The Bridgewater Hall- Mahler in Manchester

 

My wife and I call Mahler 2 “the Mahler symphony of “this is the best moment in the piece” moments.”

From the bracing opening to the shattering climax of the first movement, from the infinitely elegant pizzicato return of the theme of the 2^nd movement to the bizarre and jarring opening of the 3^rd, from the serene beauty of Urlicht, the astounding song that makes up the fourth movement, to the portentious and awe inspiring first pages of the Finale, it is  a piece that again and again has you saying “I love this bit- this is the best moment in the piece.”

I want to talk about one of those moments today: perhaps one that on first glance is not as obvious as those above, but one that, once you become aware of it, changes your whole sense of the shape of the piece.

To talk about this spot, I need to speak for a moment about keys.

Discussions of keys are one of those things that many listeners find to be a little too technical. They often say “I don’t have perfect pitch, I can’t tell C minor from D minor, so what does it matter to me what key something is in? I just want to enjoy the music and not be reminded of what I don’t understand or can’t hear.”

Well, have no fear- this is not going to be an ear training test.

After all, tuning pitches have always varied and have changed a great deal over the year. A listener with perfect pitch who grew up in Bach’s Leipzig would not recognize Bach’s C minor and Mahler’s as being the same key- Mahler’s was higher.

Unless you have synesthesia (meaning you see specific colours for each pitch, chord and key you hear), or perfect pitch, the frequencies of each key are not all that important. What is important, and can help us get more out of the music emotionally are the relationships between keys and the meaning and history of each key.

A lot of the frustration and confusion surrounding discussions of  keys comes from the clumsy way in which we are taught them when we are young- we learn each key as a collection of sharps or flats, or as scale fingerings on our instrument. We are taught that D minor has one flat, C minor has 3. Describing D minor as a key with one flat doesn’t get us very far toward enhancing one’s listening experience. A far more useful description comes from the movie Spinal Tap, when the rather addled guitarist Nigel Tufnel calls D minor “the saddest of all keys. People weep instantly when they hear it…”

So, don’t think about keys as scales, key signatures, fingerings or frequencies. Think about keys as moods, as histories, as contexts, as universes. A key is a space in which things happen.

The 2^nd movement of Mahler 2 is in A flat major, but because it occurs in a symphony in C minor it means something different than it would if the whole symphony was in A flat, or D major or any other key. When we see “Symphony in C minor” on the cover page, we can take a moment to remember that for Mahler, C minor is the key of Beethoven 5, of the Great Mass of Mozart, of the end of the St Matthew Passion of Bach, of Brahms’ First Symphony and Beethoven’s last Piano Sonata. What this key means will forever be in some way changed by Mahler’s engagement with it. When Shostakovich wrote his 8^th Symphony in the key of C minor, it carried all the associations that Mahler had in mind, but also had become the key of Mahler 2 and Bruckner 8.

Mahler was always conscious of his engagement with the musical tradition, and would have been keenly aware that when one said “Symphony in C minor,” in 1888, two pieces would have come to mind- Beethoven’s Fifth and Brahms’ First. Both of these works, and the then-brand new 8^th of Bruckner are really symphonies from C minor to C major. They begin in a place of profound darkness and tragedy and emerge into light, hope and triumph.

Mahler seems to have clearly seen C minor in a similar way- as a place of darkness from which hope can possibly emerge, but he was too much the innovator to simply repeat the journey from C  minor to major that Beethoven and Brahms had handled so perfectly. Beethoven’s only other minor key symphony (the 9^th) traces a similar arc from D minor to D major, as does Schumann’s only minor key symphony (again- D minor to D major). Brahms 3^rd begins in F minor and ends peacefully, rather than triumphantly, in F major. Truly tragic symphonies that end in the minor are exceedingly rare- Beethoven never wrote one. The most famous examples are Brahms 4^th in E minor and Mozart’s 40^th in G minor- probably the bleakest and most tragic work in the symphonic literature. Mahler would eventually write one, and only one, work which would end in the minor- his 6^th Symphony.

