Kenneth Woods- a view from the podium

As part of my summer of Wagner, I recently saw Tristan und Isolde at Glyndebourne with the London Philharmonic conducted by Jiri Behlolavek. Nina Stemme was Isolde, Robert Gambill was Tristan and Rena Pape King Mark. The production was designed by Nikolaus Lehnhoff.

There are plenty of glowing reviews of this production (for instance here and here), which, although I don’t do reviews, I’m happy to second.

Stage direction and production design in Wagner is always controversial (there are some interesting posts over at Sounds and Fury ). Should we treat Wagner’s stage directions with the same reverence we treat the music? Should the visual world of modern productions be the same as productions from over 100 years ago? What is the boundary between a valid updating and a silly departure?

I’ve certainly seen more than a few silly departures recently, and, easy as it is to laugh at a stuffed frog in a major production of the Ring, it’s no laughing matter when one thinks of the real hard work and big money it takes to produce the cycle.

On the other hand, I’ve often found some of the more conservative and naturalistic productions I’ve seen quite dull, and the dragon in the Met’s production of Siegfried is as silly as Wotan in a pink boa, if not sillier.

The Glyndebourne Tristan was mercifully free of annoying conceits, instantly dating costumes and so on. There was one set for the three acts, a simply, abstract space, and most of the costumes were unobjectionable (except, strangely, for Tristan’s outfits in the first two acts).

At the end of the day, there were some beautiful lighting touches, the blocking found a nice balance between centered, fluid and static and the stage space did become quite alive in its simplicity.

How do they do it? Well for all the debates about narturalism, symbolism, Regietheater and so on, I’d suggest that you can ruin an opera with any type of staging. I tell my conducting students that, like good doctors, their first aim is to do no harm. You have the talents of many at your disposal as a conductor and the best music ever written to work with- if you do nothing to screw things up, people will at least have a good night out. Yes take chances, go for things, push the envelope, but don’t go so far that you take away from the music or make it impossible for people to do their jobs.

The beauty of the Glyndebourne Tristan is that it does no harm- the staging allows room for the music. When you don’t try to turn a stage into a carnival of symbols and pop-culture references, the audience can focus on the music, which is by far the most important thing, and the singing actors, which is the next most important.

When that happens, Wagner’s music can work on you, and Tristan is probably his most intoxicating work- the music gets under your skin and in your guts. Fantastic. I’m still haunted. And no stuffed frogs, either.

And I know I say I don’t do reviews here, but Nina Stemme as Isolde- wow, wow, wow.

You can hear some short excerpts of me conducting Waldweben from Siegfried here.

Just a quick calendar update, as I’ve had a couple of email inquiries about this program- 

My concert/recording with the Contemporary Music Ensemble of Wales scheduled for September 26^th 2007 has been re-scheduled for March 9 2008. The performance is open to the public and is recorded live for broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at a future date on the Hear and Now show. 

Contemporary Music Ensemble of Wales 

Gordon Downie- artistic director 

Kenneth Woods- conductor 

Studio Concert 

Studio One, BBC Studios, Llandaff 

7:30 PM Sunday, March 9, 2007 

Program- 

Earle Brown- Novara 

Paul Mefano- Ineterferences 

Gordon Downie- forms 3 (world premiere) 

Iannis Xenakis- Akrata 

Yes, composition is analysis. 

Let’s start by remembering I didn’t say composition is only analysis.

Take for a moment Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony, which I wrote about here.

If one sits down and carefully analyzes the piece in its final form, you can’t help but be struck by how logically and organically it is constructed. The large scale structure of the piece seems to be a perfect reflection of the small scale structure of the individual ideas and motives. You get the sense that Sibelius had a complete, organic design for the work from the first note to the last.

