Sunday Classics: Super Bowl Special -- Finally we piece together the Mahler 2nd and 3rd Symphonies

The first half of our old friend the Scherzo (3rd movement) of the Mahler Third Symphony, from Leonard Bernstein's April 1972 video recording with the Vienna Philharmonic -- not nearly as good as his earlier and later audio recordings with the NY Phil, but what are you gonna do? (The second half of the movement is here.)

by Ken

We've already done most of the work, so we're not going to need much talk today. For weeks now we've been puttering around the three symphonies, Nos. 2-4, that Mahler wrote during the period of his preoccupation with the folk-poetry collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn -- see also here and here). We've even heard the whole of the deceptively simple "little" Fourth Symphony. Now it's time to put the monumental Second and Third Symphonies together.

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MAHLER: Symphony No. 2 in C minor (Resurrection)

We've already heard how Mahler transformed his delicious Wunderhorn setting "Des Antonius von Paduas Fischpredigt" ("Anthony of Padua's Fish Sermon") into the Scherzo (3rd movement) of the Second Symphony (first here, then here and here). We've heard how the Scherzo's suspended ending, taken over from the song, leads directly into his haunting setting for alto solo of the Wunderhorn poem "Urlicht" ("Primal Light," 4th movement -- first here, then here, here, and here). And last night we took the plunge, venturing beyond "Urlicht" into the vast expanse of the finale, incorporating Mahler's own souped-up version of Klopstock's "Resurrection" ode.

Let's take a deep breath and hear them all put together. I've chosen two recordings by the Vienna Philharmonic, which was once Mahler's own orchestra, and probably represented (and to the extent that modern orchestras retain a sonic imprint of their former selves, still represents) his idea of what an orchestra might sound like. When the Boulez recording appeared, one of the last installments in his DG Mahler symphony cycle, I was pleasantly surprised at how compellingly dynamic it is -- this isn't a quality one necessarily expects in a Boulez performance. The Maazel recording, meanwhile, is chosen just as a fine, all-around, beautifully played and sung performance.

(The Maazel recording is also chosen in part, I admit, as an intended poke in the eye of that pompous twit Norman Lebrecht, who declared it one of his ten all-time worst classical recordings. Lebrecht some time back anointed himself the clear-eyed gadfly of the classical music world, which might have been useful, and indeed he has asked lots of pertinent, interesting questions about our world. The only problem is that most of his answers are nonsense. A good 25 percent of what he writes is flat-out wrong, factually or otherwise, and another 50 percent is really stinky bullshit.)

MAHLER: Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection), mvmts 3-5

iii. In ruhig fliessender Bewegung (In calmly flowing tempo)
iv. "Urlicht" ("Primal Light"): Sehr feierlich, aber schlicht
(Very solemn, but simple)

O rosebud red!
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.

v. Im tempo des Scherzos (In the tempo of the Scherzo)

Rise again, yes, rise again,
Will you My dust,
After a brief rest!
Immortal life! Immortal life
Will He who called you, give you.

To bloom again you are sown!
The Lord of the harvest goes
And gathers in, like sheaves,
Us together, who died.

ALTO
O believe, my heart, O believe:
Nothing to you is lost!
Yours is, yes yours, is what you desired
Yours, what you have loved
What you have fought for!
SOPRANO
O believe,
You were not born for nothing!
Have not for nothing, lived, suffered!
CHORUS
What was created,
That must pass.
What has passed, rise again!

Leave off your trembling!
Prepare yourself, prepare yourself to live!

ALTO
O pain, you penetrator of all things!
From you, I have been wrested!
SOPRANO
O death, you masterer of all things!
Now, are you conquered!
With wings that I won for myself
In love’s fierce striving,
I will soar upwards
To the light which no eye has penetrated!
Its wing that I won is expanded,
and I fly up.

I will die in order to live.

