Sunday Classics: Mahler's "military" songs -- (2) Blow, trumpets, blow (continued)

MAHLER: "Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen"
("Where the Lovely Trumpets Blow")

"Who then is outside and who is knocking,
waking me so gently?"

"It is your heart's beloved,
and let me in with you!
Why should I stand here longer?

"I see daybreak rising,
daybreak, two bright stars.
I surely wish I were with my sweetheart!
With my sweetheart!"

The girl got up and let him in.
She also bids him welcome.

"Welcome, my dear boy!
You've been standing so long!"
And she gives him her snow-white hand.
In the distance the nightingale sang.
The girl began to weep.

"O do not weep, my beloved!
By year's end you will be my own.
My own you will certainly be,
as no other is on earth!
O love, on the green earth.
I go off to war on the green heath;
the green heath, it's so far!

"There where the beautiful trumpets blow,
there is my house of green turf."

Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded Feb. 17-19, 1964

This performance is part of a group of five Mahler songs that Christa Ludwig and Otto Klemperer recorded as a fourth-side filler for their recording of Das Lied von der Erde. Their Das Lied, with Fritz Wunderlich as the tenor soloist, turned out spectacularly, one of the glories of the phonograph. But the "filler" songs turned out pretty spectacularly too. In "Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen" the intensity of atmosphere and emotional concentration are established at the initial downbeat and never let up.

Let's back up and put those two paragraphs of Jack Diether's together, then add his brief note on tonight's song.

Mahler's unique power as a composer lies in his ability to catch the essence of the sounds of man and nature, and to transmute it into purely musical terms. From his early childhood, he was fascinated by the sounds that environed him: bird songs, bugle calls, tattoos, marches and, especially, dances and airs. It is said that when Mahler was only four or five years old he could already play more than a hundred peasant songs and dances on an accordion.

Where other composers such as Bela Bartók became increasingly interested in their native music as they grew older, Mahler seems to have absorbed the music of his homeland into his very cells at an exceedingly early age and seems then to have taken no further conscious interest in it. Instead, he built instinctively on the most powerful and primitive sources of expression throughout some of the most complex and sophisticated structures yet conceived by the Western musical mind. Perhaps that is one reason the strong appeal of Mahler's music continues to grow in our increasingly complex and often baffling age. . . .

[T]he largest and most important category [of Mahler's settings of poems from the folk anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn)] comprises the so-called "military" songs, where Mahler's penchant for the ironic, the pathetic and the macabre is given full rein. Of the six in this genre, three are duets and three are solos. . . .

"Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen" is compounded of eeriness and sad beauty in a manner that is virtually unparalleled in the art of song. This too would be a duet, were it not that the whole thing is cast in narrative form -- therefore one voice.

Now you'll recall that Jack was a proponent of duet performance of the "he said, she said" Wunderhorn songs. It turns out that he's wrong in thinking that nobody would contemplate performing "Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen" as a duet.

"Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen"
("Where the Lovely Trumpets Blow")

Diana Damrau, soprano; Iván Paley, baritone; Stephan Matthias Lademann, piano. Telos, recorded 2003

I think a duettized "Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen" would be a tough sell even in a better performance than this one (where I have to say I don't think the piano-playing is the problem).

One point to note about the Ludwig-Klemperer performance is that, relatively speaking, it's fast. It doesn't sound fast to me, but the just-over-six-minutes timing is practically lickety-split. I haven't combed my holdings, but I don't think I've got a performance anywhere near that short. Ludwig's next recordings, with Leoanrd Bernstein conducting and at the piano (in the glorious Des Knaben Wunderhorn with her then-husband, baritone Walter Berry; last night I ventured that their "Trost in Unglück" and "Lied des Verfolgten im Turm" pretty much sweep the field) are almost a minute longer. But thanks to the amazing intensity and concentration of the performance, it doesn't sound rushed, or even quickish, to me.

Our next two performances, in addition to showcasing distinctly different voice types (Jessye Norman's full-fledged dramatic soprano with that contralto-like lower range, Lucia Popp's lyric-weight soprano), stretch the song out significantly -- to 7:31 and 8:41, respectively.

"Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen"
("Where the Lovely Trumpets Blow")

Jessye Norman, soprano; Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bernard Haitink, cond. Philips, recorded April 1976
Lucia Popp, soprano; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Klaus Tennstedt, cond. EMI, recorded 1985-86

And finally, I promised last night that we would hear Anne Sofie von Otter's performance from the Wunderhorn recording conducted by Claudio Abbado. (Last night we heard baritone Thomas Quasthoff, the sturdy male soloist, give fine performances of both our songs.)

Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano; Berlin Philharmonic, Claudio Abbado, cond. DG, recorded February 1998


IN TOMORROW'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST

By now you should be able to say it before me: It's the last of Mahler's Wunderhorn settings, "Revelge" ("Reveille") and "Der Tamboursg'sell" ("The Drummer Boy").


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