However, when one then turns to the earlier versions of the piece, particularly the first version, you can see that, in fact, Sibelius struggled for many years to find that organic perfection which is the hallmark of the finished piece. Far from having had the plan for the work from the beginning, Sibelius struggled for some years to find a form that was right for the material he was working with. That process is analytical in nature- just as a theorist or a conductor may dissect the musical ideas of a work to figure out how the relate to each other in a finished work, many composers work in a similar way in the sketch process- generating melodies, phrases and large structures from the musical DNA of a few notes.

This was Beethoven’s main working method- beginning with quick notes of a musical idea or motive, which he then began to work out – not necessarily in the context of the form of the work. Motives become phrases which become periods. In one work he might have begun with the big picture- symphony in c minor, perhaps. In another case he might have simply begun with a theme and taken up the challenge of figuring out what he could do with it. The classical example of that method might be the works based on the theme of the last movement Eroica Symphony, which also include the Finale from Creatures of Prometheus and the Variations and Fugue for Piano, op 35.  Go here for a short excerpt from an essay by Elliot Forbes showing some examples of Beethoven’s sketch process in the first movement of the 5^th Symphony.

As I mentioned yesterday, it’s Mahler 4 which is on my desk right now. I’d like to save the bulk of my discussion of this piece for a little later, but let me just point out that Mahler composed the song, Das himmlishe Leben, which became the finale of this symphony about eight years before he composed the rest of the work. In fact, he long intended it to be the finale of the 3^rd. As a result, we have in the 4^th a symphony that was not composed from beginning to end, but from end to beginning. Mahler had to essentially dismantle his finished work (the song) into it’s component parts so that he could create three movements that seem to culminate in the finale. For the listener they do culminate in the finale, but the music was not written that way.

Virtually every theme and motive in the first three movements of the symphony has a connection to the musical material of the finale, sometimes very explicit and easily audible (i.e. the music of the opening bars of the symphony in the flutes and sleighbells appears to return in finale at Figure 3, although we now know Mahler extracted the opening from that passage), and sometimes more subliminally (in addition to his lifelong obsession with the perfect fourth, this symphony shows an obsession with the rising major sixth, which is the first interval of the melody of the song).

For all that we hear the 4^th Symphony as inspiration, and as a voyage from beginning to end, from a child’s view of the world to a child’s view of heaven, the work was written from end to beginning. That process was primarily analytical, and, like Sibelius in his 5^th Symphony, Mahler (who had, after all been thinking of this song as a final movement of a symphony for eight years and had, in essence, tried to write the 3^rd Symphony with this song as a finale), knew when he’d finally succeeded at the end of the summer of 1900. Just as the process had been analytical, so it was an analytical impulse that told him when the work was finished- when the micro and macro elements of the piece were perfectly balanced and related, and when he had found a way of working out his musical ideas that was true to the ideas themselves.

And it is this idea I leave with- it is a cliché to speak of a finished work as somehow true to a composer’s vision. However, what really makes a piece work is when the finished piece is true to its materials, when the composer has found a context for the ideas that is true to their nature. When someone other than the composer analyzes a piece of music, we are trying to understand that truth, to understand why the music does what it does. When the composer builds a work from analysis, she or he is trying to understand what the music needs to do.

c. 2007 Kenneth Woods

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Composition is analysis

Sometimes the best lessons come to us when we haven’t had enough coffee.

I’d been working late on the score of Mahler 4, which I’m conducting in October for the first time in three or four years. I’d been doing we we’re trained to do- analyze everything and try to create a vivid and detailed aural picture of the music in my head as I study. In other words, I’ve been trying to connect what I see to what I hear.

When I came back into my study this morning, however, I just saw the score still open on my desk and for a second I simply saw it as a page of sheet music, not as part of the first movement of Mahler 4.

What really struck me was the contradiction between what I was looking at and what I know the piece sounds like. I would guess that a non musician would look at those pages and assume that they were looking at a very complex, severe and intense piece of modern music. I would think that someone who knew Mahler 4 but didn’t read music would never guess this was the score to it. After all, Mahler 4 is supposed to be his simplest symphony, the most Haydn-esque, the most childlike, and the most classical.

