp major. Simon Rattle, Berlin Philharmonic.

I had put on the 6th, a recording with Boulez & the Vienna Philharmonic that I'd just gotten, but I got about halfway through the first movement & realized that I'm just not in the mood for the 6th (still). I will try again in the morning. I just can't seem to make it through the 6th & the 9th lately. I don't know what it is?

... So instead I decided to put on a work that I have long had trouble with—the Mahler 10th, here presented in the so-called Cooke III performance edition. Rattle clearly knows this score inside and out & from time to time I decide to give this recording another chance. I can never seem to wrap my head around it all the way, even the roughly "completed" Adagio tends to lose me. I don't hear the same cohesion that Mahler had come to master in his late music; think the Andante of the 9th, or anything from Das Lied.

Someone help me figure out what I'm missing. Maybe I ought to hear another recording... Rattle/Bournemouth? Sanderling/Berlin Symphony? Wigglesworth/BBC Wales? The latter I used to always see at my local record store before they closed their doors for the pandemic, and I would always pass it up. I think when they reopen I'll go down there and pick it up right away.

Is there any good reading material out there about Mahler's 10th? Specifically the Deryck Cooke version as that seems to be the one to get to know (first).

[Mahlerian]

The Adagio that opens the Tenth is a lot like the first movement of the Ninth in terms of form. It's based on a main recurring theme in F# major (that we first hear at the entry of the full orchestra, after the introduction in the violas) and a subsidiary theme in F# minor (in that introduction). The tension gradually builds until the sudden outburst in A-flat minor and the 9(?) note dissonance that follows, after which the primary theme brings the movement to a gentle close.

That whole trajectory is important, because a lot of it is revisited in the Finale, which brings back the introductory theme, as well as the climactic dissonant chord. But before that, we have two scherzos and the Purgatorio.

The first scherzo is buoyant and playful, the second dark and demonic. It is the Purgatorio which bridges this gap and introduces the minor third motif which will dominate the rest of the symphony.

(And because the form and material were completely worked out by Mahler in his draft, these details will apply to any version.)

[krummholz]

The Purgatorio is the one movement I can't quite wrap my head around... it's probably the shortest single movement in all of Mahler's symphonies (possible exception: Urlicht) and it is built on sharp contrasts to a degree rare in Mahler. Some writers have speculated that he would have scrapped it in the final version and ended up with a four-movement symphony, but the motives introduced there become so important later on - especially in the Finale - that I can't see that. I wonder if he might have expanded it instead... yet I think I read that he had already scored a fair amount of it, so even that seems doubtful. It's an enigma, for sure.

Edit: the Morning Bells movement of the 3rd might be as short, too... maybe shorter than Urlicht, at least in performance.

[Biffo]

The Purgatorio is the one movement I can't quite wrap my head around... it's probably the shortest single movement in all of Mahler's symphonies (possible exception: Urlicht) and it is built on sharp contrasts to a degree rare in Mahler. Some writers have speculated that he would have scrapped it in the final version and ended up with a four-movement symphony, but the motives introduced there become so important later on - especially in the Finale - that I can't see that. I wonder if he might have expanded it instead... yet I think I read that he had already scored a fair amount of it, so even that seems doubtful. It's an enigma, for sure.

Edit: the Morning Bells movement of the 3rd might be as short, too... maybe shorter than Urlicht, at least in performance.

The movement has a recapitulation indicated by 'Da Capo'. In the introduction to his performing version Deryck Cooke writes 'The Da Capo... would no doubt have been realised with a varied and possibly extended repeat , rather than with an exact one but nothing can be done about that'

I have always found this movement odd and thought Mahler might have eventually left it out. Levine's recording is the only one I have heard that makes it sound convincing for me though I am not sure why.

[vers la flamme]

I liked the Purgatorio. I actually found it more interesting than the scherzi, probably because of Mahler's own extant orchestration.

[Herman]

I love the Adagio of the Tenth Symphony as a stand-alone piece