Kenneth Woods- A View From the Podium

Leningradskaya II- Moderato (poco allegretto)

2010-03-14T03:12:44Z

(The ghosts of Leningrad, now St Petersberg, as captured by the great Alexey Titarenko

I think it is fair to say that a great composer never wastes an idea- be it a musical motive or a technical concept. Everything is explored and developed. We all know that the rhythmic cell at the beginning of Beethoven 5 (3 short notes and a long note) becomes the basis of themes in every movement of the symphony. However, that’s not all he extracts from that opening- as you may remember, after the first four notes, there is a fermata, and after the 2^nd four notes, a longer one. This means that the rhythmic flow of the music is immediately interrupted. Beethoven returns to this idea of interruption and discontinuity throughout the symphony, from obvious small examples like the many rests and feramatas in the opening movements to bigger and less obvious examples like the interruption of the Finale with a return of the Scherzo. Everything is explored and developed.

The opening of the first movement of Shostakovich’s 7^th Symphony is shocking because it is not what we expect- it’s confident when we expect something stormy, tonally secure when we expect something unstable.

After the cataclysm of the invasion theme, and the long requiem theme that follows, it is hard to imagine that the second movement of the symphony would be anything but a lament. So, just as the opening of the symphony seems inappropriately cheerful, so too does the opening of the Scherzo. I wouldn’t call it cheerful, but it is certainly enigmatic and quirky, even whimsical.

Humor played a big role in the Allegretto, and so it does here as well. This long opening section is very enigmatic music- dry, elegant, funny, ironic, sophisticated. From bar to bar we’re not sure if we’re supposed to take it at face value or not. It is music that is outwardly accessible, but fundamentally perplexing. Critics of the work find this ambiguity intolerable- reading their assessments of this movement is like sitting in a movie theatre with someone who can’t follow the plot or deal with the unknown. If they don’t know if a given character is a baddie or a goodie, they don’t want to follow the story.

Shostakovich doesn’t call this movement a Scherzo, and the musical material is just ambivalent enough that a listener might not know if it was a dance movement or not. Generally, minuets and scherzos are monothematic. The typical form is Scherzo-Trio-Scherzo. The Scherzo section will be in two parts (each repeated), but both parts are generally made of the same stuff. The second section works with the same thematic ideas, usually just elaborated, before returning to more familiar ground just before the end. In this movement, Shostakovich creates the expectations of a Scherzo when he repeats the opening thematic ideas, but it is not a literal repeat- instead, the 1^st violins take over the theme from the 2nds.

Then instead of the 2^nd section being an elaboration of the repeated first section, he introduces a completely new theme in the oboe. Again, our expectations, which he has carefully cultivated, are challenged. Are we back in the world of sonata form? Is he making up for the damaged form of the first movement? This second theme certainly sticks in the head, largely through its distinctive scoring. The long melody is set at the top of the oboe register, very high, over a repeated string ostinato.

After this long oboe episode, he seems to confirm our suspicion that this is a sonata movement by introducting a 3^rd group of ideas with a mournful cello melody. Is this a closing theme- proof positive that we’re in sonata form? Wouldn’t that be interesting?!?!?!

Finally, things wind down, and first violins restate the opening theme in pizzicato- which further confuses the issue. Is it just a Scherzo after all, and are the 2^nd and 3rrd themes just part of the b-section? What is going on here?

Suddenly the mood shifts. Is this the Trio of a Scherzo, or the Development of a sonata form? Humor was a big part of the 1^st movement- remember that the invasion theme seemed to use humor to mask its maeleveolent nature. There have been elements of wit and humor throughout the 2^nd movement, but suddenly, the humor, as in the 1^st mvt, turns nasty. Where the first section of the movement was soft, whimsical and low key, here the music becomes bitterly sardonic, aggressive and caustic. There are shrieking high tunes for E-flat clarinet and oboe, and buffoonishly aggressive low melodies for conrtra bassoon and low strings. Later there are quasi-millitary outbursts in the trumpets, which are usually doubled by the low tuba, a very interesting, agressive and distinctive sound.

At the climax of this middle section, the trumpets shout their fanfares, answered by triumphalist declarations of the strings and woodwinds over thundering accompaniment in the timpani, low strings and bassoons. Over and over again, they hammer out the same 2 note figure: C-G-C-G. It’s the first two notes of the symphony, but possibly more telling, the same interval as that repeated punctuation in the timpani and trumpets at the beginning of the piece. Gradually, our questions about the opening of the symphony are being answered- the melody of the beginning of the work is so soulful when it returns at the end of the first movement that we can accept it as quite sincere in nature, but this section seems to confirm our suspicion about those early timp and trumpet interjections. There is something violent and evil in that simplistic, hammering fourth. In this passage in the 2^nd Mvt, Shostakovich seems determined to shake the music free of that hammering fourth, by shifting meters, scoring and keys, but nothing seems to work.

So, we’ve had another movement in which a sense of stability is shattered by a violent outburst. Another movement in which something that could have been a sonata form is interrupted by a middle section built of unrelated ideas. What then to expect of the 3^rd panel of this movement?

I think it is fair to say that a great composer never wastes an idea- be it a musical motive or a technical concept. Everything is explored and developed.

In the first movement, the recapitulation is like a dark mirror image of the exposition. A heroic first theme becomes a scream of anguish. A hopeful second theme becomes a desolate lament. It is not a validation or a culmination, but a melancholic reminiscence. Likewise, in the final panel of the 2^nd movement, Shostakovich creates another mirror image. Where the 2^nd theme of the first movement is heard originally in soulful tutti violins, the recapitulated on lonesome, plaintive solo bassoon, the 2^nd theme of the 2^nd movement is first heard on painfully high solo oboe, and recapitulated on painfully low bass clarinet. In fact, a good chunk of this solo is written below the register of a standard bass clarinet- one needs either a special bass clarinet of a contrabass clarinet to get the lowest 3 notes.

In the end, we’re left unsure of what we’ve just heard. A symphonic Scherzo? An Intermezzo, or break in the action? The Sonata movement we should have heard originally? On the surface the mood is very different from the 1^st mvt, yet we seem to be falling into the same traps, reliving the same catastrophes. Perhaps the tempo marking tells the story “Moderato (poco allegretto),” or “differently (but a little bit the same as the first).”

Is this our destiny- to repeat the same tragic patterns, day after day, war after war?

Still think this piece is all film music and feel-good propaganda?

Leningradskaya I- Allegretto

2010-03-13T05:43:35Z

(The ghosts of Leningrad, now St Petersberg, as captured by the great Alexey Titarenko)

By this point in my life, the vast majority of works I’m conducting are ones I’ve already been thinking about for a long time, and already have very strong convictions about. However, one of the delights of the job is that there are always pieces you can leave to discover and explore when an opportunity to perform them comes along. As long as you continue to study and learn new works, the opportunity for a genuine revelation is there.

I’ve always been a Shostakovich nut, but some of the symphonies I’ve known backwards since I was quite young- no.’s 1, 5,8, 9, 10, 12, 14 and 15. The others I have certainly long been aquainted with, but not in the same way- I know them more as a fan, and haven’t had the chance to really figure out what I think about them. This made it all the more exciting when I got the chance to do number 7 last month with the Wrexham Symphony Orchestra.

When I was young, the Leningrad was better known for the crap and nonsense American critics had written about it than for the music itself. The level of sheer invective, usually paired with carefully selected musical excerpts, used out of context, was almost impossible to resist. We grew up being told it was propaganda, that it was film music, that it was banal, self-indulgent, poorly crafted and worse. The “invasion theme” was a huge mistake- a grave manifestation of a lack of taste and professionalism by the composer. Others blamed the material- as if the poor composer was somehow pressured into writing a symphony based on inferior melodies and motives.

I never believed that, but I never quite bonded with the piece as I did with its sister work, the 8^th. The 8^th begins with a kind of ruthlessly focused angst, while the 7^th sounds a bit naïve at the beginning. The meanderings of the 2^nd mvt of the 7^th seemed a little perplexing to me, compared to the ferocity of the inner movements of 8.

However, over the years, I heard enough good performances to think I had to figure it out for myself- there was the legendary Bernstein-Chicago recording, which every music lover owned at one point, and I also remember a broadcast of the World Orchestra for Peace and Gergiev at the Proms that was pretty awe-inspiring. I gradually became convinced the piece worked, but I wasn’t sure how or why.

Still, it is possible to enjoy a piece while having reservations about it as a work of art- that’s why we call them guilty pleasures. I knew when we programmed the 7^th that it would be fun to play and exciting to hear, but I didn’t really know how the whole work would fit together, what it would say, or how I would feel about it.

Months before the first rehearsal, I was talking with two colleagues- one, who is a Shostakovich agnostic, asked me if it was a great piece or not. I told him I thought it might be, but I didn’t know yet. My other colleague, usually a Shostakovich evangelist, told me in no uncertain terms, that no matter how good most of it was, the “invasion theme” was just “not right” and ruined the piece for him.

Much about the history of the work’s creation and early performances are well known. Shostakovich had been working on the piece long before the war, but started writing it down at speed during the early months of the siege of Leningrad. In such horrible circumstances, one would expect an opening like that of the 5^th or 8^th symphonies- something bracing, violent, dramatic. Instead, we get a bright, energetic, rather tuneful opening in C major. It sounds kind of cheerful- bordering on triumphalist. The texture is extremely simple- the strings play the melody in octaves, punctuated by the trumpets and timpani, who again and again play the notes G and C. It turns out that those notes, and that interval of a fourth, are going to be very important throughout the symphony.

Is this opening ironic? Is it a depiction of naivety before a cataclysm? What is the relation of the melody to the trumpets and timps- they seem simplistic to the point of being belligerent. Throughout the piece, questions like this come up that musicologists and conductors like to argue about- is this theme the good guys or the bad guys? You don’t have to decide whether or not to take this music at face value. The way he has scored it makes one think it’s likely that some of it is innocent, cheerful and even naïve, while other aspects- notably the trumpets and timps, are more manipulative and cynical. One thing is for sure—this opening clearly establishes C major as the tonic key of the symphony, far more clearly than the openings of the 1^st or 5^th do. By the 11^th time the trumpets and drums play that G-C, we’re pretty damn sure this is a symphony in C major.

If the opening of the symphony seems on first glance to be quite orthodox, the 2^nd theme is even more so. It’s almost like a textbook 2^nd theme- in the dominant (G major), lyrical, spacious and long-breathed. It’s also beautifully integrated with what we’ve already heard- where the first theme begins with a falling fourth, this one begins with a rising one. How much more perfect and comfortable can you get- a 2^nd theme that, in every way, is the perfect contrast to the first.

I think this second theme achieves a second aim- anyone familiar with Shostakovich’s style is likely to hear the opening with some skepticism. It just doesn’t seem like him to write something so muscular and upbeat without any hint of a double meaning or an ironic undertone. However, the 2^nd theme is so gorgeous, and he plays it very straight- there is nothing like the bizarre trumpet timpani interjections of the opening to indicate that we should view this music with suspicion.

Again, as in a textbook sonata-allegro movement, we have a closing theme, which emerges almost seamlessly from the 2^nd theme, carrying forward the lyrical and serene mood. There are long, dreamy solos for piccolo and violin- this is something we’ll hear more of throughout the piece, these moments of near stasis, where the music becomes meditative and still. Here, that stillness is calm, genuinely beautiful, and profoundly peaceful- the only sign of mischief in the air is that the exposition doesn’t end in the dominant, as we expect, but on a third relationship- E major.

I’ve used the word “expect” many times already. One reason critics get this piece so wrong as that the don’t understand the ways in which Shostakovich is intentionally manipulating our expectation. Some writers have dismissed the exposition as too neatly fulfilling our expectations- as if it was all a little too “text book.” How sad that they’ve missed the point- which is that this is exactly the effect that Shostakovich wants us to experience. He wants us to feel secure about where the piece is going.

So, what we now expect is the development section, where the three thematic groups will conflict and intermingle and where he will develop their motivic possibilities, and explore some interesting tonal regions. What we get instead is one of the most infamous passages in 20^th c. music, the so-called “invasion theme.” It is actually a theme and 12 variations, loosely modeled on Bolero, complete with a snare drum ostinato and a gradual crescendo. We now know beyond doubt that Shostakovich was already working with this theme long before the war. Early on, he apparently called it the “Stalin” theme, it was later called the “Hitler” theme, and in his later year, he simply called it a depiction of evil. He was aware of the inevitable comparisons to Bolero, but remained unapologetic- “this is what evil sounds like to me,” he said.

That evil is not immediately apparent. Perhaps the theme is a little banal, but it is harmless enough- a simple march theme in E-flat major. Through the first few variations, it evolves into something a little bit funny, outright silly, and later completely absurd. If we are to see in this music a sort of political critique, the example couldn’t be more apt. Despots and dictators have long snuck themselves into power by pretending to be fools. A recent American president was a master of this ruse- hiding a ruthless nature behind a buffoonish exterior. His British contemporary might still be in power had he understood the benefits of letting yourself go “misunderestimated.”

As the variations unfold and the volume builds, the music becomes genuinely exciting, even triumphant. It may be a depiction of evil, but it’s quite, well, fun- we are being made complicit it something. As the music increases in volume, however, we’re no longer so sure we want to cheer along with the music- the evil is getting closer to the surface, and yet it is exciting, it is cathartic. And, when we reach fortissimo, Shostakovich unveils the first real obvious masterstroke- he makes us realize that he has completely altered our perception of time.