And here is the issue- sometimes the very sound of the music can be the biggest barrier to getting close to the actual meaning of the music.

The Fourth is Mahler’s simplest, most Haydn-esque symphony, the most childlike and the most classical, but when so few of us understand Haydn, how can we understand what it is to be Haydn-esque. Mahler understood Haydn very well.

In Haydn’s music, simplicity is serious business- the simpler and more innocent the theme, the more elaborately and creatively he works with it. Mahler is much the same- for him childhood is the most serious of subjects, and innocence is the most complex of states because of its very fragility. Even in this symphony, which is life as seen through the eyes of a child, innocence is constantly under threat and true, stable and permanent innocence is only attained in the life after death of the final movement.

Looking at the page instead of thinking about what it sounds like tells you a lot about just how complex and conflicted this first movement is. As with Haydn, simplicity is the most serious business for Mahler. I’m also reminded of the end of Das Lied von der Erde, where the simplest sounding music in the entire work is actually the some of the most rhythmically complex and technically challenging music ever written by anyone. Well played, one would never guess at the ferocious difficulties, but they are part of the emotional complexities of the music.

Simple is never simple.

c. 2007 Kenneth Woods 

There is one less giant among us today with the passing of the great jazz drummer Max Roach. 

He was a virtuoso in the best sense of the word, but also a poet- no drummer ever had a sweeter touch or a more effortless sense of swing. Jazz fans like to talk about how hard a drummer swings, but with Max Roach it never sounded hard, but cool and electric. 

He was the perfect bebop drummer- the only drummer with the agility to match and even challenge Bud Powell, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and yet he was never content to be a relic of the bebop era, but stayed forward looking throughout his long career. 

His work with Clifford Brown was some of the best music made in the 1950s- it was a band that could have changed the world forever if they had more time. I’m listening today to a wonderful live set (“The Best of Max Roach and Clifford Brown in Concert) in his honor tonight. Fantastic. 

Goodbye to the man who made speed elegant and sophistication effortless.

From the New York Times 

The best art show I went to last year was the exhibit “Underground Surrealism” at the Hayward Gallery on London’s South Bank. Check out the view I had last year here.

Assembled and currated with care and insight it was a show that was more than merely a collection of interesting works of art, but a compelling and thought-provoking exploration of a world of ideas and a moment in art history.

Given how much more compelling that show was than anything I’ve seen at the Tate Modern since Matisse Picasso, or anywhere else for that matter in quite a while, I wasn’t surprised to hear that this summer’s show at the Hayward had become a huge hit, the most successful show in the gallery’s entire history. Someone at the Hayward is doing something right.

This year’s show, “Antony Gormley: Blind Light” is a major retrospective on the work of British sculptor Antony Gormley. The change in focus from an entire creative epoch to the life’s work of one man represents a huge change of emphasis, and yet, literally, there is so much at work in this exhibit that the gallery alone cannot contain the entire show.

As one approaches the South Bank Centre, one becomes aware of solitary human figures on the tops of buildings, along the bridges and across the river. It is as if the entire area is haunted by these strangely enigmatic forms. This is an installation called Event Horizon, which spreads over much of the area around the South Bank on both sides of the Thames. Right away, one is engaged, even before you’ve entered the show. You’re asking questions, you’re seeking out information- how many figures are there? Are they all to the same scale? Are they all made from the same model (as a matter of fact, they’re all the artist himself. Doest that change the meaning of the installation?)”

Even with extended hours in this, its final week, tickets are scarce for this show. We arrived at 2:30 and got some of the last tickets available for all of that day (the show closed at 10 PM). It’s great to see this kind of demand for a show of works by a living artist, and it’s clear from a look around the courtyard that the show is attracting a mixture of art lovers and tourists, with quite a few kids around.