In all of these examples of Minor-to-Major symphonies, the symphony ends in what we call the “parallel major,” which is the key which shares the same tonic note as the home key. Mahler’s innovation is both extraordinarily simple and completely new- instead of ending in parallel key, he ends in the relative one. A” relative key” shares the same key signature as the home key- Mahler 2 is in C minor, and the relative major of C minor is E flat, as both keys have 3 flats. Of course, it’s not important for you the listener to know how many flats we’re dealing with, only that we’re dealing with a new kind of journey- instead of keeping the same tonic note and evolving of transforming from minor to major, Mahler keeps the same key signature and rises a third from C to E flat. In a symphony that starts with a funeral march, climaxes with Armageddon and ends in heavenly transfiguration, this key relationship with its perceptible feeling ascension is a powerful metaphor.

And, of course, E flat, like C minor, has a history, has resonances. There is Beethoven’s Eroica, which also has a great funeral march in C minor at its heart (the funereal nature of C minor seems to be defined in the St Matthew Passion, be honed in Mozart’s Masonic Funeral music and perfected in the Marche Funebre of the Eroica), and one of his last works, the String Quartet op. 127. It was Mozart’s favourite key, home to the sublime Piano Quartet in E flat and the 39^th Symphony, and Haydn did great things with it in his 99^th Symphony. Because of Beethoven, 3 E flat is often thought of as the “heroic” key. Mahler was well aware of this, but for him E flat found it’s meaning in this work, and he stayed true to that character throughout the rest of his life. For him it would always be a spiritual, ecstatic and celebratory key- his other work in which E flat major plays an important role is the closest in spirit in every way to the 2^nd Symphony, the 8^th Symphony in E flat Major.

This relationship between a home key and it’s relative key is the most common one in music, particularly in works in a minor key. Most works in a major key move first from the home key to the dominant. Works in a minor key, as often as not, move first from the home key to the relative major.  In the case of both Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music and the Marche Funebre, both also in C minor, the second theme is in E flat major, just a minute or so into the piece.

Mahler 2 begins with a funeral march in C  minor, clearly indebted to the slow movement of the Eroica. One would expect it to move immediately to E flat major, but instead the first new key it hints at is E major before being jerked back into the funeral world of C minor. Lots of keys are visited, but none of them E flat major. The 2^nd mvt is in A flat- you would expect the first port of call to be the dominant of A flat, E flat major. Nope- we first visit the parallel key instead (G sharp minor). On it goes- the epic Finale goes through numerous keys before the entrance of the chorus, and basically avoids E flat major.

The world ends, the souls of humanity march to Armageddon, the off stage band sounds the Last Trump, and even the chorus finally gets to sing, and we’ve all the while not seen the key we’ve been looking for since the 2^nd page of the piece. We are almost at the end of the symphony before we hear a cadence in E flat major. Just before the long-awaited appearance of the key we’ve been searching for since the first pages of the work, the chorus sings

Was enstanden ist, das muss vergehen!

Was vergangen, auferstehen.

 

What has come into being must perish,

What perished must rise again.

 

They begin in B flat minor and end in C flat major. Not promising, but the brass answer them with a simple chorale- a moment that could come straight from Bach, and they cadence, for the first time, on E flat major. This is THE MOMENT we’re talking about today- the first appearance of something we’ve been seeking for 75 minutes. The chorus hears this chord, this key, and answer, now staying in E flat.

Hör auf zu beben!

Bereite dich zu leben!

 

Fear no more!
Prepare yourself to live!

So, where is the “Performer’s Perspective” in all of this?

Well of course, it is a pivotal moment in the work, but it is not a climax- there are no cymbals and drums to underline the first arrival in our destination key. Does a conductor see this moment for what it is? How does she or he shape these phrases? How does she or he bring the text to life?

Mahler gives lots of instructions to the conductor- the beginning of the first phrase in the chorus is marked Slower and Mysteriously, but ends with the indication of Forward!. When the brass enter, it is suddenly held back (Zuruckhaltend), and he repeats the instruction in Italian, just in cased you missed it (ritenuto). The brass cadence on a fermata, then there is a second fermata on the silence that follows that first E flat major chord. In that silence we are awestruck- astounded by what we have heard. Finally, the men of the choir speak- Mahler says it should Langsammer (slower) and, again, Misterioso. “Fear no more,” they say. The women join, now everyone singing the same words “Fear no more.” (there’s a great low B flat in the basses here- what a great sound).