Throughout the invasion theme section, he moves very, very slowly. Each variation treats the entire theme from beginning to end, but adds only one new trick. My favorite example is the variation for oboe and bassoon, where the oboe plays a fragment of the theme, which the bassoon simply parrots back exactly the same. Since everything is played twice, it turns a long theme into a very long variation. This is exactly the sort of thing that infuriates many critics of the piece, but it achieves several things- first, it is funny. Second, it builds incredible tension. Third, it’s stretching your attention span.

When the crescendo finally reaches fortissimo, he keeps us there or above not for a bar, or four bars, or 16, but for 204 bars. If the previous variations had unfolded at a more economical pace, or been more richly embroidered, I doubt our attention span could withstand this. Stretched as it is by what precedes, now we’re not only able to follow it, we can’t seem to avert our attention from it. I find it hard to explain the effect of this section, but it is as if a film maker has a camera focused on a single horrifying act for a painfully long time, then gradually pulls back with a crane shot. Instead of one tragedy we see two, then ten, then fifty, then 200 hundred, then an uncountable multitude. And when we finally see the scale of the cataclysm, we don’t get to look away, but just as the piccolo and violin were free to mediate on things peaceful before, now we must absorb and contemplate the horror before us.

In the midst of all this fortissimo, we finally escape the invasion theme- again, the camera pulls back and we see humanity. What we hear is the recapitulation- the return of the opening of the symphony. However, what was bright, hopeful, swaggering C major is now apocalyptic, wailing C minor.

One of the reasons I wanted to do this piece long before I understood it was a masterpiece was because Shostakovich himself seemed to have a special place in his heart for it, alongside the 8^th. He called it his Requiem. These pages, this epic unfolding, give voice to something truly horrifying- people who argue about whether it was the Stalinist terrors or the siege of Lenningrad that he was depicting miss the point entirely. What we will see throughout the symphony is that today’s hero is tomorrow’s villain. It’s a requiem for humanity. The message is universal.

In a sonata form, the recapitulation is typically the point in the music where that which has been unstable is made stable. Where the exposition takes us from a home key to a point of departure to unstable tonal regions, we expect the recapitulation to solve the problems of the exposition. Although the exposition of this movement modulates, it doesn’t really have problems. Shostakovich wrote an exposition that is already stable, so, of course, his recapitulation becomes almost a dismantling of what we’ve heard before.

Technically, this achieves something quite fascinating- it makes up for the fact that the invasion theme essentially ate the development. This may seem a rather academic point, but Shostakovich had a profound respect for the need for rigor in his music. He may lead us to think he is being purely theatrical, but there is always a sense that part of what makes symphonic music dramatic and emotional is the intellectual discipline with which one explores and develops ideas. So, on a dramatic level, the cataclysm of the development has created a mournful atmosphere, but on a technical level, the need to transform hopeful, serene and confident material into music that is lamenting, desperate and despairing means that he is back in the world of developmental technique.

His treatment of the 2^nd theme is perhaps the most starting example- instead of soulful and glowing first violins, he gives the melody to the solo bassoon. Where the first occurrence of this music is in the dominant (G major), this return, which should be in C major, is instead in F # minor. Instead of unfolding with confident regularity, the phrases are distorted and distended over a strange 7 beat ostinato. The first statement of the 2^nd theme lasts 16 bars, divided into 2 even 8 bar phrases, all in cut time, with a lovely chord shift exactly half way through. In the recap, he stretches the same material to 27 bars, and the meter changes every measure. It’s profoundly sad, genuinely heart-wrenching music, but it is also very clever and sophisticated.

In the coda, Shostakovich gives us a pretty literal re-statement of the beginning, back in C major, but this is surely not a re-assertion of confidence, but a longing memory of what has been lost. It turns out that opening melody really was innocent, and now it is lost. When the snare drum sneaks back in, and the trumpet plays the invasion theme on last time, the effect is devastating- all this tragedy, and it was just a joke.

Defending LvB’s tempi- Symphony no. 2 and beyond

2010-03-15T03:59:52Z

Some months ago, my trio, Ensemble Epomeo, had just given a rather pleasant and exciting concert the night before, and I was enjoying my morning espresso on the slopes of Mount Epomeo just that little bit more with the first performance of a challenging new program behind me. As I wandered the grounds, I ran into a student I had always thought of as a genial if eccentric older amateur musician. Any hint of her gentle wit soon evaporated when she started yelling at me, for a good 15-20 minutes, about our tempos in the Beethoven C minor String Trio the night before.

A key element of her lengthy and rather vitriolic diatribe seemed to be that by choosing rather brisk tempi throughout the work, we were revealing a lack of respect and affection for Beethoven’s music. Apparently, in her world, playing slowly means you love the music, playing fast means you hate the music. I recently encountered the same sentiment again. If you don’t know what Beethoven actually wrote, nor understand why he wrote it, or the relationships expressed within, it might never occur to you that a performer has chosen tempi not to aggravate you, but because they have made an effort to understand the text they’re interpreting. That’s not to say the performer is correct, but simply that you lack the skill and standing to evaluate the merits of their approach.The art of tact rarely extends to explaining to a listener that they just don’t know what they are talking about. Sadly, she didn’t know what she was talking about, much as she loved her recording of the piece.

Of course, the question of tempo is always somewhat fraught in Beethoven (mostly because his quicker tempos require the performers to practice their parts), but I’d never actually been accosted about it so violently before. I can remember my own deep resistance when someone got out their metronome while I was listening to a favorite recording of a Beethoven symphony (the 1st mvt of #3). Of course, LvB’s tempo was insanely faster than what I was used to- it was a mistake, I thought. I got very upset- It’s a load of crap! Metronomes aren’t musical! They don’t feel, they don’t express! I’m sure I did some colorful and vitriolic ranting of my own. I might have even considered some accosting. I probably said that anyone who conducted the piece that fast would have to hate the music or be late for a train.

What finally got me to sit down and think hard about Beethoven’s tempos was the experience of working with some great chamber music coaches, notably the La Salle and Tokyo quartets (especially the patient mentoring of Henry Meyer), long arguments with my conducting teacher, Gerhard Samuel, and encountering the Beethoven symphony performances of Carlos Kleiber. Kleiber seeled the deal. I’d always been presented with a false dichotomy- real, deeply feeling, passionate musicians who love and care about and understand the music came up with their own tempos. Cold, unfeeling, mechanical academics are just content to hack through based on a tempo dictated by a machine. Kleiber, of course, was the most joyful, the most passionate, most creative, most flexible interpreter of Beethoven who ever picked up a baton. He also stayed very, very close to LvB’s carefully thought out metronome markings.

The fact is, when you learn a piece from a recording, you’re not learning the composition, you are imprinting a performance. Nothing more. It’s a passive process, not an active one. It confuses familiarity with understanding. Listening to a beloved performance ten thousand times doesn’t mean you understand the piece- you’ve got to go to the score for that. When we hear or perform music, we’re often inspired to poetic descriptions. We might decide that this or that piece is “genial’ or “lyrical” or that it “needs to breathe,” when what we mean is that we are used to a performance that has those qualities. This doesn’t mean that the favorite performance is wrong, simply that it is not definitive. What is surprising is that, for such a listener, a performance that departs from their familiar version might still affect listeners as “genial” but might come across to that listener as something else entirely. Or, it might bring out other, equally valid and worthy qualities. And, of course, you can still enjoy aspects of a performance while recognizing where there are problems. I continue to admire the color and sensitivity of Celibidache’s Beethoven, even though I find he pays too high a price in terms of structure, and loses almost all the wit and humor. I can still strive to learn from those beautiful textures, and enjoy the performances on their own terms. Put simply, it is wiser to educate yourself to listen more openly and more critically- to be able to enjoy and admire points of view different from your own.

Take, for example, the 2^nd Symphony, which I just conducted last weekend in Cambridge. Beethoven added the metronome markings in 1817, after the work had been performed many times, by which time he would have had not only a sense of his original concept but also of the performing issues of the piece. All the tempi he suggests are eminently playable, if challenging. Of course, the value of a performance is not measured in how exactly one adheres to those tempi, but it doesn’t take long to see that they are exceptionally carefully thought out, and reflect carefully intergrated tempo relationships throughout the piece.

The Allegro section of the 1^st mvt is marked half=100. That’s brisk and virtuosic, but not chaotic (unless the listener insists on hearing it that way). The 2^nd mvt is marked Larghetto, which sounds slow, but the metronome marking is 92, which means the speed of the pulse is just the tiniest bit slower than that of the Allegro. When LvB transcribed the Symphony for Piano Trio, he changed the tempo marking of this movement to Larghetto quasi andante, or “in a walking tempo.” If you were raised on a very slow tempo, LvB’s will make for a different listening experience, but it is also a revelation- the anticipations of Schubert’s Andantes are right there to be seen. Instead of a Romantic slow movement, you have more of an intermezzo- a leisurely stroll, during which you experience many beauties, moments of great humor, mystery, fantasy and much more, before your journey brings you back home, enriched. It sparkles, it flirts, it explodes in pomp, then retreats into radiant serenity. To me, it is more profound because it wears its genius more lightly.

Things get even more interesting in the 3^rd Mvt, which LvB marked dotted-half=100. In other words, the speed of the pulse in the 1^st and 3^rd mvts should be exactly the same. Take a slower I, you need a slower III, a faster I a faster III. It also means that the pulse of III is just the tiniest bit faster than that of II.

Then, there is the Finale, which is marked half= 152. This is, of course, fast, but it is also an expression of a very interesting relationship. At dotted half=100, the speed of quarter notes in III is 300. At half+152, the speed of quarters in the Finale is 304- almost the same speed, and the metronome doesn’t generally have a 150 option, so Beethoven may have meant either exactly the same speed or one slightly more fizz. (I always assumed that if Beethoven had had the option of a 150 notch on his metronome he would have used it, but I’m no longer so sure- that bit of extra fizz seems to create a lot of propulsion, since each of the last 3 movements then is just a bit faster than the one before)

This means that the whole symphony has a sort of underlying sense of unity to the tempi that makes a lot of sense. Interesting things come to the surface at these speeds- notably humor and virtuosity. There are several thematic references to the Marriage of Figaro Overture (in the same key, of course) in IV- these come out beautifully at LvB’s tempo. In fact, Beethoven’s wit comes across beautifully throughout.

In the end, following LvB’s tempi doesn’t in any way guarantee a good performance- it’s got to be colorful, articulate, in tune, together, dynamic, balanced and more, and I’m not sure I’d sacrifice any of those for tempo. If I did, I’ll learn from the mistakes, to be sure, and I’d be grateful for feedback that called it to my attention. When I did the piece last week, I found 96 was about as fast as I dared go in the 1^st and 3^rd mvts, with other tempi adjusted proportionately, at least in the rehearsals. I’ll be curious to hear the recording of the concert, and see how it worked. I last did the piece in Pendleton in April of 09, at almost the exact same tempi, but for some reason, the 3^rd Mvt didn’t work as I hoped it would- it never quite grooved and ended up a little slow- it felt better this time. However, the outer mvts worked well at LvB’s tempi, which you can also hear in fine recordings by Gardiner, Zinman and many others.

This is a big and contentious subject, but the only thing to add is that LvB is pretty consistent from piece to piece about his metronome markings- similar movements with similar descriptive markings end up with similar metronome marks. Look at the first mvts of his 3^rd and 8^th Symphonies- what do they tell you about the tempo of the Egmont Overture? There is a range of tempo possibilities there, but it is a relatively narrow one. The Finale’s of LvB 2 and 4 are cut from the same cloth, and have almost identical tempi of 76 vs 80 to the bar or 152 versus 160 to the half bar. Most good conductors switch back and forth between conducting in 2 and 1 in these movements- that shift in the unit of pulse is very, very typical of classical repertoire, especially Haydn, whose music is the most obvious and profound influence on early Beethoven. If you take either movement too slowly, you are stuck in 2 all the time- the pulse of the whole bar becomes to slow to have any impetus.

So, of course that string trio performance last year could have been shaky, not together, out of tune, ugly, whatever. To say that it was “too fast” though, belies a sort of well-nurtured ignorance. Taking the time to learn LvB’s tempo tendencies is certainly not indicative of a lack of deep love for his music. I count myself as a very lucky man- I’ve conducted all the Beethoven orchestral music other than Wellington’s Victory (which I like!), played all the quartets, all the piano trios and all the string trios. I’ve even massacred a good smattering of piano sonatas in the privacy of my home. I’m so glad I had some teachers and mentors strong enough to overcome my attachment to the performances I grew up with- those visions of the pieces were wonderful, but there is always much, much more in Beethoven’s conception of his own music than in that of any one conductor. The more you learn the whole output, the more you realize how logical and consistent he is with tempi.

I’m so glad I can look back on my past and realize how much I had to learn- I don’t like the alternative at all….. to be forever trapped by my own ego in a prison of ignorant dilettantism. To be proved wrong is a great gift- otherwise, you simply remain wrong forever.

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Just to reiterate my point about metronome markings not being something to apply in a completely facile way, take Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin, which we also performed on the same concert as the Beethoven last week. Ravel’s tempo for the 1^st Mvt is dotted-quarter= 92, which is very, very fast. However, that turns out to the tempo of the original version for piano- such a tempo sounds fluid and lucid on solo piano, but is impossible, or at least ill advised, with orchestra. We took it at 80, which keeps the liquid flow Ravel was after without introducting an unwanted sense of panic. Oboe soloist Bethan White played it rather sublimely. We made a similar adjustment in the 2^nd mvt, marked 96, which we took about 80-84. You try to keep the same relationship (very slightly faster than the 1^st mvt) while adjusting for the realities of the new setting.