Once inside, the clear star attraction is “Blind Light,” with an extra 30 minute wait to enter. The idea seems blindingly obvious: Gormley has built a giant glass tank, filled it with clouds of dense water vapour and flooded the entire space with blinding bright light. Punters are both viewers and part of the exhibit- you go in and walk around (visibility is less than 2 feet) and become disoriented. There is light, but there are also elusive shapes, sometimes ghostly, sometimes close enough to register as ordinary faces. You may bump into the glass walls, in which case your own form becomes something observed by those in line outside until you disappear back into the fog.

What was remarkable and refreshing about “Blind Light” was the sense of play, even joy it brought out of those there. There was laughter, and yet there was a genuine effort to understand, to contemplate- passive viewing is replaced with active engagement. Interestingly, the many children present were some of the quickest to see the many possible metaphors. One young boy of about seven looked in from the outside at the ghostly shapes appearing and disappearing and said “mommy, it’s all the dead people in heaven.” Another said “the people look lonely when they disappear in the fog,” and so on.

The musician in me couldn’t help but want to look for ideas that could be taken to concerts. After all, Gormley’s work is doing exactly what we say we want classical music to do- engage, involve, challenge and awaken the audience. To me, most of the ways of doing this in classical music end up being trite and awkard, but is that the difference between presentation and content? Perhaps the lesson of this show is that we have to find answers in the content we present, not in how we present it.

In a certain sense, Gormley’s work is about as simple as it gets- his subject is the body, and we all have bodies. We can look at any of his pieces with a view to seeing echoes of ourselves in them, so even though his medium is basically rather abstract, there are pathways in. Where so much moderninst music can be alienating for listeners, Gormley’s ideas are instantly accessible, even though the language he works in is abstract. Perhaps too much so- time will tell if this is great art, but at least it is great for art.

c. 2007 Kenneth Woods

It was intermission of a garden concert for a local charity- we’d just finished the Dohnanyi Serenade for String Trio and were milling about the lawn while the punters downed their pinot noir and brie.

He was easy to pick out even in a crowd. On a very casual afternoon, he was dressed rather smartly- grey trousers and a navy blazer with a tie, everything perfectly ironed and organized. He had a distinguished head of silver hair and gold framed glasses. My first thought was that he looked clever. My second thought was that he looked like he’s served in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet. No, he didn’t look that old. He looked like he’d just come from a meeting of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet.

He’s spotted me even before I’d spotted him. He elbowed his way through the crowd and came up to me with something just less than a smile.

So far during the intermission, everyone I’d talked to had had something nice to say about the music so far, but his opening gambit was a bit different….

“Cello….er, cellist, eh? Cellist, eh?”

“Hello! Thanks for coming out this afternoon,” I attempted to respond.

“Yes, er, cellist, cellist.”

“Lovely afternoon,” I ventured, “we all appreciate you coming out this afternoon to support the House,” (a care home for autistic adults).

“Yes, ahm… So, ahm, how much does a cello cost?”
Now, this is one of my least favorite questions because the next question is almost always “okay, how much did your cello cost.” Still, I had to say something, as it was still a good ten minutes until we could get back onstage.

“Well, it depends entirely on the cello. You might find something at an estate sale or an auction for almost nothing, a decent student cello might cost a thousand pounds, but it can go up into the millions.”

“Ah yes, ah yes. Well… Yes…. Well, how much for a normal cello?”

“Well,” I didn’t know exactly how to respond, “I’m not sure you can really say there is a normal cello. It depends on what it is, when it was made, what kind of condition it’s in and so on.”

“Well, we’ve been given one. Given a cello…. I think it’s German, yes maybe German, 18^th Century, but it’s been reconditioned. It’s been given to us, but I have no idea what it’s worth. I don’t know anything about it.”

Aha- he has a cello! Okay! “I see. Well, it would be difficult for me to guess the value having not seen it. You should take it to a couple of shops and see what they think it’s worth.”

