Sunday Classics preview: "Prepare yourself to live!" -- Mahler and resurrection
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The final 4:44 (our No. 11 below) of Mahler's Second Symphony, the Resurrection, with Bernard Haitink conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra, with mezzo Jard van Nes and soprano Roberta Alexander, in 1984 -- our No. 11a comes at 1:40 of the clip, the grand final peroration (our No. 11b) at 2:14.
by Ken
We're bumping this edition of "preview" into DWT prime time because, even though as you'll see I'm not really undertaking to say much about the music itself, we're tackling one of the grandest monuments in the musical literature: the finale, the "Resurrection" movement (incorporating a setting of a somewhat custom-tailored version of Klopstock's ode "The Resurrection"), of Mahler's mighty Second Symphony, the Resurrection. Somehow this didn't read as a mere "preview."
So let's start with an anecdote.
A MAHLER SECOND SYMPHONY ANECDOTE
I wasn't a big fan of the "Europeanized" Leonard Bernstein of the '70s and '80s, when his tempos generally seemed to have slowed to a crawl and the playing he drew seemed to me to grow rather mooshy and shapeless. During this period, on one of his regular guest-conducting returns to the New York Philharmonic, he was scheduled to conduct one of his specialties, Mahler's Second Symphony, the Resurrection.
As it happened, the orchestra had recently instituted a policy of opening many of the orchestra's Thursday morning rehearsals, which is to say the rehearsal on the morning of what was normally the first of four performances (running through Tuesday night) of that week's subscription program, at a preposterously low price. Of course attendees were guests of the orchestra, which was there to work, and there was no guarantee that you would hear an actual performance. You might hear a run-through of one of the works on the program, or you might hear the conductor and orchestra quickly get up to speed on an as-yet-unrehearsed piece on the program, especially if it's one that the orchestra has played a lot. But it was a way of getting a glimpse at the rehearsal process, not to mention getting to hear some real music at dirt-cheap price.
There was indeed an open rehearsal for Lenny's Resurrection, and it turned out to be his first opportunity to rehearse with the Westminster Symphonic Chorus, which had been prepared only by its own conductor, who presumably had discussed basic interpretive issues with Maestro Bernstein to find out how the chorus was to be prepared. But of course that's not at all the same thing as having actually rehearsed with him. And clearly they didn't have a lot of rehearsal time available.
Now, the chorus's first entrance in the finale of the Resurrection, No. 8 in our breakdown below, which occurs at roughly the midpoint of the roughly 35-minute movement, is -- or can be -- one of the truly magical moments in music. The finale explodes out of the final chord of the fourth movement, Mahler's setting of the Des Knaben Wunderhorn poem "Urlicht," which by now should be an old friend. (We've heard it sung by Maureen Forrester (with Glenn Gould conducting!), by Christa Ludwig (her 1978 recording with Zubin Mehta and the Vienna Philharmonic), and by Janet Baker (with Otto Klemperer and the Bavarian Radio Symphony, in 1965).
There have been a number of false starts, when the audience might have expected to see that big chorus that's been sitting on its collective duff all evening finally start singing. But now is the moment, and Lenny clearly wanted that first "Auferstehn" to sound as if it was coming out of nowhere. He also wanted it slow, and I do mean slow! It was so slow, it didn't even seem to ge moving. Which certainly fit well with my not-wild-about-Lenny mood of the period.
When I mentioned this to my friend Sedgwick, whose life, I think it's fair to say, had been changed by Bernstein's Mahler, he insisted that I attend the Saturday night performance (yes, including getting me into it!). And it was one of the transcendent musical experiences of my life. What I think Lenny had been doing was preparing the chorus to sing the section even slower than he planned to do in performance, to prepare them mentally and physically for an even more exhausting ordeal -- and then the actual performances turned out to be, relatively speaking, a cinch.
It's my understanding that Lenny, the Philharmonic, and Deutsche Grammophon, for which he was then engaged in recording a final Mahler cycle with various orchestras, decided then that not only the Resurrection but the Third and Eighth Symphonies would have to be recorded in New York, however expensive that would be. Since Lenny was making all his recordings by then from live performances, this meant shoehorning the works into the already largely planned Philharmonic schedule. The Resurrection duly took place in April 1987 -- and proved to be an even slower performance than the 1986 one -- and the Third in November (same calendar year, but different seasons, of course -- 1986-87 and 1987-88. I understand that the Eighth was also scheduled, but Lenny died before that much-hoped-for event could take place. (To complete the audio cycle, DG used the audio from the 1975 Salzburg video recording of the Eighth, and also from the 1974 video recording of the Adagio of the Tenth.)
When the Resurrection recording came out, I thought oh for Lenny's sake this is just too damned slow. It took awhile, but eventually I came around.
MAHLER: Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection)
iv. "Urlicht" ("Primal Light")
Sehr feierlich, aber schlicht
(Very solemn, but simple) [6:18]
O rosebud red!v. Finale (1)
Man lies in the greatest need.
Man lies in the greatest anguish.
Far rather would I be in heaven.
Then I came to a broad path.
Then a little angel came and wanted to send me away.
But no! I didn't let myself be sent away.
I am from God, I want to return to God.
Dear God will give me a little light,
will light me all the way to eternal blessed life.
Im Tempo des Scherzos. Wild herausfahrend.
(In the tempo of the Scherzo. Driving out wildly.) [1:46]
posted by KenInNY @ 6:00 PM
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5 Comments:
The only thing I didn't like sometimes about Mahler is he often seemed too brief. God will he ever stop? boring.
It's worse than listing to the Rolling Stones and watching that stupid Mic Jagger prance around forever. Boring
Fair enough -- there's no disputing taste, as they say.
But just to double-check, I looked again at the Haitink clip of the Resurrection Symphony's final minutes. Boring, eh? And of course that culmination only has its full impact if it does culminate everything that's come before. There must be a boring moment somewhere in those 80 or so minutes; I guess I've just missed it.
Ken
Ken: You have a fine ear and your posts are a true highlight of this sight. It's my ADD talking I just can't hang so long. My comments are in no way a criticism of your most excellent Sunday posts which I look forward to each week and I do my best to listen to them as much as possible. Mahler broken down into little segments is great, it's just if you put them all together I go sound to asleep. Mahler is not boring it is I.
Thanks for checking back in, Anon. Not to worry, I never thought of taking the comment personally -- it was directed at Mahler, and goodness knows he had a thick hide on the subject of his music. He trusted, though, that in time listeners would develop a capacity to take in what he was serving up.
I really mean it when I say that not all music is meant for all listeners. The tricky thing is finding your way to the music that does do the trick for a person. in my own case, a lot of the music I now love the most took a fair amount of patience to "get into," and involved a certain amount of initial trust -- as long as there was some point of contact to keep me coming back, there was the possibility of an amazing relationship developing.
I just realized that, purely by coincidence (?), I've got Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde playing, and we're in the great final song, "The Farewell." I'm sure I didn't begin to understand or even properly appreciate its half-hour expanse the first 20 or 30 times I heard it. Something kept me coming back, though, and over time it became one of the stretches of music that not only entertains and moves me most deeply, but tells me most about the experience of both living and dying.
And that said, I now find that my "favorite" movement of Das Lied isn't that great concluding farewell, but the opening "Drinking Song of Earthly Despair." I never saw that one coming! It just happened over time.
Anyway, I wanted to make clear that I do appreciate and respect the comment!
Cheers,
Ken
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