Performer’s Perspective- Mahler 6, a decision

2010-03-08T22:28:29Z

The Bridgewater Hall- Mahler in Manchester

The BBC Philharmonic will perform Mahler’s Sixth Symphony in A minor on the 27th of March at 7:30 under the direction of their Principal Conductor, Gianandrea Noseda. Also on the programme is the premiere of Edward Gregson’s “Dream Song.”

I am often asked to rank the Mahler symphonies.

Which one do you think is the greatest? Which is the hardest to conduct? Which is hardest to play? Which is a good one to start with if I am new to Mahler? Which one sells the most tickets?

Not surprisingly, my answers to all of these questions have varied over the years. They are all such compelling, challenging, rewarding, vexing works that working on or listening to any of them can quickly convince you that the piece on your desk is the greatest, the hardest, the most accessible, the most popular, the scariest or the most multi-faceted.

However, when asked for my “favourite” Mahler symphony over the years, my answer has been pretty consistent. It’s still a close contest and always has been. The late triptych of Das Lied von der Erde, the Ninth and the Tenth all mean a great deal to me- they are a profound source of comfort and solace and have been almost my entire life. The 2^nd will always be special for many reasons because of its cathartic power and the special place it has held in my performing life. The 4^th is simply perfection. The 8^th, well, I just love it- I’m not too cool to love it, and I have no criticisms of it. On goes the list for all 11 works.

But, more or less without interruption, the 6^th has always been my favourite of them all.

It was the first Mahler work I analyzed the score to- even if it was the wrong score (the Dover edition is only Mahler’s first version),. It’s not the one I listen to most often (that’s likely to be the one I’m conducting in 2-6 moths, whichever that may be), but I listened to it so many times in my youth that it will probably always be the one I’d heard the most times.

I only share this because I suppose the deeply tragic nature of the piece might scare listeners off from it. You might well take my love of this work as an indication that I am a morose or gloomy person. Well, I may or may not be gloomy, but my love for Mahler 6 is not to be confused with a love of gloom.

Over 25 years of acquaintance, I suppose there two things in this piece that make me feel so close to it. First, I think it is in many ways his most musically perfect work. That’s not to say it is as innovative and transcendent as the later works, nor is that to be taken as a criticism of his earlier ones. Still, to me, it is the Mahler symphony in which everything works. The structure, the material and the orchestration are all so utterly compelling that for all its complexity and vast scale, I think it is the Mahler symphony that is the most consistently sturdy. Everything works, and works for almost every performer able to do justice to the technical demands of the piece, and yet it is also a work that can always be taken to a new height. There are a number of truly amazing recorded performances of Mahler 6- there seems to be no limit to what the piece can be.

The second thing I feel most strongly in this piece is its sheer life force. It is the most powerful musical evocation of will, courage and resilience of any work I know. Far from being nihilistic, I think the message of the work is far more hopeful in a completely painfully realistic way. Mahler described the plan of the Finale of the symphony as a portrait of a great hero who suffers three blows of Fate, the last of which fells him “as a tree is felled.” Shakespeare knew that the true test of a hero was what they did when all hope was lost, in how they faced the inevitable when it becomes inescapable. This piece is completely unflinching in is acknowledgement of mortality, and yet the heights to which the hero soars in this work are unlike anything else in music. It is only the ultimate fact of our universal mortality that stops him. I always find the ending upsetting, but my lasting impression of a good performance, be it mine or someone else’s is of a great life lived to the absolute limit.

Of course, there is a strange autobiographical coincidence in this piece- it could very well be a depiction of Mahler’s on life. He himself suffered those 3 blows of fate- the tragic death of his daughter, the loss of his position in Vienna, and the onset of his terminal heart condition.

But, Mahlerians will already know that the paradox is that in this case, life imitated art. Mahler wrote the piece before any of those misfortunes came upon him.

This has long left commentators wondering about the inspiration behind this unique piece. Mahler wrote 11 symphonic works- all the others end in either triumph or transcendence. Only this one ends in tragedy. Beethoven never wrote a tragic symphony, Brahms and Mozart only wrote one each. When Mahler wrote the Fifth, which ends exuberantly, he had just recovered from a life threatening illness. On the other hand, when he wrote the 6^th, he was at the peak of his career, in the happy early days of his marriage to Alma, and his beloved children were all well.

And yet, Mahler developed a uniquely strong sense of identification with this piece- it seemed to genuinely upset him.

The question has long been “where did this piece come from.” Was Mahler truly being prophetic? Were there signs his perfect marriage was not so perfect after all?

I have no doubt that Mahler was in some strange ways more sensitive than most of us to the spiritual reverberations of great events past and future, and probably was dialled in to the resonances of tragedies to come. On the other hand, I’m sure the inspiration, the trigger for this outpouring of tragic energy came from his own 5^th Symphony.

The 2^nd movement of Mahler 5 is an explosion of violence and despair without precedence in music. Certainly, there were important tragic works before- Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, Mozart 40, Brahms 4 and Tragic Overture and Tchaikovsky’s Sixth. However, none has the unremitting ferocity and apocalyptic power of that one movement of Mahler 5. As I got to know the piece in minute detail, I was stunned to find that it is not just a narrative of destruction- it comes close to being the destruction of narrative. At every turn, Mahler sets up expectations of the classical forms that gave structure to many of the great tragic musical essays of the past. Coriolan, the 1^st and last mvts of Tchaik 6 and Mozart 40, the Brahms Tragic Overture- all of these are built on sonata form.

With the 2^nd mvt of his 5^th Symphony Mahler created something not “in” sonata form, but “against” it. Without going into analytical detail, Mahler does everything he can to remind us of what we expect, even in a work like Coriolan, but it is not just his protagonist who is destroyed, it is the form itself. Every expectation is denied, every continuation interrupted- I can’t think of a more disturbing work written before it.

But, of course, in the 5^th, the road continues beyond this point of negation- first to a sort of ambivalent, world weary black humour in the Scherzo, then later to a serene awakening of hope in Adagietto, and finally on to joyful celebration in the Finale. The Fifth Symphony is the first truly modern symphony- for the first time Mahler offers no “answer.” The cataclysm of the 1^st part is not balanced out by the 3^rd part, instead, a page is simply turned. Mahler seems to be acknowledging that life can be cruel one day and kind the next, that the most horrific tragedies and the most joyful awakenings can come in close succession. Today may be the worst day of your life, but tomorrow could still be the best.

It seems self-evident in the music, though, that Mahler could see that the 5^th was obviously a Triptych in which the outer panels could be switched. What if today was the greatest moment of your life, and tomorrow brought tragedy? The Fifth didn’t show that things must get better, only that they can get better, and that when they do, we can still re-awaken our capacity for joy.

So, the Sixth became Mahler’s attempt to come to terms with the monstrous truth he had revealed in the 2^nd movement of the 5^th. It is in the same key as that movement, A minor, and very much in the same mood. It is also a triptych- the first movement ends in the joyful triumph of the melody he himself called the “Alma” theme. Today, it says could be the best day of your life.

Then, in the final great panel of the 6^th’s triptych, possibly Mahler’s most perfect movement (the 1^st mvt of the 9^th is the other obvious contender), Mahler creates an epic drama, in which a truly heroic protagonist rises to ecstatic heights, again and again overcomes impossible adversity, only to be completely and utterly destroyed by Fate in the end. Tomorrow, it says, could be the end of your life.

Just as the Scherzo of the Fifth Symphony is more ambivalent, with hints of both hope and nihilism, the middle of the Sixth is also a bit more grey, where the outer panels are one white and one black.

And here is where this piece suddenly gets very problematic and controversial for the performer.

The Sixth is in 4 movements (the 5^th in 5). Mahler fans will know that he originally had Scherzo as the 2^nd mvt and the Andante as the 3^rd. He changed the order at the first performance to Andante-Scherzo, and the scores for many years were printed in that order. In the 1960’s, Erwin Ratz, the editor of the old Critical edition, determined the original order was correct and switched it back to Schezo-Andante. However, since his death recent research by Jerry Bruck and Rheinhold Kubik has revealed that Ratz may have been a bit free with the facts- Ratz claimed that Mahler later changed his mind and that later performances after the premiere were done in the original, Scherzo-Andante order. We now know that this was not, in fact, true, and that Ratz knew it wasn’t true. You can read more about this issue here in Gilbert Kaplan’s excellent NYT piece. Suffice it to say that historical evidence pretty clearly validates the case for Andante-Scherzo. Mahler changed his mind, and never seems to have reversed that decision.

However, as Ginanadrea Noseda and I discussed the other day, there remain compelling reasons for sticking to Mahler’s original plan. The key relationships are more dramatic, logical and compelling when going Scherzo-Andante (a topic for another post), and the thematic similarities of the Scherzo and the 1^st movement make pairing them seem quite logical. In fact, it greatly strengthens the sense of a tripartite form- the first two movements form a thematically unified part I, the Andante a part II that, like the Scherzo in Mahler 5, offers a break and a meditation before taking us to the mirror image of Part I, the great and tragic Finale. Also, remember the axiom that Mahler generally did not change matters of concept in revision, only of execution. Changing the order of movements as he did seems out of character and musically suspect.

In fact, Mahler’s whole attitude to the piece seems out of character. His correspondence shows he could be colourful and passionate in discussing any of his works, but a study of the working copies of his scores show his attitude to conducting his own music was extremely pragmatic. He never seemed to suffer great doubts about what he’d written- he simply kept trying again and again to perfect the “how’s,” never really changing the “what’s” or the “why’s”

And you will remember Mahler’s own description of the 3 blows of Fate in the Finale. Mahler actually called for the use of a huge hammer at these points in the score- it is a devastating effect. However, he removed the final hammer blow. Why? Superstition? Did he see in it his own demise? It was really just a symbolic gesture- the ending is no more hopeful without it, it just ends a slightly different story. This change seems so out of character, as does the swapping of the movements.

So- history and a respect for the composer’s wishes indicate Andante-Scherzo. Analysis seems to indicate Scherzo-Andante. Conductors and scholars get very passionate in their disagreement about this. Was Mahler driven to indecision or revision by his own powerful emotional response to the music he had written? Was he concerned that the original movement order was to exhausting for the players or the audience? Did he fundamentally change his idea about the piece? Did he want to abandon the tripartite form, or to mask it? Did he feel that the piece as originally written was too dark?

The more one grapples with this, the more confused the issue seems to become. On the one hand, it turns out Mahler had done the same thing with his 2^nd Symphony. I recently found out from Gilbert Kaplan that the score Mahler used for the premiere of the 2^nd Symphony was printed with the order of the 2^nd and 3^rd movements reversed from what we are now used to (which is, in fact, Andante-Scherzo). With that knowledge we can see that this was not the only time he reversed himself on such a basic question, and in both cases, it was just before his first performance.

And, of course, there were other major changes of plan throughout his ouvre, notably the move of Das himmlische Leben from the 3^rd Symphony to the 4^th.

On the other hand, we by no means always assume that a composer’s final version is the only one worth doing. In Bruckner, the question is very complicated of which version to perform, and often in Stravinsky, the originals are preferred. Why not in Mahler?

I’m conducting the 6^th next season for the first time in many years, so soon enough, I will have to make a decision. I’m very grateful to those who have done the recent research on the 6^th, and I admire their commitment to setting the historical record straight, but the historical record is only as permanent as the latest paper. Ratz used to be the last word. Next week, we could find a lost letter from Mahler to Alma saying that the 3^rd hammer blow was back in and the original order should prevail. A conductor taking on this piece can’t trust the concept to research, but only to analysis of the score itself. The text is the only authority that matters, and people will come to their own conclusion about whether Mahler should have trusted his original instinct and would have, or may have reverted to the original (Alma told Mengleberg that he had changed his mind back to the original order). I admire the conviction of the faithful, but I have to remain a passionate agnostic, doomed to revisit this again and again. I may conclude that the historical evidence indicates that I should go Andante-Scherzo, but until I understand Mahler’s musical reasoning for the change, I’ve got no business conducting it that way.

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Another Perspective- Peter Davison on the Adagietto.

2010-03-01T09:19:41Z

The Bridgewater Hall- Mahler in Manchester

Hi everyone-

I have a crazy turnaround between gigs this week and I need to write something about Shostakovich 7 while the experience is still fresh, so we’re callin’ in the reserves.

I mentioned to Peter Davison the other day that I wanted to follow up on this piece (please do read it!) about Mahler’s song, Nun seh Ich wohl, from Kindertotenlieder. In recent years, there has been a great deal of valuable research highlighting the importance of Alma’s arrival in Mahler’s life as being part of the inspiration for the famous Adagietto movement. For much of the 20^th C., many interpreters and commentators assumed that the Adagietto was about death- the later research indicated that it was about Mahler’s love for Alma. My point in that earlier post was that the piece is clearly about both love and death, and more- maybe even life. Fortunately, Peter has taken up where I left off.

Since I can’t provide the words, I’ll do what I’m best qualified for and provide the music. Mahler’s song Liebst du um Schonheit was very much a love offering to Alma- he declined to orchestrate it as part of the Ruckert Lieder because it was intended just for her. You can listen to it, Um Mitternacht and an excerpt from Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen from my concert with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Symphony and baritone Paul Rowe in December via the links below. I find it very exciting to hear these gifted young musicians responding to their first encounter with the Ruckert Lieder, and I hope you enjoy their committed playing and Paul’s beautiful interpretation.