“Yes, well, I, ah, don’t know anything about it, about cellos. It’s been reconditioned. Completely reconditioned. German, I think”

I was no longer sure where this was going, but I thought maybe he wanted me to guess the value, which I’m completely unqualified to do…. “Do you know if it is from a particular school of makers?”

“Makers? No, don’t know anything about it. Reconditioned, thought. Completely reconditioned.”

“Well, that’s a big project- did they have to patch a lot of old cracks?”

“Well, they put new strings on it. Brand new strings…”

“I see. That’s great. Well, if you want to sell it, I’d get a couple of estimates from luthiers.”

“Millions, well, we’ve got to put it on Ebay.”

“Of course, but  maybe get it appraised first.”

“It does have new strings.”

“Fantastic!” Eight more minutes until we get back on stage….

“Yes, on Ebay. Someone played it for us. It’s very loud. I had no idea how loud one is!”

“Hmm… I suppose if you’ve only heard one from back in a concert hall, it’s probably surprising to hear how much sound they make up close.”

“Really loud. Amazing. Loud! I had no idea.”

“Well, ahm..”

“You know, I was quite shocked just how loud they are. Really a lot of noise. I’d always thought of cellos as a nice sort of instrument, but they’re quite loud. Loud. Well, we’ll put it on Ebay.”

And then he was gone….

c. 2007 Kenneth Woods 

At the end of the Rose City Workshop, I was presented with a list of the quotes of the week, most of which were mine, although a few were from Chris (marked as CZ in this list). David, being the wisest and most mature of us managed to stay off this list, which is probably a testament to the value of experience and perspective. Anyway, I’ve had a number of requests to publish these, so here they are.  Just for laughs, I’ve compiled a second list of the musical or pedagogical context for each quote below. 

I was so touched that these got compiled- thanks to all of you for writing them down and passing them on, ridiculous as they are…. 