Rise again, yes, rise again,
Will you, my heart, in an instant!
That for which you suffered,
It lead you to God!

iii. In ruhig fliessender Bewegung (In calmly flowing tempo)

iv. "Urlicht" ("Primal Light")

v. Im tempo des Scherzos (In the tempo of the Scherzo)

[final "Auferstehn" section at 33:00] Christine Schäfer, soprano (in v); Michelle DeYoung, mezzo-soprano (in iv and v); Vienna Singverein (in v), Vienna Philharmonic, Pierre Boulez, cond. DG, recorded May-June 2005

iii. In ruhig fliessender Bewegung (In calmly flowing tempo)

iv. "Urlicht" ("Primal Light")

v. Im tempo des Scherzos (In the tempo of the Scherzo)

Eva Marton (in v) and Jessye Norman (in iv and v), sopranos; Vienna State Opera Concert Chorus (in v), Vienna Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel, cond. CBS/Sony, recorded Jan. 5-10, 1983 [note: Jessye Norman, with that famously voluptuous, contraltolike lower range, is singing the mezzo part here, so she's the one who sings that gorgeous "Urlicht"]

Of course you want to hear the missing first two movements, the snarling opening Totenfeier ("Death Memorial" -- 25 minutes in the performance we're about to hear, which is impressively long until you measure it against the 35-minute finale) and Mahler's tribute of sorts to the minuet. I've chosen this live performance by Klaus Tennstedt, not because I disdain his studio-recorded Mahler cycle with the London Philharmonic, which in fact I quite love. This is one case where the CD edition impressed me in a way that the LPs hadn't. I thnk Tennstedt's dark (I've described it as "nocturnal"), elegantly relentless vision is captured beautifully. But yes, Tennstedt's live performances often do offer a little something extra on the intensity meter, and this is also a performance you're perhaps less likely to have heard.

By way of "link-up," I've included Tennstedt's Scherzo, so we get to hear one more round of Father Anthony with his river-dwelling parishioners.

MAHLER: Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection), mvmts 1-3

i. Allegro maestoso

ii. Andante moderato

iii. In ruhig fliessender Bewegung (In calmly flowing tempo)

North German Radio (NDR) Symphony Orchestra, Klaus Tennstedt, cond. Live performance in Hamburg, Sept. 29, 1980

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MAHLER: Symphony No. 3 in D minor

Friday night we added the 4th movement setting for alto solo of Nietzsche's "O Mensch! Gib acht!" (from Also sprach Zarathustra) to our previous components: the orchestral Scherzo expanded from the Wunderhorn song "Auflösung im Sommer" ("Transition in Summer" -- first here, then here); the 5th movement setting for boys' chorus, women's chorus, and alto solo of the Wunderhorn poem "Es sungen drei Engel" ("Three Angels Were Singing" -- first here, then here and here); and the 6th movement, the glorious final adagio.

Which means that we're now in position to string togther the 3rd through 6th movements of Mahler's longest symphony.

For those of us with longish memories, it's astonishing that nowadays there's hardly an orchestra in the world, down to the humblest community ensemble (okay, that may be an exaggeration, though I'm frightened at what a YouTube search might turn up), that doesn't play the Mahler Third. First, it's astonishing that there's demand for all those orchestras to play a piece that for so long was scorned and ridiculed. Second, this is a piece that strains the symphony orchestra's resources to the limit, requiring not only the ultimate in precision and chamberlike delicacy and the fullest range of dynamics and colors, but the maximum sheer force of which an orchestra is capable.

The Chcago Symphony under Georg Solti certainly qualifies. Their 1982 recording may not be the most probing or soulful, but it's a gorgeous piece of work (Solti's Mahler doesn't seem much in favor among the Mahler faithful, which seems to me wasteful, given the depth of his knowledge of and love for the music, and the uniquely un-neurotic confidence and flair he developed with it), and we get to hear onetime dramatic soprano Helga Dernesch (Herbert von Karajan's Fidelio, Brünnhilde, and Isolde) settled happily in the mezzo range. (Her Fricka in both Das Rheingold and Die Walküre in San Francisco in 1985 is one of my really happy musical memories, and she did such a bang-up job as Mrs. Peachum in the Mauceri-Decca Threepenny Opera, it's a shame she didn't get a crack at the imperious Leocadia Begbick in the Brecht-Weill Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.)