Love, Life and Death in Mahler’s Adagietto

— Peter Davison

I’m grateful to Ken for inviting me to contribute a piece to his Mahler blog. He’s off to Cambridge next week conducting the University Chamber Orchestra; another feather in his cap after his successful BBC Radio Four appearance and a powerful performance of Shostakovitch’s Leningrad Symphony in Wrexham last Saturday. Readers will know that Mahler’s Fifth Symphony will be performed at The Bridgewater Hall next Thursday 4 March by the Halle directed by Sir Mark Elder. The performance will preceded by a new work by jazz musican, UriCaine called Scenes from Childhood. But now for the blog!

Interpreting Mahler is a source of endless fascination. It is easy to identify in his music a variety of literary references, musical quotations, sound-symbols and other meaningful gestures, yet we can remain unsure what the music means. Mahler himself was often contradictory in what he said about his music and he became very wary of fixed programmes. Yet clearly he wrote music that consists of complex constellations of musical and extra-musical references, which tend to point in the same direction; a direction which the music on its own is usually quite adequate to express. Since music is a language of feeling and psychological process, it doesn’t need to have a specific meaning. However, finding the references and sources can still enhance our understanding, even if it is not essential to it. Sometimes in Mahler we know something makes musical and emotional sense, but we simply cannot explain why. A limited deconstruction of the music can provide an explanation and take away some of our puzzlement that Mahler’s music at times seems at different levels both to make sense and not to make sense.

But let’s turn to the famous Adagietto movement of the Fifth Symphony. Mahler was one of the sharpest intellects that ever took to writing music, so there is always a thoughtful motivation behind the narrative scheme of his symphonies. Readers of this blog will by now already understand that the Fifth Symphony is at one level a reflection upon whether to say “yes” or “no” to life. It is the big question which Nietzsche suggests we all must face in his philosophical work, Also Sprach Zarathustra. He advocates saying an unequivocal “yes”; one which accepts that amidst joy there must be suffering and that to live a full life, we must accept our mortality without fear and resentment. This is because the two experiences – joy and suffering – are inextricably linked, and there can’t be one without the other.

So it should be no surprise that Mahler’s Fifth Symphony opens with a fateful trumpet fanfare and a gloomy funeral march. This is followed by an explosion of un-containable grief which threatens to make the symphonic argument collapse altogether. In the work’s second movement, there is an outburst of anger and grief, interspersed by moments of gloomy introspection and the painful reminiscence of past woes. But there is also a struggle for transcendence which offers us a brief glimpse of the symphony’s goal; a magnificent D major chorale. But even after we have seen dry-land amidst the storm, the music once again sinks into nihilistic despair. What stands in the way of the longed-for goal? Some demon in Mahler (and us) cannot let go of the doubt created by past negative experiences and the nagging reality of death. The first part of the symphony seems to say; we are all tragic victims, play-things of the gods who vent their anger upon us helpless human beings, whose hopes and desires are inevitably thwarted. If this were truly so, then life would be hardly worth living!

Part II of the symphony is less intense than Part I, as if the trauma of Part I is being held at arm’s length. The bitter-sweet scherzo hesitates between saying “yes” and ”no” to Nietzsche’s big question. The movement seems to draws us towards the dance of life and yet, at the same time, pulls us away into melancholy and loneliness. The music alternates between world-weariness and a state of wild intoxication. Life is presented as both enticing and frightening. The passage of time and the proximity of death seem to rob life of hope and meaning, yet the finite nature of man and his existence are also the very essence of life’s joys. So how can anyone decide what attitude to adopt? With that big question still unanswered, we come to symphony’s third part and its fourth movement, the famous Adagietto. Ken has already hinted that this movement may be about both love and death, and his view makes good sense. Part one of the symphony is about the fact of death and the emotions associated with it. Part two (the scherzo) shows how fleeting life’s pleasures can be. The invitation to life is symbolised in a waltz with a seductive woman who lures a man to his fate with the promise of earthly delights. But in Part three, beginning with the Adagietto, we enter an intimate inner space where time stands still and where the vicissitudes of life cannot touch us. But the refined sensuality of this music tells us that we are no longer being tempted into a dance to the death with a femme fatale, but that erotic feeling has become something less sinister.

How does Mahler achieve this? There is an obvious melodic connection between the Adagietto and the song “Nun seh’ ich wohl” from the Kindertotenlieder. In that song, the rising three-note figure expresses poignant yearning and pathos. The grieving father recalls the glance of the lost child which had previously intimated its tragic destiny and longing for eternity. The eyes are thus a window upon the soul, allowing us to glimpse the deepest reality of the other. In the Adagietto, the mood is serene, rather than grief-stricken, but the gesture of spiritual intimacy is the same. The promise of hedonistic oblivion in the scherzo has here become spiritualised. Sexuality has become personalised and life-giving. Compare this with Tristan and Isolde! In that work, the lovers feel they can only achieve true union in death because, beyond the human world, nothing can intrude upon them, nor apply limits of time and space to their feelings. Mahler seeks a similar release from worldly limitation in the Adagietto, but he achieves it here and now in the security of his inner world. In the Adagietto, the spiritualization of sensual desire is achieved by the death of the ego in relation to the temporal world. But it is not a lonely place, as Mahler suggests a very human kind of love, filled with tender regard for the other and which relishes human intimacy as the gateway to the life of the soul. He is not searching for some intoxicated climax of feeling that can lead only to a life-rejecting suicide-pact. For Mahler, love is something renewing and creative which should give us the zest to go into the world at ease with ourselves.

So it doesn’t really matter whether the Adagietto was written as a love-token for Alma or not, nor in what sense it advocates abandoning the world. It is primarily an appropriate slow movement for the scheme of the Fifth Symphony. The movement finds profound relationships between love for the other, the death of ego and achieving transcendence. We might sum this up and say that the movement restores Eros, and this may help us to understand better why Mahler made a musical portrait of Alma in the Sixth Symphony and why he was inspired to joyous reverence for the feminine in the Eighth (which Mahler later dedicated to Alma). A word of warning though- we must be careful not to confuse Alma the real person with Mahler’s idealisation of her. He wanted her to be a conflation of great physical beauty and a soul-mate, but this led to unrealistic expectations and blindness to her weaknesses; problems which in the end got the marriage into serious trouble. Alma certainly helped Mahler feel good about himself and stimulated his creativity, but perhaps she achieved this more by what she represented than what she actually was. Later she awoke very painful emotions in Mahler. But it was the burden of Alma’s whole life to be a creatively gifted woman in her own right who yet had to play the role of a passive muse and nurse-maid to the art of others. It was a role she both valued and despised, resulting often in serious tensions between her and the highly talented men she captivated.

But back to the Fifth! After the scherzo, the structure of the symphony provides a mirror-image of the first two movements, but now transformed into their opposites. The Adagietto is thus paired with movement number two. Instead of extroverted anger, conflict and striving, we now have introverted calm and sustained lyricism. The wind and brass fall silent, and we hear the harp as if it were the lyre of Orpheus, enchanting and praising the gods, singing with a beauty that restores their sympathy for humanity. Mahler has this Orphic side to his musical personality. He believed that music allowed him both to address and express the divine. To underline this mood of transcendence, the Adagietto encompasses thematic links to several of the Ruckert songs composed in the same period. Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen, of course, suggests a blissful retreat from the world, but there is also Um Mitternacht – At Midnight, which alludes to the Nietzschean idea that light lies buried amidst the darkness. We can also hear in the final bars the tender lyricism of Liebst du um Schonheit – which was indisputably written as a love-gift for Alma. While pondering these Ruckert connections, I also re-read Nietzsche’s Midnight Song in its more extended version and found the following passage:

“Sweet Lyre! Sweet Lyre! Your sound, your intoxicated, ominous sound, delights me! – from how long ago, from how far away does your sound come to me, from a far distance, from the pools of love!…The world itself has grown ripe, the grapes grow brown, now they want to die, to die of happiness. You higher men, do you not smell it? An odour is secretly welling up, a scent and odour of eternity, an odour of roseate bliss, a brown, golden wine odour of ancient happiness, of intoxicated midnight’s dying happiness which sings: The world is deep; deeper than the day can comprehend!”

This sums up the atmosphere of the Adagietto perfectly, and its role in the symphony becomes clearer. In deep contemplation, we connect with something that allows the “yes to life” to be said, Something profoundly beautiful emerges which gets us past the anxiety of Part I. Mahler suggests that beneath the surface of things, something is born from the inner life which is not subject to fate and which can transform the victim-feelings of the symphony’s opening into joy. We may call that thing love, the divine presence or simply a state of intimate being, but whatever we call it, it connects us to the eternal realm. And after this axis of transformation, Mahler can honestly assert his ”yes” to life. The funeral march of the work’s opening turns into its opposite; the exuberant, life-affirming Rondo Finale.

If you think that this transformation is musically a bit shallow, then listen again to the opening of the Adagietto. The harp plays an ambiguous C and A motif, the strings enter and the rising melody begins, but only when we reach that upward leaning E which resolves to the F are we sure that this is F major and not A minor. A minor is the key of the second movement, and faint hints of the angry minor third heard from its beginning can also be found in the Adagietto at bars 19-22. The flattened minor sixth and ‘Neapolitan’ inflections (that is B-flat in A minor) which create a lot of the angst in the second movement are also heard in the Adagietto, but reharmonised. We can hear the same notes and intervals, but accompanied by F major harmony, so that they become contained within a serene and expressive cantilena.

I could go on showing other links between these two movements, but you will have the idea by now. Mahler is always eager to show us that opposites belong together. It is paradoxical, but he proves his point musically by showing how closely related these things are; with only a small change of harmonic context and a slower tempo, the same musical ideas are rendered unrecognisable. In the song Um Mitternacht, the dark night of the soul leads to a triumphant vision of the light. So also in the Adagietto, at midnight, in deep repose, perhaps even looking into the beloved’s eyes, the whole mystery of life is revealed, so that when dawn comes, the symphony’s hero is ready to face life positively. Mahler shouts out his “yes” to life, after he has found the love to heal the wounds with which the symphony began.

“Today” yesterday

2010-02-28T20:01:16Z

First, let me say hello to the many new readers who have found their way here from the BBC after my chat (which you can hear here) with Nicholas Kenyon on yesterday’s Today programme. In that very brief segment, we managed to touch on a few topics very dear to my heart, so let’s follow up a bit.

First, on the original question of tempo in the Mahler 5 Scherzo. If you want to read an in depth discussion of the issues we were referring to you might want to check out this blog post, which was the one that inspired Today to do the segment.

The point I was making in that post wasn’t so much that some conductors “race through the movement,” and that this means they’re doing violence to Mahler’s music. Instead, what I find interesting about this particular passage is that it is very typical of the kinds of issues and challenges one encounters when learning and interpreting a work. Very often our first instinct as performers is to do what sounds “best” to our ears, and to do what we think will be most attractive to the listener. Mahler knew that this instinct would drive performers to find a way to play the first 100 or so bars of this long movement in the most attractive and natural sounding way possible.

The only problem is that, as in life, too much focus on immediate satisfaction can lead to long-term disappointment. Imagine a movie in which every character is supposed to be as attractive and likeable as possible, in which every situation is happy and where there is never any tension or conflict. That might work in a 30 second commercial, but not in a 90 minute films. Likewise, a 2 minute pop song can aim only to please, but a 75 minute symphony needs tension, drama, conflict and catharsis to make a performance pay off.

In this movement, Mahler wants to let a certain amount of tension build in the opening pages. I referred to the Goethe poem which inspired the Scherzo in my conversation yesterday (you can read it here at the end of the post). The first part of the poem reflects a young man’s impatience with the pace of time, but as the movement unfolds, the mood shifts to heroic striving, earthly temptation, morbid fear of decay, and finally a nihilistic race into the jaws of hell itself- better dead than dying, he seems to say.

“Before the marsh-mist envelopes me in my old age,

with tootless gnashing jaws and tottering limbs

Snatch me, drunk with the sun’s last ray,

a sea of fire boiling up before my eyes,

blind and reeling through the dark gates of Hell.”

Good poet, that Goethe chap.

The music of the opening is in the style of a Landler, which is a country dance in a moderate tempo, with three impulses or beats per bar- taken at that speed, you get that sense of frustration and impatience Mahler was after. Later in the movement, there is a waltz which starts slowly (much like the great Strauss waltzes) and finally works itself into a frenzy. The point of which is simply to say that the question is not whether one takes “the movement” too fast or too slow, but how successfully one is able to differentiate the dozens and dozens of tempos within the movement so that the whole thing has a powerful impact. It is a long movement and is very episodic- it is easy to lose the audience’s attention. The danger of starting in the quicker tempo is that it can homogenize the music to the point that the audience gets to the end thinking “ gosh, that could have been ten minutes shorter.”

In fact, the Lenny recording we used as an example of a slow opening ends at blazing speed.

The point is not whether any conductor is right or wrong to take a specific tempo, or whether we have latitude as interpreters. Instead, this is just a simple, rather obvious, example of an instance where what makes sense when you look at a passage in isolation could lead you to a performance of a whole work that is less gripping and exciting that it could be. It has nothing to do with respecting the text versus creativity, and instead to do with effectiveness. This movement can easily fall flat in performance- this was Mahler’s concern when he made that statement about conductors taking it too fast. It’s not that he wants to control the performer, but that he, as a great composer and performer, has a sense of the traps and pitfalls one could fall into.