Then Mahler tells the conductor Schneller (faster) as the men erupt in fortissimo- “Prepare yourself to live!” Finally, all repate the same words mezzo forte and melt into pianississimo, landing on an expectant E flat dominant chord as we prepare to begin the work’s ecstatic coda.

So much happens in these 23 bars- we go from a sober acknowledgement that all that is created must die, to the hopeful promise, the realization, even, that all will Auferstehen- Rise Again.

In 23 bars, there are 8 indications of tempo modification and 6 fermatas or pauses.

Perhaps more than almost any moment in the work, this passage tells the listener whether a conductor dares to go to the extremes Mahler seems to demand, whether they have been tracking the piece’s harmonic journey from the beginning, and whether they have the patience to let these awesome silences have meaning.

Who goes for contrast, and who goes for continuity? Who is fastest and who is slowest? Who has the most terrified sounding Alto soloist? Let’s listen….

I’m not sure Otto Klemperer knew what “Vorwarts” meant, but then he told one of my teachers that “Klemperer means slow.”

Eliahu Inbal downplays the first few tempo changes- very little change for the first Langsammer, almost nothing for the Zuruckhaltend which follows the Vorwarts, and very little of the last Schneller.

Claudio Abbado in Lucerne is masterful as always- he surprised me with the vehemence, even violence of the first “bereite dich” Schneller.

The under-recognized Kazushi Ono is marvellously in control, and the chorus sings with lots of care for the words.

Riccardo Chailly starts brilliantly (he even gets the accents on the first two notes, almost the only who does), but doesn’t do a whole lot of Vorwarts or Schneller. The slow stuff is stunning, but is it balanced by enough drama and contrasts? His are the softest softs, but that can also be a factor of the recording.

Michael Gielen sounds very impressively polished, but downplays the tempo changes and skips the fermatas on “beben.” There is a strangely disinterested quality to the cutoff of that first E flat chord which kind of bugs me, but what follows is pretty beautiful.

Valery Gergiev sounds a little rough and ready (he’s not a big rehearser), but he sure as hell knows what Vorwarts means (although that first forte, and it is just forte and not fortissimo, is close to too harsh sounding for me), and I am sure he knows what that E flat major chord means from the way they play it. A moment, to be sure.

Back-in-the-day Lenny B is dramatic as you’d expect, but tends to treat changes of tempo as changing tempos- both the Zuruckhaltend and the last Langsammer are getting gradually slower, instead of simply being held back of slower.

I like James Levine’s violin trill at the beginning (they start the trill a little slow). He’s not big on Vorwarts, but has a great fermata on the first silence. His Schneller is faster than his Vorwarts, which begs the question- should they be more or less the same tempo, or one faster than the other. We know what Jimmy thinks.

Late Lenny is not quite what I expected- I thought he’d go like a bat out of hell at the Vorwarts, but he’s pretty broad there, taking time to let each chord sound. Like Levine, he does more for the Schneller than for the Vorwarts. His brass chorale sounds like it was multitracked by God- what a sound, and the chorus sings as if possessed.

Ivan Fischer has a lot of attention to detail- nothing on the slow side, to be sure. You can actually hear the contrabassoon in his chorale- it drowns out the tuba. Kind of a cool sound .

Haitink with the BBC Symphony at the Proms (not great sound quality from webstream) a few years ago is astoundingly in control (listen to that harp!) at the beginning and it just gets better from there. I was at this concert, and listening again to this passage, in my opinion,  it is pretty amazing music making.

Which of these readings speak to you? Which drives you bananas? Do they all sound the same and do you feel I’ve just wasted 30 minutes of  your life? Does one or another make you want to listen to the whole performance? We’d love to hear your comments

 

 

UPDATED

 

A few friends asked me to put my head on the chopping block, more out of curiosity about how I conduct it than out of malice. In spite of the fact that our budget for this entire season, not just the Mahler 2, was about half James Levine’s normal weekly fee, I’ve decided to post this clip of my OES performance in 2006.

A sensational take from Walter Weller on video

http://youtu.be/DTd2MTYpqOE