1 Yes, effervescent in the sense of acid boiling acid bubbling under your arm… skin peeling off….

2. Imagine sliding your finger backward down a rose stem and catching every eighth note on the way down

3. Project the eighth notes with mental powers

4. Think of the articulation as being like deranged barnyard chickens- bawk, bawk, bawk (etc)….

5. On the Beethoven Richter Scale, you are a 7.2

6. Give it some fangs

7. You are starting to look a bit like Barney the Dinosaur…

8. Treat the soloist as the holy click track of destiny

9. Circles, lines and rubber bands

10. Keep this boiling in your entrails and then show it (CZ)

11. There’s that knitting thing again (CZ)

12. Do that that thing you do … that bosomy thing (CZ)

13. Haydn should never be nicey-nice.

14. Beat three, straight across, cut off their heads

15. Preparation is more important than ability

16. You know the type… lawn sprinkler conductors

17. Bite into the sound like rabid rabbits

18. Drop the stick like a guillotine

19. Soccer- soccer- basketball…

20. F*ck the technique

1. I was referring to the sound of the last movement of the Shostakovich 1^st Piano Concerto. Chris had previously asked a student who was conducting it in a somewhat heavy style to make it more effervescent, and after they stopped the next time, I asked if it could be a different kind of effervescent.
2. I was talking about subdivision in Stravinsky (L’histoire du soldat in this case). His music must never rush, and the key to this is to have a clear, incisive sense of the subdivisions. Maybe I could have come up with a less bloody metaphor, but it works for me
3. This applies to all music all the time
4. I was speaking about the articulation at the beginning of the finale of Haydn 92. “Barnyard” is one of my favourite sound colors
5. We were talking about the excitement levels in Beethoven 7
6. This also applies to almost all music all the time, but particularly to the Stravinsky
7. This is what happens when you conduct with your arms pinned too closely to your ribs and flop a bit with your wrists. We’ve all seen it…
8. I was speaking about the first movement of the Shostakovich piano concerto, but it applies to all concerti.  I was quite stunned at what a difference it made when I said it. Conducting is a funny mixture of leading and following, and the key in a concerto is to NOT follow the orchestra, which one often does, but to follow the soloist constantly.
9. The three basic kinds of baton strokes
10. This is a wonderfully Zimmerman-esque image, and applies to everything, all the time
11. All three of us worked on knitting issues. This is what happens when the baton swims in the beat like a knitting needle, which deflects the moment of the beat-point. It can work in certain kinds of music, but not in anything that is really clearly rhythmically structured
12. Chris was referring to a place where the conductor in question could return to an old way of beating after staying more disciplined for a long time
13. I was talking about what kind of happy and what kind of humour one finds in the Haydn finale. He was never a naïve composer- when he writes country bumpkin music, he’s not making fun of the bumpkins but of those who look down at them. Hence the deranged chicken theme of the finale of 92 ends up being treated with the most sophisticated contrapuntal skill imaginable
14.  A technical direction to establish a beat pattern with maximum clarity in mixed meter music. This is not the time for lovely loops and circles
15. Always something to remember. It’s better to be a good and prepared musician than a great and unprepared musician (unless you’re a total genius, in which case you know better than to bother reading this blog).
16. Lawn sprinkler conductors are those whose gaze coasts across the top of the orchestra from side to side in a regular oscillation that has nothing to do with what is going on in the music or who needs a cue. The most famous lawn-sprinkler conductor is also known for his program notes.
17. The string articulation in the coda of the last movement of the Shostakovich concerto
18. When one holds tension in the arm and tries to give a strong or explosive down beat, one ends up forcing the arm down, which looks rather spastic and creates an unpredictable motion. The most explosive downbeat is the one that is a release, when the arm just drops without tension, as a guillotine.
19. Ways of counting mixed meters in Stravinsky ( 1-2-12-123). Basketball is useful because a good 3/8 beat (in one) feels a bit like bouncing off of a ball.
20. From the last movement of Beethoven 7, which was coming off as other-worldly and disengaged. The poor conductor said the reason he was being so boring was that he was thinking so hard about the technical things we’d suggested in his last session, at which point I offered the complete quote “I have to apologize to anyone this offends because I can’t think of a better way to say this, but… F*ck the technique! Be the music”

www.rosecityworkshop.org

c. 2007 Kenneth Woods

From the “I know I live in a glass house” file…

A recently released recording of  Mahler’s Second Symphony apparently comes with some rather provacative liner notes from the conductor, which have been widely quoted in the reviews. The quotes alone were enough to get me writing…. I’m sure you all know the conductor I am speaking of, but I honestly don’t want this to be a personal attack on anyone, but a discussion (albeit spirited) of ideas, as I feel the quotes alone, and their use in the media, point to a some fundamental problems in the way we talk about music today, so I’ll leave the conductor out of it and look at the ideas, which I believe are often factually wrong, misrepresented or irrelevant.

This conductor, for instance, claims that he’s breaking new ground in restoring Mahler’s original bowing at the beginning of the second movement of the symphony (the entire phrase in one down bow portato). He apparently states that by restoring Mahler’s long forgotten and lost original bowing, he’s found the key to the tempo of the piece. The conductor’s contention is that (and I paraphrase) one cannot do Mahler’s original bowing in the slow tempo it’s usually heard at these days, which is why all conductors now take it all in separate bows at a much slower tempo.

This contention is so laced with misleading nonsense that I feel I need to break my usual no-slagging-off-other’s-work rule (anyway, I have no opinion on the recording, which I’ve only heard excerpts from, I’m just critiquing the “ideas” put forward in the liner notes).

