TENNSTEDT Vol. 61 = DVORAK: Symphony No. 9 “From the New World”; MAHLER: Kindertotenlieder – Boston Symphony Orchestra; Brigette Fassbaender, mezzo-soprano/ NDR Sinfonieorchester/ Klaus Tennstedt – Yves St-Laurent YSL T-1399 (65:47) [78experience.com] *****:
Yves St-Laurent extends his label’s love affair with the live-performance legacy of German conductor Klaus Tennstedt (1926-1998), here appearing before two fine ensembles in the repertory with which he came to be best associated, Mahler and the Slavic/Bohemian tradition embodied in Dvorak. Tennstedt’s appearance in Boston always had emotional resonance, given he fact that his transplanting from the Baltic port of Kiel took him before the BSO. The Dvorak performance of the eternal staple New World Symphony (17 January 1987) finds everyone in fine fettle, I could wish the first movement Adagio – Allegro molto took the repeat to establish more heroic girth to the context. What we do experience comes highly driven and clearly enunciated, much in the Vaclav Talich and George Szell tradition of warmly energetic optimism, not the tragic muse invoked by the likes of Ferenc Fricsay.
The famous second movement, the D-flat major Largo, intoned by the cor anglais and muted strings, occupies the dynamically nuanced heart of this paean to American landscape and folk impulses, issuing from the BSO winds, strings, and brass many passionately etched figures. The transition to darkly enharmonic C# minor occurs seamlessly, haunted by blended, interior lines. The valedictory tone of the funereal pace finds momentary relief in the brief scherzando episode that invokes materials from the first movement, before the English horn reestablished a mood of deep intimacy, supported by the chamber music texture of the strings. The long, drawn-out coda receives the kind of molded treatment we might attribute to Sergiu Celibidache.
By startling contrast, the Scherzo: Molto vivace assaults us with spiky fury, rife with colors co-opted by Dvorak’s appreciation for the poet Longfellow’s “The Song of Hiawatha.” Tennstedt slows down the middle section, savoring its woodwind colors and cross rhythms, the brass and tympani insistent. The re-appearance of the first movement motto gains the import of Beethoven’s rhythm for his Fifth Symphony. Tennstedt has placed his brass players at the forefront of the opening, martial gambit, producing a dramatic contrast to the sweet theme that next emerges, even given its bass-fiddle undercurrents. The competing rhythmic impulses, mixed with thematic elements of prior movements, create a melodic vortex, a momentum Tennstedt exploits with frenzied power. Purchase this performance if only to savor the creamy sonority of the BSO strings, touted by RCA as “the Aristocrat of Orchestras.” The G minor recapitulation demonstrates a virtuosity in stretto layering, only to dissipate into the correct E minor tonality, punctuated in the rhythm by pizzicato strings and timpani. The coda Tennsedt and the BSO deliver guarantees the voluptuous ovation they receive.
Discerning critics have lavished much praise for Tennstedt’s Mahler performances, noting their consistent, “affectionate ardor.” Tennstedt’s romantic approach to Mahler lies well along lines set by Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer. This performance from Hamburg (20 May 1980) resonates with unrelenting solemnity. The cycle of five Rückert poems Mahler set between 1901-1904 combine the composer’s late-Romantic style within a chamber music idiom applied to an array of instrumental colors in winds, horn, and harp, capturing the repressed agony of having to face the bright world, even though “A little lamp has gone out in my tent.” The second song, “Now I see why dark flames/Your eyes flash at me” offers a lament in C minor whose harp-assisted string and wind lines lend an agonized parallel of lost eyes to distant stars. The drooping vocal line succumbs to inexorable fate but not without cries of bitter realization.
Even more pathetic, “When the Little Mama/Steps in through the door” in C minor despairs the loss of the child who once accompanied her. The combination of wind and brass instruments, especially oboe and horn, join Fassbaender, the effect resembles the poignancy of a Bach cantata aria. The fourth song, set in E-flat major as a counter to its relative minor, “I often think they have just stepped out,” in its terrible brevity, offers false solace and emotional denial to the hard, cruel fact of death. The last of set, “In this weather, in this wind-swept storm,” opening in fateful D minor, self-recrimination rules, the mother’s having let the children face the punishments of Nature. Suddenly, a kind of terrible magic occurs, when Fassbaender intones that the children now rest with another, higher maternal power, unafraid of mortal storms and sheltered by the Hand of God. The impulse to transcendence invokes the harmonies in both the “Resurrection” Symphony and Third Symphony. The performance leaves off any audience response to such an extended heart-rending moment.
—Gary Lemco
TENNSTEDT Vol. 61
DVORAK: Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95 “From the New World”
Boston Symphony Orchestra
MAHLER: Kindertotenlieder
Brigette Fassbaender, mezzo-soprano
NDR Sinfonieorchester