So it's no surprise coming from the Chicago Symphony, but would you expect the Dallas Symphony to produce a Mahler Third of this caliber? I was quite blown away by Andrew Litton's Delos recordings with them of both the Resurrection and Third Symphonies.

MAHLER: Symphony No. 3, mvmts 3-6

iii. Comodo. Scherzando. Ohne Hast.
(Comfortably. Jokingly. Without haste.)
iv. "O Mensch! Gib acht!" ("O man! Beware!"):
Sehr langsam. Misterioso. (Very slow. Mysterious.)

O man! Take heed!
What says the deep midnight?
"I slept, I slept -- ,
from a deep dream have I awoken: --
the world is deep,
and deeper than the day has thought.
Deep is its pain -- ,
joy -- deeper still than heartache.
Pain says: Pass away!
But all joy
seeks eternity -- ,
-- seeks deep, deep eternity!"

v. "Es sungen drei Engel" ("Three Angels Were Singing"):
Lustig im Tempo und keck im Ausdruck
(Merry in tempo and saucy in expression)

Three angels sang a sweet song,
with blessed joy it rang in heaven.
They shouted too for joy
that Peter was free from sin!

And as Lord Jesus sat at the table
with his twelve disciples and ate the evening meal,
Lord Jesus said: "Why do you stand here?
When I look at you, you are weeping!"

"And should I not weep, kind God?
I have violated the ten commandments!
I wander and weep bitterly!
O come and take pity on me!"

"If you have violated the ten commandments,
then fall on your knees and pray to God!
Love only God for all time!
So will you gain heavenly joy."

The heavenly joy is a blessed city,
the heavenly joy that has no end!
The heavenly joy was granted to Peter
through Jesus, and to all mankind for eternal bliss.

vi. Langsam. Ruhevoll. Empfunden. (Slow. Reposeful. Deeply felt.)


iii. Comodo. Scherzando. Ohne Hast.
(Comfortably. Jokingly. Without haste.)

iv. "O Mensch! Gib acht!" ("O man! Beware!")

v. "Es sungen drei Engel" ("Three Angels Were Singing")

vi. Langsam. Ruhevoll. Empfunden. (Slow. Reposeful. Deeply felt.)

Helga Dernesch, mezzo-soprano (in iv and v); Glen Ellyn Children's Chorus, women of the Chicago Symphony Chorus (in v); Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Georg Solti, cond. Decca, recorded Nov. 13-16, 1982

iii. Comodo. Scherzando. Ohne Hast.
(Comfortably. Jokingly. Without haste.)

iv. "O Mensch! Gib acht!" ("O man! Beware!")

v. "Es sungen drei Engel" ("Three Angels Were Singing")

vi. Langsam. Ruhevoll. Empfunden. (Slow. Reposeful. Deeply felt.)

Nathalie Stutzman, mezzo-soprano (in iv and v); Texas Boys Choir, women of the Dallas Symphony Chorus (in v); Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Litton, cond. Delos, recorded May 14-19, 1998

It's dangerous to go making up rules about most anything, as I just did about the orchestral standard required to approach a piece like the Mahler Third. For one thing, through sheer repetition the piece has become infinitely more familiar and so, somehow, more accessible, to more humble orchestras. That happens. All sorts of music that was once considered "unplayable" over time has become, if not exactly easy, then at least readily manageable.

Even this new rule I've just made up, in the face of necessity, doesn't help us with the performance we're about to hear, which dates back to 1969, when the piece was still infrequently performed and hardly familiar to most orchestras or audiences. The well-intentioned but meagerly funded and modestly staffed Hallé Orchestra certainly wouldn't have been the orchestra one would have wished to hear undertake it. Which suggests that we have to point a finger at the conductor, and indeed Sir John Barbirolli had taken to Mahler in a big way in the '50s, and the music clearly stirred something in him that wouldn't have been predicted from his combined Italian and English roots.