Mr Kenyon mentioned Mahler’s “neurotic” nature as manifest in his use of extensive markings and re-editings of his music and that of other composers. Having conducted his music for many years, and conducted and studied his re-touchen of several works such as Beethoven 9, Schumann 3 and the Death and the Maiden Quartet, I can tell you with all honesty that Mahler’s notation is always practical and logical, and that his changes to his own scores always reflect what he himself learned in preparing and performing his own music. Mahler was not some worry-obsessed Woody Allen character pacing his flat worrying that the E-flat clarinet player might not be heard on page 23 unless he changed the ff to fff. Mahler knew, from the basis of his own experience, what the challenges and difficulties of the parts were, and kept striving to make his music as performable as possible. The markings are not there because he was insecure or controlling. They’re simply there because they save time and they work- opening a Mahler score for a conductor is like getting the greatest lesson of your life and like being analyzed by Freud himself. With hindsight, I can look at almost every change and revision in the last versions of his scores and see the reasoning and the improvement over the original versions.

What the conversation most underlined for me, however, is a pervasive misunderstanding about interpretation. The questions before us seemed to be these- do performers really have to obey all those markings in the score? Doesn’t that just limit their creativity and don’t audiences really prefer performers who let their own personalities come through?

This discussion has been going on for hundreds of years, and I can certainly remember being a young musician and bridling at the notion that anyone could claim my tempo for this or that piece was wrong because it was different to the metronome marking. I knew how I felt it should go! To a large extent, I think this mindset comes from learning music from recordings, but that’s a topic for another day.

What I’ve learned through a lot of trial and error is that one learns so much more from engaging really deeply with the text. It’s not about obeying instructions, but learning from them. There is so much you can learn from a metronome marking that doesn’t limit one to an exact tempo, such as the unit of pulse (how many impulses are felt in each bar), or the relation of tempos between movements and sections. For instance, for many years, most conductors took the last movement of Beethoven 5 in a faster pulse than the 3rd movement, but, Beethoven’s metronome markings tell us the opposite- he says clearly the half-note in the Finale should be slower than the dotted- half in the Scherzo. I think that’s interesting, and might be useful to keep in mind even if I take a tempo that’s a little faster or slower than his suggested ones.

But, more important is what I tried to work in at the very end. I really feel that the more I try to learn scores properly and to engage with the text and the more I try to understand why a composer like Mahler or Beethoven or Elgar has made the choices they have, the more vivid and distinctive my own performing personality becomes. I really believe that every time you engage with a piece of information in the score- a dynamic or an articulation or a tempo marking- your own personality comes through more, not less. For me interpretation is not me looking at a score and deciding how I think it should go, it is me looking at a score and trying to understand why everything that is on the page is there. It’s not about obeying intentions, but about comprehending the music. When you’ve gone through that process, you have begun to really hear the score. You don’t have to “decide” how you like it, nor are you worried about how the audience will like it- you hear it with a clarity that allows you to go into rehearsal or performance and respond to the musicians and the hall and create a performance.

Take, for example, old Lenny Bernstein. Nobody every accused him of lacking personality, or of being afraid to take risks as a performer. However, he was a highly analytical musician whose score preparation was very, very detail oriented. One of my old friends in the Chicago Symphony said his few visits to the CSO in his last years were the highlight of her 30 years there. I asked why. “He knew the scores better and in more detail than anybody I ever played for” she answered with out hesitation.

If you follow his Mahler recordings with the score, you can see how incredibly attentive to detail he was. A lot of those “Lenny-isms” turn out to be very directly connected to Mahler’s own markings and suggestions- some of the very things I’ve heard critics write off as wilful Lenny indulging his ego are right there in the score. Of course, like all of us, some things he changes, some he misses out and some he adds, but his Mahler can sound both eccentric and thrilling because he’s so sensitive to what Mahler wrote. The more Mahler Bernstein absorbed, the more Lenny comes through. The same can be said of Ben Zander’s recording that we used in that segment- he is so attentive almost every detail in Mahler’s score, yet comes up with a completely different, and equally personal performance. Name any of the great Mahler interpreters and you’ll find something similar- the performances that really feel imaginative, distinctive and convincing are the ones where the performers are the most invested in the text. It’s not a moral thing, it’s a practical thing.

On the other hand, when I hear a performance by conductor who seems a little too quick to dismiss the value of all that detail, what I get is a forgettable performance I don’t get the sense of more personality, I get the sense of no personality. . Copying a performance from a recoding has the same effect- copy a memorable and distinctive performance from a CD and you always get something plastic and forgettable. All of the conductors Nicholas mentioned- Gergiev, Jansons, et al- you wouldn’t know of any of them if they weren’t wrestling with these very questions themselves.

When we engage with a score and really try to understand it, we get performances that are more unique, more memorable, more distinctive and more individual. Mahler wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Huge kudos to Radio 4 for putting Mahler front and centre and talking about art and music in a general news show!

More on this topic in a series from a few years ago-

Score studying or ……

Score Questioning- The Practical

Score Questioning- Getting to “How”

Score Questioning- Getting to “How”Score Questioning- How the old school got to “how”

Score Questioning- the quest for understanding

Tomorrow on Today- Mahler 5 with KW and Sir Mark Elder

2010-02-26T17:18:00Z

VFTP readers who have been following my current Mahler in Manchester series may interested to listen in tomorrow, Saturday the 27th of Feb at 8:20 AM GMT to Today on BBC Radio 4.

We will be discussing my recent post, “Mahler 5, a tempo,” and the whole question of tempo, character and form. What sorts of considerations go into finding the “right” tempo for a piece of music? Is it just what sounds good or feels comfortable, or are there other issues? Should we ever intentionally choose a tempo that feels uncomfortable? Why would we do such a thing? Joining me in the discussion will be Sir Mark Elder. Nicholas Kenyon will be the host for the discussion.

For those of you without access to Radio 4 on FM, you can listen live on line, or on demand via the Radio 4 website. When the archive recording is posted to their website, we’ll update listening details here.

6th Rose City International Conductor’s Workshop

2010-02-24T00:23:14Z

Rose City Chamber Orchestra announces

6th Annual Rose City International Conductor’s Workshop

July 5-11, 2010

Concordia University

Portland, Oregon

Priority Application Deadline- April 21, 2010

Emerging Artists Program

An intense professional workshop for conductors in the advanced stages of their studies, entering the field, or already active as professionals

Invited participants will have the opportunity to work intensively with all three mentors and the musicians of the Rose City Chamber Orchestra. Each participant will conduct in five teaching sessions and a final mock concert.

Teaching sessions include Opera Masterclass with full orchestra and professional singers, String Orchestra, Concerto accompanying, Wind Ensemble, Symphonic Masterclass

Repertoire-

Verdi- excerpts from Otello, with Brennen Guillory (Otello) and Esther Mae Moses (Desdemona)

Beethoven- Symphony no. 6,

Strauss- Metamorphosen,

Stravinsky- Symphonies of Wind Instruments,

Schumann- Piano Concerto in A minor, Neal Kurz, piano solo

Discovery Program-

A perfect opportunity for younger conductors to get started, for educators and teachers to refresh their technique, choral conductors to get time in orchestral repertoire, and for amateurs to test their mettle.

Invited participants will take part in all classes and discussions, will receive personal coaching on basic technique and score preparation and will have 3 opportunities to conduct.

Conducting sessions include Piano reduction session, String Ensemble session, Full Orchestra session, and Classes in score preparation, Stick technique, Movement, breathing and posture.

Repertoire-

Beethoven- Symphony no. 6,

Strauss- Metamorphosen,

Mozart- Symphony no. 39 in E Flat (piano reduction)

Fees and tuition costs-

Application Fee- $65/US Video Fee- $85/US

Emerging Artist Program Tuition $960/US 2 Payments of $480/US

Discovery Program Tuition $580/US 2 Payments of $290

Faculty-

Kenneth Woods (director)-

Hailed by the Washington Post as an up-and-coming conductor and a true star of the podium, conductor and cellist Kenneth Woods is quickly becoming recognized as major talent on the international scene. He has worked with many orchestras of international distinction including the National Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the Budapest Festival Orchestra and the State of Mexico Symphony Orchestra. He has also appeared on the stages of some of the worlds leading music festivals, including Aspen, Lucerne, Round Top and Scotia. His work on the concert platform and in the recording studio has led to numerous broadcasts on BBC Radio 3, National Public Radio, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In 2010, Woods takes up the position of Principal Guest Conductor of the Stratford-upon-Avon based virtuoso ensemble, Orchestra of the Swan, with whom he will be active on stage and in recordings. As music director of the Oregon East Symphony from 2000-9, he transformed a tiny orchestra in a remote, rural area into possibly the most talked-about orchestra in the Pacific Northwest, winning universal praise for their nationally celebrated Redneck Mahler cycle, progressive programming and their innovative youth programs. Other affiliations include Conductor of the Contemporary Music Ensemble of Wales, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Rose City Chamber Orchestra in Portland, Oregon. In September of 2009, Kenneth Woods made his recording debut as a conductor in sessions for Avie Records with the Northern Sinfonia at the Sage Gateshead,

David Hoose-

David Hoose is Music Director of two distinguished Boston musical institutions, the Cantata Singers & Ensemble, a organization whose repertoire reaches from Bach and Handel to the music of today, with all in between, and Collage New Music, a chamber ensemble devoted to music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and whose members include musicians from the Boston Symphony Orchestra. As well, Mr. Hoose has recently completed eleven years as Music Director of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra. He is Professor of Music at the Boston University School of Music where he is Director of Orchestral Activities and Chairman of the Conducting Department. Mr. Hoose has just been awarded the 2005 Alice M. Ditson Conductors Award, given in recognition of his commitment to the performance of American Music. He has also received the Dmitri Mitropoloulos Award and, as a member of the Emmanuel Wind Quintet, the Walter W. Naumburg Award for Chamber Music. Mr. Hooses recordings appear on the New World, Koch, Nonesuch, Delos, CRI and GunMar labels. His recordings of John Harbisons Motteti di Montale with Collage New Music and Harbisons Four Psalms and Emerson with the Cantata Singers & Ensemble have been recently released by New World Records, and his recordings of Peter Childs chamber opera Embers and of the complete chamber music of Donald Sur are forthcoming. The recording of the Harbison Motteti di Montale has been nominated for a 2006 Grammy Award.

Christopher Zimmerman-

From his professional debut, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, of which The Daily Telegraph of London observed Contact with the orchestra seemed immediate, the result a reading in which the playing responded keenly to gestures which themselves were expressive both of the symphonys fiery vigour and of its finer nuances. Christopher Zimmerman revealed a sharp interpretative profile and control of orchestral timbre…. a most auspicious London debut. to guest conducting in Cleveland with the Ohio Chamber Orchestra, where Donald Rosenberg of the Cleveland Plain Dealer described his performance as some of the finest conducting at Severance (Hall) in recent years, Zimmerman elicits enthusiasm and praise. Christopher Zimmerman graduated from Yale with a B.A. in Music, and received his Masters from the University of Michigan. He also studied with Seiji Ozawa and Gunther Schuller at Tanglewood, and at the Pierre Monteux School in Maine with Charles Bruck. Zimmerman served as an apprentice to Andrew Davis and the Toronto Symphony and in Prague, as assistant conductor to Vaclav Neumann and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. Zimmermans debut with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was followed by engagements with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. He has also conducted the Prague Symphony, the Slovak Philharmonic, the Seoul Philharmonic, the Mexico City Philharmonic, the Edmonton Symphony, the Hartford Symphony, the El Paso Symphony, the Ohio Chamber Orchestra and the Prague Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra among many other orchestras.

Application instructions and more information on our website- http://www.rosecityworkshop.org

All enquiries via email please- admin@rosecityworkshop.org

Performer’s Perspective- Mahler 5, two changes

2010-02-26T23:32:41Z

The Bridgewater Hall- Mahler in Manchester

The Halle and their music director, Sir Mark Elder, will be performing Mahler’s Symphony no. 5 on Thursday, the 4th of March at 7:30 PM in the Bridgewater Hall. Also on the programme is the premiere of Uri Caine’s Scenes from Childhood“

How many scores of Mahler 5 do you own?” came the beleaugered inquirey from one who knows the ins and outs of our library budget here at Vftp International Headquarters.

The reluctant answer is “over four.” I’ve got the Dover (useless for performance, but interesting for comparison as it is almost the earliest version of the symphony, without most of Mahler’s later changes), a pocket score of the Erwin Ratz edition from 1962, the octavo score of the 1999 printing of that same score corrected and updated by Fussl, and am now working from the nearly brand-new critical edition edited by Rheinhold Kubik. On top of these, I have reductions for piano and two-pianos and a score of just the Adagietto. So, over four….

There are many interesting differences between the Kubik and the Fussl editions, but the most dramatic change may be at the end of the Adagietto. In the Ratz/Fussl edition, Mahler has marked “Drangend,’ or “pushing forward,” over the last eight bars, while in Kubik, the same eight bars are marked Sehr Zuruckhaltend, or “very held back.”

I’d been aware of this discrepancy for some time because when I first did the Adagietto on a conducting recital in Cincinnati, the parts had the Sehr Zuruckhaltend, not the more commonly seen Drangend. Kubik’s research clarifies things-

“”Sehr zurückhaltend” {“Molto ritenuto”} in Aut, StV, EA-Stp, St1 and St2, “Drängend” {“pressing on”} only in EA-Dp. In Korr2 “Sehr zurückhaltend” is struck out, in its place is written “Vorw.[ärts]” {“onwards”} and in bars 99 and 101 “rit”; in W-Stp “Sehr zurückhaltend” is struck out and in bar 100 restored.

That both sets of parts — the one which was demonstrably played from several times in 1905 – 1907, and the one which contains Mahler’s last Revision realised in New York — stick to “sehr zurückhaltend”, is ample reason to adopt this reading in the present edition.