 First of all, many conductors, including me, use Mahler’s original bowing and always have. It’s not a lost bowing- it’s right in the score, and always has been, and people use it all the time. Second, Mahler’s original bowing does not necessarily dictate a particular tempo- one can take it as slowly as one would wish (espcially if you have a large string section), it just means you’re likely to have to play it softer or with a more focused stroke to save bow. Third, conductors who modify the bowing do not all do it in separate bows- there are many ways to bow the theme, any number of which can be quite true to Mahler’s articulation and phrasing. In different halls, with different groups or with a different sound concept, another bowing may be perfectly justified if it does no violence to what Mahler has asked for. Fourth, it is not entirely clear that Mahler really wanted portato here- he’s less systematic with his use of this kind of articulation marking (dots under a slur) than Beethoven, who _only_ uses that marking for portato (as opposed to staccato under one bow).  One need only look at how the same theme is orchestrated later in the movement when it is written pizzicato to question whether long notes were what he wanted at the beginning. I’m not saying that he meant staccato at the beginning (I think he meant for each of the three statements of the theme to be lighter and shorter than the one before it, culminating in the pizzicato the last time, but I recognize my reading could be wrong), only that there is a very strong argument to be made by those conductors who do play it that way. In any case, it would be an act of radical laziness to base the tempo for an entire movement of a Mahler on a single bowing (the more obvious example of a bowing that really affects the tempo is the spic at figure 3). I take the movement on the faster side, but there are arguments for a range of tempi, all of which should be carefully considered before deciding. After all, although he marks “con moto” (with motion) he also marks “very laid back” and “not rushed.” The indications are contradictory, which means the conductor has to find the right balance of “with motion” but “not rushed.” For different conductors (and listeners) that balance is going to be found at different tempi, but that has nothing to do with the bowing.

If this conductor is somewhat misleading in his analysis of the articulation of the main theme of the second movement- resorting to telling you the reason to listen to his recording is that it corrects some great historical wrong at the hands of an army of lazy and uncomprehending conductors, he turns to telling good old fashioned pork pies when talking about the use of vibrato in Mahler’s time.

I suppose it is possible to contend that Beethoven should be played without any vibrato on the grounds that we cannot prove absolutely that he expected it to be played with any, although I’ve always found that argument simplistic in the extreme. Surely one of the most powerful coloristic tools available to a musician, a tool that is part of the singing traditions of all non-microtonal folk musics, deserves more thoughtful consideration and application than a simple yes or no answer.

However, it is simply not possible to back up a statement as ludicrous as this one-

“pure tone” was “normal with all orchestras until the 1920s. We don’t believe Mahler ever heard a classical orchestra…playing with permanent vibrato.”

in the face of overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary.

There is ample testimony from the musicians who played under Mahler that he felt that vibrato was an essential tool, and that, if anything, he expected more vibrato from string players than may often be used now. In 1964, Herbert Borodkin, violist with the New York Philharmonic from 1904-09, recalled that Mahler “used a lot more vibrato than most conductors do today. He insisted on it. He asked for it. When you played a melodic tune, you would have to use a lot of vibrato and sing, as he called it.” Other colleagues, including Herman Martonne, who knew Mahler’s work in both Vienna and New York said the same thing.

Also, the playing traditions of the world’s orchestras did not suddenly shift all at once- trends come and go, including the use of portamenti, but the tool box stays the same. Orchestras have always been able to vibrate or not vibrate, slide or not slide, play with darker or lighter sounds, and can change gears when asked by a conductor. It would have been impossible for the world’s orchestras to suddenly have started wiggling in the 1920s- vibrato is the most difficult physical skill for string players to master, and it would be inconceivable that grown, professional musicians could have learned it in their 30s, 40s or 50s while managing the demands of a professional life. Vibrato is like a language- you’re best advised to master it young or it will never sound natural. It’s much easier for an orchestra to stop sliding or stop vibrating than to start, as stopping means you’re not using a skill you have, starting means developing a skill you lack.