And so it turns out that (uh-oh, sounds like yet another rule coming) even an orchestra not fully up to the demands of the Mahler Third may, in the right hands, take us closer to the heart of the piece than a better-endowed ensemble under less knowing direction, and so, rather to my surprise too, I've chosen the Hallé Orchestra under Sir John for our first hearing together of the first two movements -- and then once again we're going to "link up" by continuing on with the 3rd movement. The mammoth 1st movement of the Third, which roughly duplicates the roughly 35-minute length of the finale of the Second, is the movement that, as I noted, Bruno Walter declared himself sure the Devil had gotten into, explaining his disinclination to perform the symphony.

MAHLER: Symphony No. 3, mvmts 1-3

i. Kräftig. Entschieden. (Powerful. Emphatic.)

ii. Tempo di menuetto. Sehr mässig.
(In minuet tempo. Very massive.)

iii. Comodo. Scherzando. Ohne Hast.
(Comfortably. Jokingly. Without haste.)

Hallé Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli, cond. BBC Legends, recorded live in Manchester, May 3, 1969


A NOTE IN PASSING (ON WHAT --
IF ANYTHING -- WE'RE DOING HERE)

We just had what I think was an interesting exchange in the comments section of last night's post focusing on the finale of the Resurrection Symphony. The commenter distilled his unresponsiveness to Mahler quite plausibly: "Mahler broken down into little segments is great, it's just if you put them all together I go sound to sleep."

This is legitimate and important, and I wanted to share my response with the group, such as it is:

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 you. 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!


I've already expressed unease about how long our Mahler project was drawing out, knowing that it would try the patience of some reader-listeners. And I have to apologize for that. At the same time, I didn't see any way to speed up the process we'd begun. There isn't any music I cherish more, and I didn't want to give up the chance to help it reach listeners who might not have experienced it.

In that regard, I was aware even last night that I'd let down the cause. Once the great finale of the Resurrection Symphony was broken down into those manageable bits (and not by me, I should note, but by the DG music presenters who chose to insert all those track points on the CD), I assumed I would have some pithy, helpful observation to make about each bit. Partly because the manual labor required to get all of that into bloggable form was so time-consuming and wearying, I found I didn't have much that was either pithy or potentially helpful to say. (I found myself thinking mostly, "Hey, wouldja listen to that?" So, especially with the clock ticking (tick-tock, tick-tock), I just let it go. That's something I'm going to have to work harder at.

I really don't like telling people how to listen. What I've come to understand -- it will sound pathetically obvious, but at least to me it sure wasn't -- is that the process of developing a relationship with great music involves more than anything finding one's own way of listening. There are an infinite number of ways that this process can be influenced and helped, and even the bad old "music appreciation" efforts I disdain could have the value of simply focusing a listener's attention productively.

What makes Leonard Bernstein's musical commentaries, including the Young People's Concerts, so valuable is that something, or probably a whole bunch of things, in the way he thought, harnessed to his passion for music, made it possible for him to find tangible connections in music that listeners who were receptive to his manner could readily relate to and that would stimulate and enrich their own way of listening. He wasn't necessarily giving us the whole truth about the music, which would have been impossible in any case, but he had a genius for finding and communicating features of a piece which might trigger a listener's imagination.

If you want to appreciate just how difficult this is, ask yourself who else has been able to do this. It's not for want of trying. By now there have been thousands of imitations of Lenny's YPCs. What there's never been, to my knowledge, is another Lenny. No, wait, that's not what I mean. It's true, but beside the point. I'm sure that in various times and places there have been other lecturers and commentators who have produced truly useful lectures and commentary, and more power to them. (As for the zillions of pretenders who have produced yawning travesties, well, they know who they are. Or do they?) But no one has yet found his or her way to doing anything remotely comparable to the job Maestro Bernstein did.

In the 1960 Mahler YPC I wrote about last week, he broke down a series of dualities he found in Mahler, among which one of the strongest was the tension between being simultaneously a conductor and a composer, which, as he explained, he could readily identify with, since he was in the same position. And he was remarkably good at both. Just to have created the four or five minutes of the Overture to Candide is an achievement most of us can't match in a lifetime.


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