If an interpreter decides on “Drängend”, he or she should remember that there are sources according to which the last four or five bars should then still be slowed down. “

What I find interesting about this is the implications of this discrepancy in understanding Mahler’s evolving thinking about other places in this and other works. One of the central tenets of Mahler scholarship seems to be that Mahler never really changed his initial concept of a piece or it’s details once he’d written it, and that his many revisions areprimarily practical in nature, not changes of concept. In essence, we’re told that as Mahler performed his works, he discovered more and more what did and didn’t work in the orchestration, and that all those markings in the parts reflect his practical sense of what players needed to do in order to make his music sound in a hall the way it sounded in his head.

I’ve written many times before about Mahler’s use of notation, and the fact that because of this approach, his notation is more a representation of how is music should be performed than how it should sound. Conductor and Mahler scholar David Pickett takes this one step further- if the final versions of Mahler’s scores tell us most accurately how the music should be performed, perhaps the original versions tell us more accurately how they should sound.

“While it might be expected to confer great benefits in the case of a composer whose watchword was clarity, the adoption of extra microphones has often resulted in grossly distorted balances. Mahler’s post-publication changes to his scores reflect his experience in the concert hall; and in recordings, when microphones are placed close to woodwind, harps and percussion instruments, it is sometimes helpful to know what his first thoughts were.”

You can hear an example of this here on his website. I’m also one to argue in favor of ditching some of those extra mics.

Along these lines, a controversy has come up in recent years regarding the last note of the first movement of the Fifth Symphony. In 2002, the New York Times published this long article by Gilbert Kaplan examining the question of just how loud that pizzicato note should be. For many decades, almost all conductors interpreted the sf on that final note to mean a loud thwack- some even used a snap pizz for extra volume and violence. Kaplan reads that passage more literally, noting that the last dynamic in the parts is pianissimo 13 bars earlier. Kubik joined Kaplan in looking into this, and comparing the different sources and found that Mahler’s revisions all seemed to point to a soft ending-

“For one thing, he marked the note to be played softly from the beginning. In his original handwritten score, he wrote pp on the note itself, and pp also appeared in the first published edition.

After conducting the premiere in Cologne in 1904 and a second performance in Hamburg in 1905, Mahler changed the pp to p, a modest boost in dynamics. He also added an accent.

Some months later, Mahler passed these changes on to Mengelberg, who, as resident conductor, was preparing the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam for a performance of the Fifth to be led by Mahler. After arriving in Amsterdam, Mahler wrote to his wife, Alma, that the orchestra had been ‘’splendidly rehearsed in advance” and that Mengelberg was the only conductor to whom he could entrust a work of his ”with complete confidence.”

Mengelberg’s score reveals that Mahler, in red ink, crossed out pp, substituted p and added an accent… The minor change to sf showed up first in the orchestral parts used for a concert Mahler conducted in Strasbourg in 1905, and it remained in all later editions of the score and parts.”

Perhaps most compelling, however, is the fact that Mahler himself recorded this movement on the piano in 1905, and does, indeed, play the last note very softly.

Kubik sounds completely convinced-

“”What he wanted was a soft last pizzicato,” writes Reinhold Kubik, the chief editor of the critical edition of Mahler’s music, who has just completed work on a new edition of the Fifth Symphony”

However, if that’s what Mahler wanted, it seems that the earlier versions make this MUCH clearer than the later ones- in the first version, Mahler had marked the note itself pp, in the second version he’d marked it piano with an accent. Surely either of those are significantly safer ways of asking for a soft final note than a sf on a pizzicato when the last dynamic was 13 bars ago, when the strings were playing col legno, not pizzicato. Why replace something so clear with something so ambiguous?

Kubik seems convinced that the original version is the key to understanding what Mahler wanted here-

“Mr. Kubik writes: ”Investigating the many, many revisions Mahler did in his symphonies, you find that he almost never changed his original intentions. He just changed the means by which they could be made audible.””

And, perhaps most convincingly in addition to the piano roll recording from 1905 is a review of Mahler’s performance of the piece in Vienna a few months later, after the change to sf had been made which described the end of the movement as follows-

“Max Kalbeck, in his review for the Neues Wiener Tageblatt, wrote that the first movement had ”an ending that fades away quietly” and concluded with ”a final muffled pizzicato from the lower strings.””

Still, we know from Mahler’s letters that around the time he wrote the Fifth he was looking intently for ever more clear and specific ways of notating his intentions. Why would he then end up with such an ambigious way of notating this note, when there were so many obvious ways to write it clearly. Remember, not only did he write sf, he REMOVED both the piano and pianissimo that had been there before. Also, note that all of the revisions are in the direction of that note being louder, from pp, to piano with accent, to sf. The piano roll recording is from 1905, but we know he was working on this piece up to his death. Is it possible that his concept was actually evolving, not just his way of specifying the execution? Is it possible he felt diferently about this spot in 1902, 1905 and 1910? Could those views have not simply evolved, but fundamentally changed? The end of the Adagietto, with its changes between “speed up” and “slow down” doesnt’ tell us this IS the case, but it tells us this COULD be the case- he could have changed his concept from soft to loud, even to very loud. Of course, if he had wanted a very loud final note, he could have written ff with the sforzando- again, the text is pointing to something more nuanced and elusive.

Kubik’s point about Mahler’s revision process being one of clarifying details, not changing intentions seems to argue against any change in concept, but the end of the Adagietto tells us that he in so important a moment as that, he could go back and forth between OPPOSITE concepts. Of course, on one level his concept remained the same- the music is getting more intense and the tempo modification is an expression of intensification- but the nature of the tempo modification changed as radically as it possibly could have. (His indecision about this point seems to indicate that he wanted a LOT of intensification and wasn’t convinced either version was generating enough), But the same could be true for a loud final note- either version could express abrupt, desolate finality, in which case, the concept would have stayed the same in the broader sense.

All this tells is that linear, deductive reasoning is only of limited value in determining Mahler’s intentions. We can’t always reduce all the evidence down to whether or not the butler did it. By the logic of the Kaplan’s and Kubik’s argument for the last note of the Trauermarsch, it should be impossible for us to accept Mahler’s change in the order of the inner movements of the 6th Symphony from Scherzo-Andante to Andante-Scherzo. Surely we should accept his original concept as definitive? However, Kaplan and Kubik have consistently been among the strongest advocates for Andante-Scherzo (there’s another, very interesting, Kaplan/New York Times piece on that issue here).

I personally am thinking that Mahler was trying to elicit something more complex than just loud or soft from that last pizzicato. Mengelberg’s score has the word “dof” or dull. That seems good- like a muffled funeral drum. I told the orchestra last time I did this piece that it should sound like a coffin lid falling closed for the last time. This coda is full of seemingly contradictory information, like the combination of pp and schwer (heavy) at figure 19 a few bars earlier. However, that’s part of the richness of this music- trying to resolve and integrate complex and contradictory ideas, not to water them down into things one dimensional and simplistic. Mahler abandoned a perfectly clear way of asking for a soft note in favor of something that’s much more ambiguous, in a musical context that is full of complex emotions. I think we’ve got to come to terms with that.

Now- hear this. The last few bars of the Trauermarsch as recorded by Bruno Walter, replete with loud final thwack. (It’s worth noting that Walter’s 7’ 35’’ Adagietto is often cited by scholars as a prime piece of evidence for a faster tempo in that movement, but Kaplan dismisses Walter’s reading of this note in his times article: “Yet other conductors, including Otto Klemperer and Willem Mengelberg, were also close to Mahler and heard him perform, and many of their interpretations are quite different from Walter’s. One should also bear in mind that Walter recorded the Fifth more than 35 years after Mahler’s death.

Let me make this clear- I’m not arguing that Kaplan and Kubik are wrong about this pizzicato. What I am saying is that their richly researched scholarship seems to point to more nuanced and complex readings of this and other points than resolving along simple lines of binary oppositions between loud/soft, fast/slow, Andante/Scherzo-or-Scherzo/Andante. We’re almost being asked to reduce everything down to whether or not the “butler did it.” Why did the butler do it? Did he have help? Did he do it differently the second time for a reason?

Maybe soon we can talk about the Adagietto, and not just the last 8 bars. It’s been so widely debated and discussed these last few years in a way that seems to, again, direct the discussion towards very simplistic, binary readings of the piece, changing “it’s about death” to ”it’s not about death, it’s about love.” Again, it seems liket the essence of Mahler is the co-existence of contradictory ideas- can’t the Adagietto be about death and love? What could be more Mahlerian?

—————————————————————–

A slightly different version of this post appeared in Feb 2009 here.

How Hans Rott got to Paris

2010-02-21T19:59:39Z

Well, Hans Rott seems to be in the zeitgeist this week.

My old school mate, Tom Consolo, has written a brilliant piece for Music in Cincinnati describing the events leading up to the first performances of the Rott Symphony in E in Cincinnati and Paris in 1989.

The big mystery was what we were to play.

The answer: “Totenfeier,” first draft of the first movement of the Resurrection(second) symphony and the world premieres of six early Mahler songs orchestrated by Luciano Berio and of the Symphony in E Major of Hans Rott. Reaction from the orchestra was unanimous. Hans who?

Rott was a colleague of Mahler’s at the conservatory in Vienna. He died at age 26 of tuberculosis and left but one work of substance, the E Major symphony. Mahler admired it very much, calling it “the beginning of the New Symphony as I know it.” The score of the Rott had been discovered, not wrapping a cheese in St. Petersburg or in the musty trunk of a distant relative, but in the library of the Vienna Philharmonic. It was lost through lack of use.

November, 1988; A-9 rehearsal room at CCM: We attempt to read the Rott. The parts are officially declared “a mess” by the conducting students who have to mark them. There are so many mistakes in the wind parts that only a string sectional is possible. Most of that is spent fixing more misprints. The word “litigation” is occasionally overheard.

The rehearsal has one other message: The Rott has a lot of notes. Many of them nasty. Our work is definitely cut out for us.

“Totenfeier” got its North American premiere as part of a Philharmonia concert in the fall; it will get an encore in March before hitting the road. Besides that, little is done on tour repertoire until mid-winter quarter.

There were moments of humor-

The concert Friday night was sold out. “Totenfeier” and the early songs made up the first half, the Rott — a hearty hour long — the second. Cheers and enthusiastic applause greeted us and our soloist, a baritone whose cologne smelled like Raid, after each song.

Triumph-

The entire brass section lines up against a backstage wall for a group picture. They have just played “Totenfeier” to death, and we and they know it.

And sudden, random, pointless tragedy-

At about 11:30 p.m., Teri Murai and orchestra librarian Mack Richardson pulled aside Russell’s closest friends to tell them Russell was dead. The allergy had triggered an athsmatic attack, and the combination had overcome his heart. Those who were awake didn’t sleep — or speak or feel well — much that night, pondering something so absurd it would be ridiculous if it hadn’t proven deadly.

Well worth reading. And well worth remembering when you listen to Riccardo Chailly or Paavo Jarvi’s recordings of Totenfeier or see Alan Gilbert conduct Rott, that it all started with a student orchestra in Cincinnati.

You can here Paavo discuss Rott and the piece here-

Review of the concert here- I like the fact that Paavo paired Rott with Brahms. V

Performer’s Perspective- Mahler 5, a tempo

2010-02-26T23:01:02Z

The Bridgewater Hall- Mahler in Manchester

The Halle and their music director, Sir Mark Elder, will be performing Mahler’s Symphony no. 5 on Thursday, the 4th of March at 7:30 PM in the Bridgewater Hall. Also on the programme is the premiere of Uri Caine’s Scenes from Childhood

The Scherzo is a damnable movement. It will have a long history of suffering! Conductors will take it too fast for fifty years, and audiences—Oh heavens—what sort of faces will they pull at this chaos…..”

(Gustav Mahler, speaking of his 5^th Symphony before the 1904 premiere. )

This quote of Mahler’s often appears in program notes- usually citied as a manifestation of his insecurity and megalomania, and also as a measure of the Herculean difficulty of the piece. But what of the specific musical concern he cites- that conductors will take the Scherzo “too fast for fifty years?”

Interestingly, for all that one hardly ever reads a review of a performance of the 5^th that doesn’t include a timing for the Adagietto (“the maestro brought the Adagietto in at a brisk and worthy 8’ 20’’…” or “the maestro wallowed his way to a lugubrious 10’ 5’’…” are typical of the writing on that movement), I’ve hardly ever seen a conductor taken to task for taking the Scherzo too fast. I think this is mostly because we have a very vague idea of what Mahler meant by “too fast” when he wrote about this movement.

In fact, I’d say 90% of the performances of the Scherzo take the opening tempo in a comfortable “tempo di valse,” and that it does sound great at that tempo. A small minority, including Bernstein and Barshai, take it slower, and “in three” instead of “in one.” However, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a single performance that went any faster than the 90% of conductors who treat the movement as a waltz.

So, was Mahler needlessly worried? Was he envisioning some sort of crazed, keystone-cops whirling dervish prestissimo that not even 100 years of other conductors were stupid enough to try? Or was he actually worried that conductors would, as 90% of them do, trea the opening section of the Scherzo as a waltz. (Hint- Mahler is never wrong about the likely failings of conductors)

Well- although many commentators refer to the Scherzo as a waltz, Mahler certainly doesn’t indicate Tempo di Valse or anything of the sort. Kraftig (“strongly” or “vigorously”). Nicht zu schnell (“not too fast”), and then just five bars in the movement- Nicht eilen (“unhurried”). The next tempo marking at bar 60? Nicht eilen, again! How about the next one? Bar 108- Nicht eilen, again!!! It’s not until 120 bars into the piece that Mahler tells us to get a move on- “Wider flessender” or “again more flowing.”

