Tahra TAH 642-644 (3-CDs), 50:26; 66:41; 52:02 (Distrib. www.tahra.com) ****:
From the many European Mahler archival performances, Tahra resurrects three distinguished interpretations, of which only the Bruno Walter carries with it the notion of “traditional” Mahler style. Joseph Keilberth (1908-1968) tends to be remembered as a Wagner conductor of some credence–he led two Ring cycles, in 1953 and in 1955. Keilberth enjoyed a strong repute in Munich after Fricsay abandoned the Prinzregententheater. Known for driven performances of Beethoven and Bruckner, it comes as a refreshing moment to hear his 4 February 1950 Mahler D Major Symphony in very good sound and imaginative realization. Though not dragging in tempo, the first two movements combine lyricism with a thoughtfulness and monumentality we hear in the modern version by Abbado. The scherzo generates both laendler and rustic energies, the bass and trumpet parts in vivid colors. The middle section rises to some excellent work in the woodwinds and strings’ song over a deliberate pulse. The last page of the da capo achieves a whirlwind of colors and brassy pyrotechnics of astonishing intensity.
Lyricism and grotesquerie merge for the third movement, the Frere Jacques in sardonic hues, complemented by Viennese cabaret and vulgar street songs. The middle section with harp, based on the last of the Songs of a Wayfarer, floats in gossamer space–transparently vocalized–quite a pleasure for Mahlerites who think they’ve heard it all. The finale–which cannot decide between F Minor, B Minor, and D Major–receives a throttling opening, controlled hysteria. The first, lyrical theme emerges after a sea of turmoil, a consolation of distant, perhaps world-weary, skies. Keilberth is unafraid to inject a rich portamento as he sees fit. Tumult, pomp, and heraldry each compete for our attentions in this febrile brew, which renews its fierce energies time and again. Under an inverted pedal the hymn to Nature’s consolation rises again, though stormy basses and a meandering melodic line suggest all is not well. A lovely oboe suggests redemption is possible, and the strings and cymbals affirm our hopes. Once more into the breach via a canonic march, Keilberth increasing the tension to a seething, boiling point to the cataclysmic coda, another (Roman) march, the very assertion of the artistic ego triumphant.
Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt (1900-1973) led more Mahler than is perhaps widely known, including a Song of the Earth with Nan Merriman and Fritz Wunderlich.
Schmidt-Isserstedt’s Mahler Second (12 November 1956) possesses the requisite energy and conviction–besides a strong instrumental and vocal technique–we demand for this spectacular conception of the composer. A turgid, anguished foray yields to the lyrical counter-theme, lovingly rendered. The working out of the 43-bar main theme and its polyphonic development, with off stage effects, moves gravely and passionately, furioso in some sections, the Hamburg Philharmonic strings and triple-tongued brass in full tilt. When the laendler section returns, it lingers in the ether of another world, Mahler conducting that rivals what we hear in Walter, Scherchen, and Barbirolli.
The Andante remains among the most simple, shortest, and purest evocations found in all Mahler. Schmidt-Isserstedt takes the tempo as written, a forward-paced walking gait that gathers emanations from Nature as it proceeds forward. Graciously Schubertian for the most part, only occasionally interrupted by a savage note of despair or world-weariness, the music rumbles and frolics, pizzicato, arco, and trilled, in pantheistic exultation. Two tympanic strokes move us into a debonair Scherzo, light and eerily mesmeric, the equivalent of Berlioz’ hexentanz from the Fantastic Symphony. Flute and bass fiddles make a piercing juxtaposition prior to the martial blasts from the full orchestra. Death’s fiddle seems active amidst the pulverizing, throbbing interjections from the tutti that adumbrate the Apocalypse of the final movement. The Urlicht waxes ingenuous and ardent, at moments shimmering and static at once.
Then, the Last Trump in all its Viennese glory, given a cut or two that reduces the playing time to under twenty-seven minutes, where Barbirolli takes thirty-four (in 1965 Berlin). Anguished cries alternate with enunciated pageants, Mahler separating the spiritual wheat from the chaff, the resurrection motif foretold. Echoes from Liszt and Beethoven’s Op. 111 permeate the orchestral tissue, here a war-march frenzied and hallucinatory. The mystical atmosphere coalesces at the choral entry on “Aufersteh’n” and the a cappella singing in G-flat, pianissimo. Vocalists Balsborg and Wagner assure us–and trumpets, trilled strings, and triangle confirm–we have not suffered this mortal coil in vain. The cathedral effect can be cut with a knife, even a guillotine. The voices rise to glory, then eight trumpets, ten French horns, four trombones and tubas, and a host of battery effects transport us, enraptured, somewhere beyond Alpha Centauri.
Bruno Walter (1876-1962) has already nine documented performances of the Mahler Fourth Symphony; this concert (4 September 1950) gives a tenth, and it comes between his notable collaboration with Irmgaard Seefried (24 Auguest 1950) and that with Carla Schlean (19 April 1952). Walter tended to realize Mahler for his Viennese culture and innate humanism; the demonic elements Walter played down or ignored. A performance of the overtly bilious Seventh Symphony with Walter the French radio services erased; instead, they kept Walter’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik!
The G Major Symphony, composed in reverse–Mahler had already scripted out the last movement from Des Knaben Wunderhorn–calls for a chamber music sensibility as connected to colossal, pantheistic tissue. Walter drives the first movement hard, his brass section not particularly warm-toned, even off key. The recap of the first movement, its tinklings, horns, and tripping strings, all suggest a mountain excursion worthy of Wordsworth’s “The Prelude.” The fanfares become quite insistent, the tympani unleashed, and the string attacks gruff, heaving affairs, breathing hard. Always the composer seeks revelation in Nature, an answer to his eternal “Quo vadis, Domine?” The pages achieve some degree of consolation, although the mysticism Mahler seeks truly reveals itself in the Ruhevoll third movement, the composer’s personal favorite composition. The Scherzo/Allegretto refers to old wood cuts of Death playing his out-of-tune violin; a definite archaism casts itself about this eerily compelling movement, whose counter melody after a woodwind march/laendler/waltz in folk style arches grandly, harps ablaze, with aspirations of immortality. Typically, the da capo trips as ingenuously as its opening, childlike, as though nothing had happened.
Ever since I first heard Walter’s 1945 CBS inscription with the New York Philharmonic of the third movement, I felt as though Mahler adagios were special moments in time. That it was employed for a love-scene in Clouzot’s film La Prisonniere should not surprise anyone who knows its expansively erotic power. Walter keeps the entire 19-minute panorama under tender control, the spiritual vistas opening up in colossal spasms with trumpets and swooping strings, tympani, triangle; and ending on the note of the Wunderhorn song of Heavenly Feast-Slaughter in rapturous tones. Anneliese Kupper, despite some stridency in her vocal tone, manages to deliver clean runs in the course of the feral execution on behalf of innocence described in the text. Walter leads a wildly dissonant accompaniment, at least until the harp and oboe usher in the sweetness of the strings. While Seefried doubtless provided Walter’s best singer, and Schwarzkopf (twice) his most illustrious, Kupper lends a strong authority to her part, but not so “blandly” naïve as that of Teresa Stich-Randall in her singing for Otterloo and Klemperer. Strong Mahler, certainly powerful alternatives from the main stream.
— Gary Lemco
