Tahra Les Grands Interpretes TAH 657-658,48:56; 63:06 [Distrib. by Harmonia mundi] ****:
A delightful surprise in every sense, the Mahler Symphony No. 1 in D Major (8 November 1954) with the Berlin Philharmonic must represent one of the earliest inscriptions of this youthful, perpetually energetic work with the Berlin players, since acolytes Oskar Fried, Jascha Horenstein, and Bruno Walter never inscribed the efforts from the 1920’s and early 1930’s with this ensemble. Rosbaud (1895-1962) became renowned throughout Germany and internationally for his clear, articulate textures and his rhythmic precision, on a par with Erich Kleiber, and no less passionate in Rosbaud’s own terms. Too quickly identified with “only” the moderns in the popular mind, Rosbaud’s catholic range has become more evident as Cologne, Baden-Baden, Hamburg, Aix-en-Provence, and Berlin archives unearth the many collaborations and excursions Rosbaud made into the baroque, operatic, and romantic repertory.
The D Major proceeds along its well-trod pantheistic lines, a solipsistic, often grotesque sojourn of Mahler’s interior life as it projects itself on the screen of Eternity. But Rosbaud adds any number of elementally pungent touches, ritards, massive crescendi, sweeping gestures, slides, and bristling attacks that bespeak a thorough command of Romantic Agony. The music moves at brisk pace, without dawdling or stretching the musical line into metaphysical taffy; yet the affect is serenely exalted, music of the spheres as well as of Dantesque torments. Listen to the procession of trumpets as the visceral line achieves its heroic apotheosis at the finale, strings and tympani ablaze–a Shakespearean would cry, “Zounds!” without embarrassment.
The astonished flair of the Das Lied’s (18 April 1955) opening chords perfectly capture the innate hysteria of the composer’s reaction to the musing detachment of the Chinese poem, recited by Mahler regular Ernst Haefliger (1919-2007)–pupil of Julius Patzak and a lyrical favorite of Bruno Walter. Strings, harp, triangle, and fluttering trumpets ring with wild sweep as the music begins to evoke a dreamy nightmare, longing mixed with horror. The melting sweetness that comments on the darkness of life and death proves the equivocation of Shakespeare’s Porter from Macbeth. Grace Hoffmann (b. 1925) takes up the haunted figures of Autumn loneliness, the wiry melodic line and stark harmonies redolent of the composer’s own Kindertotenlieder. While few can equal Fritz Wunderlich for his coy, playful invocations of beauty and porcelain, Haefliger projects a fervent sincerity. The music of Von der Jugend explodes into pentatonic flowers whose petals often resemble figures in Puccini’s Turandot. Typically, Mahler asks Rosbaud for immediately contrary dimensions, from cosmic angst to delicate, plucked intimacies. The Drunkard in Spring might be Mahler’s version of Sigmund Romberg’s drinking romp in The Student Prince. The driving, staggered figures easily recall the G Major Symphony, especially as the tenor–in his low tessitura–the first violin, and the flute exchange plaints. Nice trumpet work from the Cologne players at the coda. The last movement, the extended Der Abschied, has its colors rise up from smoky depths like a magic rope from within the fakir’s wicker basket. Hoffmann’s voice lacks the eerie huskiness of Kathleen Ferrier, but she conveys well Mahler’s haunted spirit. She and Rosbaud sustain the melancholy tension with plastic, often lulling pathos, the vivid colorations emanating from the 1955 source most intensely. Impressive, stylistic Mahler, at the very least, often gripping in its cumulative power.
–Gary Lemco