In fact, it seems clear to me (and Donald Mitchell and Henry Louis de la Grange both seem to agree) that this opening section is not a waltz, but a Landler. The Landler, being a country dance, is slower than the waltz, and is felt in “three,” not “one.” If it is a Landler, and 90 % of my colleagues are conducting it as a waltz, then I think Mahler’s 50 year prediction was wildly optimistic- it’s 105 years since the premiere, and many conductors are still taking it too fast.

Of course, the Scherzo does include a very seductive and sophisticated waltz- first heard as a slow waltz at fig. 6. This music eventually forms the basis of the wildly Dionysian climax of the entire movement. It’s a deconstruction of fin de siecle Vienna even more decadent than Ravel’s in La Valse. But that is all to come when the movement begins….

One reason I think 90% of conductors take the opening in a waltz tempo is that it feels and sounds more elegant and natural than the slower version. In three, the music can sound frustratingly controlled, even awkward. You could easily make a case that the waltz tempo sounds and feels more pleasing and comfortable to the vast majority of musicians and listeners. Well, isn’t that proof positive that the quick opening of the Scherzo is right, and that Mahler’s concerns were unfounded?

Is there ever a time when we intentionally adopt a performance approach that is not the most pleasing and ingratiating? Should music, particularly the performance of music, ever intentionally irritate and displease?

Donald Mitchell and and Constantin Floros may have also uncovered a key piece of evidence in understanding Mahler’s intentions with regard to tempo in the Scherzo. It turns out that both Richard Specht, who published the first study of Mahler in 1905, and Mahler’s friend and pupil Bruno Walter * called attention to the influence of Goethe’s poem, “An Schwager Kronos” (“To Brother Time, Coachman”) on this movement. Walter went so far as to state that the entire Scherzo grew out of Goethe’s poem.

Take the opening stanza of the poem-

“Hurry on, Time, at a rattling trot!

The road runs downhill,

Your dawdling makes things swim before my eyes”

The writer describes not the “hurrying on” of time, but its “rattling trot.” It’s clear that things are very “nicht eilen,” to the annoyance of the narrator. If the opening of the Scherzo refers to the opening of the poem (something we can never know with certainty), it’s not supposed to sound breezy, natural, elegant and flowing. It’s supposed to test our patience—“your dawdling makes things swim before my eyes.”

Anyway, whether you’re persuaded by the poem or by the stylistic evidence of the type of dance we’re dealing with, I think the lesson is that you can’t always make musical decisions based on what sounds or feels “best” because music isn’t always supposed to please and make us comfortable. Especially in the context of this symphony- the unease and impatience depicted in the opening of the poem seem a more logical fit with the torments and destruction of Part I, and a simple, carefree waltz.

What else does the poem tell us about this movement? Well, I can’t help but be reminded of the Alphorn calls at figure 10 when I read this stanza-

“High, wide and glorious the prospect of life rings us round.

The eternal spirit soars from peak to peak,

Full of intimations of eternal life.”

And then there is that sexy slow waltz- if our narrator has been trying to drive Brother Time on his way, this seems a welcome diversion…

“A shadowy doorway beckons you aside

Across the threshold of the girl’s house,

And her eyes promise refreshment….

Take comfort!

For me too, lass, that sparkling draught

That fresh and healthy look”

The sensuality of Goethe’s imagery matches so well with the decadence of the waltz theme, and the flirty, coquettish “schüchtern” (“coy”) oboe solo.

An then, there’s the answer to why the whole movement has, at it’s heart, a horn solo, when the poet implores Brother Time, as they descend, “blind and reeling through the dark gates of Hell”-

“Blow your horn, brother, clatter on at a noisy trot.

Let Orcus know we are coming,

so that mine host will be there at the door to welcome us.”

If Walter and and Specht were right, and this movement is based on An Schwager Kronos, and it seems like it can even be considered a setting of that poem, then that puts the movement closer in spirit to a movement I’ve not really heard it compared to. The most obviously related movement in the Mahler symphonies is the Scherzo of the 1st, which is even based largely on the same waltz rhythm (dotted crotchet, quaver, crotchet). However, perhaps the more apt parallel is in the first movement of Das Lied von der Erde, a song in which the poet finds a similar catharsis in oblivion.

An Schwager Kronos
“To Brother Time the Coachman”
–by Goethe
translation by Norma Deane and Celia Larner
“Hurry on, Time, at a rattling trot!
The road runs downhill,
Your dawdling makes things swim before my eyes.
On at a brisk pace, over stick and stone,
Stumbling headlong into life!
Now once more toiling uphill, out of breath—
Up then, no slacking, upward striving and hoping …….
High, wide and glorious the prospect of life rings us round.
The eternal spirit soars from peak to peak,
Full of intimations of eternal life.
A shadowy doorway beckons you aside
Across the threshold of the girl’s house,
And her eyes promise refreshment.
Take comfort! For me too, lass, that sparkling draught
That fresh and healthy look.
Down then, faster down!
See, the sun sinks. Before it sets,
before the marsh-mist envelopes me in my old age,

with tootless gnashing jaws and tottering limbs
Snatch me, drunk with the sun’s last ray,
a sea of fire boiling up before my eyes,
blind and reeling through the dark gates of Hell.
Blow your horn, brother, clatter on at a noisy trot.
Let Orcus know we are coming,
so that mine host will be there at the door to welcome us.”

* Interestingly, Bruno Walter’s recording of the Scherzo is one of the fastest and strangest on record. His basic tempo is on the fast side of a waltz tempo, but far worse, he stays in his Hauptempo for the slow waltz at fig. 6 and the parallel places. When writers call attention to his 7’ Adagietto, they seem to forget that his Scherzo was 2 minutes faster than any of Mahler’s performances of it. Walter’s performances of Mahler are often wonderful and are important to know, but where there is a divergence between Mahler’s text and Walter’s performance, I think it’s easy to know what must be regarded as the authority.

Finally- A practical note about the Landler tempo. If one goes even one notch too slow in this opening, the music simply collapses. Waltz tempo is safe but possibly wrong, Landler tempo is possibly right and disastrous- the margin for error in finding the right landler tempo is tiny. Trotting and plodding are two different things.

Performer’s Perspective- Mahler 3, a scherzo on a poem

2010-02-17T12:13:00Z

Hi readers-

Peter Davison and I have continued to chat about the meaning of the Rott references in Mahler 3, which were further spurred along my the question of sin raised in my Mahler 4 post. He’s made some more very interesting discoveries, especially about the Scherzo. Rather than burry this in a comment, I post it separately as it is extremely interesting. Note that all this new insight does not replace what we already knew about the piece and the original working program that Mahler told his friends about, but reveals instead a second, more personal, level of meaning. There are surely more to be found there.

Ken

Just as you might think the idea of the Third as a memorial to Rott is exhausted, I was rereading Peter Franklin’s excellent book on the symphony and it reminded me that the scherzo is associated with a poem by Leander about a dead friend. The posthorn solo calls out to the dead friend, and the friend replies with an echo. Mahler did not use the text explicitly but never discouraged the association when it was put to him. So now the Third symphony can be described like this:

First mvt. – Battle with the conservative estbalishment on behalf of Rott – with a personal attack on Brahms. Mahler’s mission is to change the (musical?) world through a struggle with the forces of inertia. He is the iconoclast with his heart set on reforming the Vienna Opera to turn it into a Mahlerian Bayreuth giving voice to neglected geniuses like Rott.

Second mvt. – Mahler says – yes I can do conservative, classical and picturesque – but in this context it is only an island of relative calm. Behind the pretty surface are dark forces.

Third mvt. – The scherzo expresses the indifference of Nature to individual death and suffering. It is a salute to the memory of Rott. The cuckoo is dead and the world does not care, the nightingale (Mahler) must sing on regardless. Mahler finds this hard to do; he grieves for his lost friend and has survivor guilt, like St Peter.

Fourth mvt. – From out of the darkness of the material world, springs the light of spirit and the possibility of transcending the survival struggle and blind willing a la Schophenhauer. Perhaps Mahler says, the pain of loss is meant to spur me on, to make me redouble my efforts. Rott’s life is wasted only if I give up. Divine love and pure being exist beyond the darkness.

Fifth mvt. – The angels deliver a message of hope. Rott says to Mahler ….don’t weep, get on and fulfill what I started; this is the dawn of your time, you are forgiven for surviving me, but it obligates you to create a new order. Be like St. Peter, compose the music and build the institutions that will sustain our message for future generations.

Sixth mvt. - Mahler’s vision of the new order is revealed. He overcomes his grief and guilt. It is a vision of a compassionate world, devoid of conservative power interests and which permits the apotheosis of Rott.

Das himmlische Leben would then become the place of timeless transcendence and innocence where Rott’s soul is able to dwell for etenity. It is a very touching to see the symphony as an expression of deep friendship and personal grief, and it hints that Mahler’s whole career as a conductor was part of an idealistic masterplan. Carzy. deluded, egotistical? Perhaps – or genuinely inspired, visionary and prophetic? Or in some very Mahlerian paradox, it was both!

Are you convinced?

Peter

Shostakovich 7- the city, the year, the performance

2010-02-17T01:51:12Z

(The ghosts of Leningrad, now St Petersberg, as captured by the great Alexey Titarenko)

For all that readers are seeing a lot about Gustav Mahler on these pages, the work on my desk right now is Dmitri Shostakovich’s 7th Symphony, which I am conducting next week.

I hope that I’ll have time to write in detail about the piece, which is proving to be a revelation in spite of the fact that I’ve loved Shostakovich’s music all my life. As I try to unravel the layers upon layers of references, meanings, allusions and ciphers in the piece, I’ve been scouring books, articles and webpages for help and insight- mostly in vain. In spite of the fact that Shostakovich is probably the most performed composer born in the 20th century, and probably also the most written about and discussed, most of what is out there is not very helpful. There is too much ranting about politics and not enlightening enough music.

I did, however, find a remarkable article on the Guardian website (originally published in The Observer in 2001) by Ed Vulliamy. The rather lame title, Orchestral Maneuvers, doesn’t give you any sense of what the lenthy two-part feature is about- a dramatic retelling of the story of the Lenningrad premiere of Shostakovich 7. It’s a story that, in it’s sanitized and shortened form, appears in almost every program note for the piece, but this account shook me. I link to it today as I know some of my colleagues in the orchestra read this blog, and I’m sure they’ll want to read it before we perform the piece next week.

So, how bad was the winter of 1941-2, the peak of the siege of Leningrad? Part I sets the scene in horrifying detail.

‘There was not a trace of joy in a single face,’ said Parfionov. ‘Everyone thin, exhausted, starving. I was on Troisky Bridge one day when a man collapsed in front of me. He looked into my eyes and pleaded for help; I told him there was nothing I could do for him, and walked on. The only thing anyone thought about was the next meal. Even in the military canteen, soldiers crawled around the floor to see if anyone had allowed crumbs to drop before going out to trenches in the cold.’ Temperatures reached 35 degrees below zero.

The horror of cannibalism has been mentioned by some Western historians, but is taboo in Russia, a blackout in Soviet and post-Soviet memory. One Westerner mentions such details as the arrest of one woman on her way back from a graveyard with the bodies of five children in a sack, but notes: ‘The memory of trauma – of minds and bodies frozen by fear and by the horror that everyone was forced to see – has been almost entirely lost.’ Mrs Matus turned the stone a little: ‘I remember a neighbour, a woman, used to come knocking at the door of our apartment shouting at mother, “Let me in!” And she would run through the door, because her husband was trying to kill her to eat her.’

Viktor Koslov is bolder. Born in Briansk, near Moscow, he had become a clarinetist like his father and, in 1935, joined the illustrious Kirov Ballet in Leningrad. He has a vivacious, easy-going face, but when he conjures up that winter in his mind’s eye, his muscles tighten. ‘Some were dead, others half dead, sometimes from injuries they had done to themselves. People were cutting off and eating their own buttocks. We only really saw what winter did when the snow began to melt. “Look, here comes spring!” But what did it bring? Decomposing, dismembered corpses in the streets that had been hidden under the ice. Severed legs with meat chopped off them. Bits of bodies in the bins. Women’s bodies with breasts cut off, which people had taken to eat. They had been buried all winter but there they were for all the city to see how it had remained alive.’

During this nightmare of life-in-death, Shostakovich was torn between brooding distress over his native Leningrad, anxiety for his mother and sister who had remained, and a struggle to finish his symphony. Work on a final movement, intended to envisage ‘a beautiful future time when the enemy will have been defeated’, eluded him.

But, finish it he did.

In Part II, Vulliamy tells the amazing story of wht it took to put together a performance with conductor Karl Eliasberg of this massive symphony in famine stricken Lenningrad-

The Seventh is a colossal work. It demands battalions of strings, but what worried Eliasberg most were the voluminous arrangements for woodwind and brass in a city short of breath. Eliasberg procured a list of musicians, of whom 25 were already blacked out, dead. Those known to be alive were circled in red and ordered to report for duty.

Of the orchestra of 100 people, there were only 15 left. I didn’t recognise the musicians I knew from before, they were like skeletons. I don’t think Eliasberg called the first rehearsal to look for musicians. It was evident we couldn’t play anything, we could hardly stand on our feet! Nevertheless, he said: “Dear friends, we are weak but we must force ourselves to start work,” and raised his arms to begin. There was no reaction. The musicians were trembling. Finally, those who were able to play a bit helped the weaker musicians, and thus our small group began to play the opening bars. And that was the beginning of the first rehearsal.