Far from restoring Mahler’s music to its original concept, this conductor is instead using, even exploiting, the music to advance his own agenda. He may contend that he is simply rescuing the music from modern performers’ bad habit of simply turning the vibrato hose on full blast and letting it run evenly over every note, but this is, generally speaking, nonsense. There are certainly a few bad apples out there who’ve heard too many Hollywood soundtracks, but to tar all conductors with that brush is completely dishonest. Conductors and instrumentalists all spend years developing their own concept of sound, and vibrato is something that all true artists think carefully about. Also, vibrato is not simply something one either uses or doesn’t- there an infinite variety of combinations of depth, speed, quality and fleshiness, each of which can be further shaped by use of the bow. There’s only one kind of off, but a million kinds of on.

Although we’re not lucky enough to have recordings of Mahler conducting his own music, we do have ample record of his friends, assistants and pupils doing so, including Mengleberg, Walter, Klemperer and Fried. I’ve read one review of this new recording which intimated that somehow this maestro had saved us from the “thunderous grandeur” of Klemperer’s recording. I’m not a huge fan of the Klemperer/Philharmonia disc because of the many ensemble problems and wrong rhythms, but it’s actually one of the fastest and least self-indulgent recordings of the piece (and one of the very few that fits on a single CD). If you want grandeur, call Lenny- Klemperer is much more austere and straight-ahead.  One thing worth mentioning about all of these conductor’s recordings of Mahler’s music is that they all use vibrato. Would all of his students and assistants, who revered him over any other musician they’d ever known, really discard Mahler’s own concept of orchestral sound so callously?

One of the nice little bonuses of having conducted a Mahler symphony is that you can then at least say- “I do it this way as opposed to that way.” You’ve earned the right to disagree with the Bernstein’s and the Walter’s and the Kubelik’s, but it is distinctly poor form to represent oneself as a valiant knight dashing in to save the music from the mistreatment it has received at the hands of others. Presenting the idea of “adhering strictly to the tempo markings and the detailed instructions that litter the score” as some kind of a departure from what everyone else has been doing is really beyond the pale. Are we really to believe that other conductors with a lifetime’s experience in Mahler’s music are wilfully ignoring Mahler’s markings? 

I take the basic march tempo of the first movement of Mahler 2 much quicker than Bernstein’s, closer to the tempo Abbado takes, but I do much more accelerando in the development than Abbado does, but those similarities and differences are just that- similarities and differences, and are totally irrelevant to an evaluation of my performance or anyone else’s, just as they were irrelevant to my decisions. Our work can only be reasonably evaluated in terms of Mahler’s score, not by comparison of one to another. Again, when we look at the recordings of Mahler’s immediate disciples, it is striking how strongly their individual personalities come through in spite of their overwhelmingly faithful readings of the score. Mahler understood this- he is not after the imitation of one ideal performance, but is after a truthful and honest reading of the score, and the definition of truthful and honest will always evolve, because every time you return to the score, you come with new skills and experience.

There are two kinds of bad performance practice- imitation and deviation, because in both instances a performance is being shaped in terms of a prior performance. This conductor claims to be practicing both- imitation of Mahler’s ideal and deviation from the “bad” performances of modern times. However, the evidence indicates that he is deviating from Mahler’s idea, and that therefore, the “bad” modern performances are in all likelhood closer to Mahler’s idea than his.

On the other hand, good performance practice is that which is not based on prior performance, but on the score. Perhaps some dislike this, because this kind of approach doesn’t allow you a sonic model to compare one performance to another, but it means that each performance must be taken on its own intrinsic merits.

c. 2007 Kenneth Woods 

PS- None of this really scratches the surface of the real performance practice issues with Mahler. We haven’t talked about what kind of brass instruments Mahler was used to and how they differed from some used today, we haven’t talke about gut versus steel strings, we haven’t talked about slides, different reed making approaches, wooden versus metal flutes, leather versus synthetic timp heads, different seating arrangements……

Study is the reward, not the price—

“I can’t claim that I could always look at a score and hear everything that was there. However, now that I’ve rehearsed and performed these pieces many times, this is my reward- that I can sit with the score and hear everything in it, every articulation, every balance, just as was intended. This is my greatest joy.”

Gunter Wand