‘I remember the trumpeter didn’t have the breath to play his solo and there was silence when his turn came around. He was on his knees, poor man. Eliasberg was waiting; he said: “It’s your solo. You’re the first trumpet, why don’t you play?” The trumpeter replied: “I’m sorry, sir, I haven’t the strength in my lungs.” There was a terrible pause. Everyone asked him to try. Eliasberg said: “I think you do have the strength,” and the trumpeter took up his trumpet and played a little. And so the rehearsal continued. Everybody did their best, but we played badly, it was hopeless, and the first rehearsal broke up after 15 minutes.’ It had been scheduled to last three hours.

Eliasberg walked the length of Nevsky Prospekt to military headquarters at Smolny Palace, with a simple request: he needed reinforcements from the front, anyone who could play an instrument. The order went out from commander-in-chief General Leonid Govorov himself: military bands and anyone capable should report to the studio….

‘Rehearsals,’ Parfionov recalled, ‘were from 10 to one o’clock. No time for fun or to ask anyone who they were; we came, did our job and left. People were in a terrible condition. Often Eliasberg would have to repeat instructions two or three times before people could understand. We went over the same passage of music over and over, simply to get it strong enough. To be honest, no one was very enthusiastic’.

‘We would start rehearsing,’ recalls Viktor Koslov, one of Parfionov’s men, ‘and get dizzy with our heads spinning when we blew. The symphony was too big. People were falling over at the rehearsals; we might talk to the person sitting next to us, but the only subjects were hunger and food – not music.’

…And ’some of our orchestra died,’ said Parfionov. ‘Three, as I recall, including a flautist called Karelsky. People were dying like flies, so why not the orchestra? Hunger and cold everywhere. When you are hungry, you are cold however warm it is. Sometimes, people just fell over on to the floor while they were playing.’

Eliasberg would remain working on the score long after his musicians had left. ‘He was very strict,’ said Mrs Matus, ‘He would allow for no mistakes, or delays. If a musician played badly or was late, they would lose their bread ration. If someone was late because of a bombing raid, he would accept the excuse only if there had been no warnings from the siren. One day, a man came late because he had to watch them bury his wife that morning. But Eliasberg said that was no excuse, and the man would lose his ration.’

Koslov remembers the episode well. ‘He said: “This must not happen again. If your wife or husband dies, you must be at the rehearsal.” He demanded absolute commitment and attention. When people said, “It’s no good, I can’t play it,” Eliasberg would reply, “Go on. No complaining!”

I quote that last bit lest anyone ever accuse me of being tough again….

The description of the concert itself is deeply moving. A must read.

(More Alexey Titarenko)

Performer’s Perspective- Mahler 4, a contradiction

2010-02-16T13:21:14Z

The Bridgewater Hall- Mahler in Manchester

The Hallé will be performing Mahler’s 4th Symphony with their principal guest conductor, Marcus Stenz, this Thursday, the 18th of February. Also on the programme is “Blumine,” originally part of the 1st Symphony of Mahler, and the premiere of Schubert’s Einsamkeit, as orchestrated byDetlev Glanert.

Gustav Mahler is the composer of contradictions and paradoxes. He is the composer of ambiguities, contrasts, complexities and cognitive dissonance.

Nothing could make this truth more evident than the move from the 3^rd Symphony to the 4^th. *

The reasons are obvious- the two works are so strikingly, obviously different. The 3^rd is his longest symphony, the 4^th his shortest. The 3^rd is written for one of his largest orchestras, the 4^th is his very smallest. One work has a huge trombone solo, the other has no trombones, one ends with a huge fortissimo catharsis, the other a transcendent pianissimo. One is a work of grand gestures, the other is strikingly intimate- almost chamber music (and it is interesting that the 4^th was successfully adapted for a small chamber ensemble by Mahler’s friend Erwin Stein).

But, of course, ardent Mahlerians will already be screaming out as they read this- the 3^rd and 4^th are Mahler’s most closely related symphonies!

In fact, they are essentially one piece. Mahler composed his song, “Das himmliche Leben” or “The Heavenly Life” in 1892, before either the 3^rd or 4^th Symphonies. He originally intended it to be the Finale of the epic 3^rd Symphony, and began composing the 3^rd Symphony backwards from that point. It was only as he was finishing the epic first movement that he realized that the song no longer belonged in the symphony, and instead he made the great Adagio, originally called “What Love Tells Me” the Finale. By this point, he had sprinkled the entire symphony with obvious references to the song, and used the song to extract a huge wealth of motivic material that is not obvious to the casual listener, but which gives the huge piece a tremendous sense of structural cohesion. The intended effect was to make the appearance of the song be the logical culmination of all the musical ideas in the piece.

It just never appears.

So, when Mahler started work on the 4^th, he essentially started the same, very unusual process, all over again, of composing backwards from the end.

The implications of this for a performer are really interesting. It means we have two symphonies which could hardly be more different which are made of the same musical DNA- it’s like a pair of siblings, or even fraternal twins- they are made of the same genes, but they grow up to be completely dissimilar people.

So, we have two symphonies that seem completely different on the surface, but which are as closely related as two works could be. This is just the first of many, many of these paradoxes present in Mahler’s 4^th Symphony. It’s often described as his simplest and most straightforward work, and on some levels it is, but it is also his most multi-layered, most contradictory, most enigmatic, most paradoxical work. Nothing in this piece is as it seems.

The end of the piece is the most gentle and understated in any of the symphonies, yet Mahler called the work the culmination of all his early works- Das himmlishce Leben is not just the finale of this symphony, but of the entire first half of Mahler’s creative life. That gentle song had more significance as an arrival than any of those amazing Finales of the first three symphonies.

The symphony seems to stand apart from the rest of the cycle by virtue of its brevity, the modesty of the orchestration and its general avoidance of the grand gesture, yet it is the most central to understanding Mahler- it is the work with the most diverse, important and profound connections to his other works. It introduces important themes we’ll hear again in the 5^th and 6^th Symphonies and the Kindertotenlieder.

It also seems to be the most technically straightforward of Mahler symphonies for players and conductor. From the conductor’s perspective, it would seem to be, by far, the easiest of the cycle. After all, the 2^nd has all that insanely complex music with the offstage band to coordinate, the 3^rd is full of tricky rhythmic modulations and treacherous transitions, the 5^th has that ferociously complex 2^nd mvt, then that awkward Scherzo in which the tempo always seems to work best in that uncomfortable place between in 3 and in1. Gergiev just wrote an essay in the Gramophone bemoaning the titanic technical difficulty of the 7^th, which is mercilessly difficult for the players and the conductor. 6, 8 and 10 are minefields of mixed meter in places, the Rondo Burleske of the 9^th might be the most complex movement in the repertoire, and even Mahler didn’t know how to conduct Das Lied von der Erde.

Alone out of the cycle, there is nothing in the 4^th that looks like an audition piece for conductors, but it takes the most skill, preparation and experience to bring off. All of the other symphonies offer a certain safety of the grand gesture- for instance, several have long accelerandi (or gradual increases in tempo), something that is always hard to pace and coordinate, but in every other case, those accelerandi lead to a very fast tempo and a very noisy climax. The build-up of tempo in the first movement of the 4^th goes on for quite a while, but arrives only at a moderately fast tempo- if you go beyond that point of moderation, the character is lost, and if you don’t go far enough, the development feels static and stuck. Again and again in the symphony, you have to turn corners with a degree of precision and a lack of room for error unique to this piece. It’s much the same for the players.

Much as the piece often sounds quite straightforward, that outward simplicity belies a ferocious inner complexity. The first movement, which sounds so direct and accessible, has some of the most contrapuntally intricate music in the symphonic repertoire, and each of those voices must be balanced and shaped. Then, just think what Mahler found in that simple song that ends the symphony- enough musical ideas to build two large symphonies!

A huge part of Mahler’s genius is in his ability to create music in which seemingly incompatible ideas are able to coexist in a way that feels truthful. This state of being seems far removed from our modern mindset- we live in an era of taking sides. Life is happy or sad, not happy and sad. Our public discourse and our critical mindset doesn’t easily allow for mixed emotions. Even in music, we seem limited to only letting music be one thing at a time. Many years ago, many conductors and musicologists thought the Adagietto was about death, now a new generation tells us it is about love. Can’t it be both? What is more quintessentially Romantic than this mingling of love and mortality? More of that soon, I’m sure.

The 4^th is about innocence and danger, about youth and mortality, about serenity (what could be more serene than the end of the symphony) and menace (what could be more menacing than the 2^nd Mvt, in which the devil himself fiddles away?). For a conductor, it all needs to be characterized in a multi-layered way, but nothing (other than the nastiness of Freund Hein’s violin solo in the Scherzo) can be too overdone.

Take, for instance the very beginning of the symphony. What could sound more innocent than sleighbells, and even if they might hide some hints of mystery and menace, that elegant ritardando at the end of the 3^rd bar which begins that exquisitely graceful main theme must surely be a sign that all is well in the world.

Well, it’s worth remembering for a second that unlike a normal symphony, everything in this work began with the Finale, so this opening is, in a strange way, not the first appearance of this music. The “first” appearance ** (coming in about 45 minutes) of this music is much more malevolent and menacing, with sharper instrumental sonorities and more violent interjections than merely the gentle flutes and clarinets which characterize the beginning.

But, it is the text which is most telling-

John lets out the little lamb

Herod the butcher lies in wait for it!

We lead a patient, innocent, patient

Darling little lamb to it’s death!

St. Luke slaughters the ox

Without any hesitation or concern.

Wine costs not a penny in the heavenly cellar

The angels bake the bread

So, yes, on one level the opening sounds innocent (and is intended to), but the text behind it is about the slaughter of an innocent. The child who narrates the final song is also an innocent, and he looks on as Luke and John murder “without hesitation or concern.” Gradually, he warms to their endeavours as he contemplates a fine meal- is his innocence being corrupted? Many writers treat this passage simply as good humoured observations of the pleasures of heavenly life, but to do so takes neither the text nor the music at face value. It’s as if we want everything in the Finale to be of one mood- serene contentment. “Surely, the little boy is not bothered by the blood bath around him,” we’re told. Why not?

And there is one more important musical clue in that beginning that all is not as simple as it seems. The meltingly elegant three note anacrusis which begins the main tune, with its lovely ritardando, exists in cognitive dissonance with the flutes and sleighbells. That rit which Mahler asks for over the last 3 quavers is written only in the clarinet and first violins. The flutes and sleighbells don’t come to a relaxed ending as the melody begins. They’re more like a menacing forest creature showing it’s face for the first time, then retreating into the shadows of a black forest. Here’s what the opening sounds like as Mahler wrote it. (You’d be distressed and amazed to know who many conductors completely overlook this detail- here is how not to do it, or at least how Mahler told us not to do it).

Just a footnote-

* Funnily enough, this blog project is forcing me to do something that I haven’t done in many, many years, which is to deal with the all the symphonies in order. Usually, my attention falls most strongly on whatever one I am conducting next.. For instance, I did the Ruckert Lieder in December and the 1^st Symphony last week, and next see the 5^th Symphony, Das Lied von der Erde and the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen in the late summer, so under normal circumstances, my Mahler curiosity would center around those pieces, with little tentacles of curiosity and comparison reaching outwards towards the other pieces. However, for this blog series, we’re marching straight through in order, and the step from Symphony 3 to 4 is one of the most jarring anywhere in the cycle.

** If the fist appearance of this music is in the Finale of the 4^th Symphony, the 2^nd appearance is in the 5^th movement of the 3^rd, as part of a dialogue between a sinner and the angels.

And should I not weep, you gracious God?

(You should truly not wee! Should truly not weep!)

I have broken the Ten Commandments!

I go and weep most bitterly.

Ah, come and have mercy on me.

I can’t help but wonder what the sin against the Ten Commandments was…..

You never know…..

2010-02-14T17:34:16Z

There is a great article in today New York Times on guitar stud, Jeff Beck.

(Cool- Jeff Beck)

“You look for the guys who can kick you” as a musician, “and Jeff can be filthy, stinky that way,” Mr. Walden said in an interview here. “He’s not just melody, or a guy who can make his guitar cry. He’s a funky cat too, always thinking about rhythm, and he has a fearlessness that makes him open to all kinds of material.”

(Narada Michael Walden on Jeff Beck)
Jeff Beck is a true original, and a musician who has stayed true to himself and continued to grow, experiment, and be a general badass while all around him, rock music dies a horrible, slow death from the lack of all the qualities he possesses- musicianship, originality, attitude and anger.

Jeff can be “filthy, stinky that way.” I hope someone will one day say that about my Haydn performances.

In celebration of a rare moment of mainstream media recognition of a great rock instrumentalist, as opposed to a pop star, a man who has never needed a lyricist of a front man, I’ve dug something out of the archives. Here’s a performance of Jeff Beck’s You Never Known as performed on my friend Brad Harner’s senior percussion recital at Indiana University School of Music. It took quite a bit of trust building to be allowed to do a fusion piece as part of a degree recital- we had to stay very close to Beck’s original recording when we (or at least I) wanted to take it in an edgier, funkier. stinkier direction. Still, there’s something satisfying about staying close to that real 70’s fusion groove. Producer and engineer Sean Flora is on bass, keys are Tony Escueta (now a tech guru at Yamaha), Brad on drums and me (all of 19 years old) on guitar. In spite of the fact we’d been admonished to maintain proper recital decorum, I did play the entire last 2 minutes of the song, including the final solo (which is my favorite part of the performance- I can happily skip the first couple minutes and so can you), with the guitar behind my head.

I hope it was an IU degree recital first, but you never know.

(KW as 19 year-old rocker posing in a tree. Less cool than Jeff Beck)