MAHLER: Symphony No. 1 in D Major “Titan” – Boston Symphony Orchestra/ William Steinberg – Forgotten Records FR 2295 (48:45) [www.forgottenrecords.com] *****:
The history of Mahler performance in the United States at the time of this performance of the First Symphony, 8 January 1960, by William Steinberg (1899-1978) and the Boston Symphony, illustrates a trend that had evolved first in Cincinnati and Minneapolis, from Mitropoulos, Ormandy, and Stokowski, and then emigrated to New York City, where Dimitri Mitropoulos, Bruno Walter, and Leonard Bernstein had honed their own sense of the tradition. The year 1960 marked the Mahler Centennial, an occasion especially pertinent in New York City, where Mahler himself had conducted performances prior to his untimely death in 1911. In terms of recordings, some 40 years had to elapse before the last of the nine symphonies and the fragment of the Tenth found their way into the catalogue in 1953; and another fourteen years would pass until Leonard Bernstein documented the complete cycle in 1967.
The live performance offered here by Forgotten Records predates the interpretation Steinberg committed to disc (for The Record Society) in August 1960 with the Pittsburgh Symphony, his major venue from 1959-1976. Steinberg directed the Boston Symphony concurrently with the Pittsburgh Symphony, 1969-1972. A prior Pittsburgh rendition of the Mahler First with Steinberg in Pittsburgh, 1953, appeared on the Urania label. The lamentable fact remains that despite his idiomatic sway with this seminal Mahler work, no American record company – Capitol, Command Classics, RCA – underwrote Steinberg in a survey of the Mahler opera for posterity.
Symphony Hall, Boston, serves as a perfect venue for the sonic demands of Mahler’s 1889 Symphony in D, opening as it does with a sustained, pedal A in seven octaves by divided strings before launching into a kind of lyrical delirium based on his song, Ging heut morgen über’s Feld from his cycle Songs of a Wayfarer. The BSO winds and trumpets prove alert and uncannily brisk in their attacks, notable for the interval of a descending fourth, adding a degree of nervous excitement that will only increase as the music evolves. What had initially appeared as a solemn, funereal occasion has transformed into a blazing assertion of the life force, with low brass, percussion, and timpani.
The energetic second movement reverts to the influence of Franz Schubert, offering a brash and loping “Ländler” that no less manipulates the A major arpeggio and highlights the melodic contour with brass and timpanic punctuations. Soon, trombones introduce more throes of syncopation by lagging behind the tutti. Steinberg milks the central section in F with a loving, folk character, some of which seems a parody of peasant rusticity. Horns and low basses introduce the da capo with a lumbering yet implacable determination, moving to a fiery coda.
The famous third movement, a parodic and contrapuntal treatment of Frere Jacques in minor, offers another funeral occasion, infiltrated by stylistic mixtures that include Jewish klezmer music, as if Mahler’s reading of E.T.A. Hoffmann had rendered all experience irreverent. We feel the falling fourth interval, in ostinato, while woodwinds and contrabass plod through the folk elements, until the klezmer’s brass and percussion intrude. With another song from the Wayfarer cycle, “Die zwei blauen Augen,” Mahler asserts his obsession with love and death, or love and a desire for oblivion. The klezmer impulse mocks this false serenity as well, so invoking a huge stretto effect, layering the three themes upon each other, the absurd synchronicity of fate.
Gustav Mahler,
by Moritz Nähr
The massive last movement would seem to justify the title “Titan” to characterize the symphonic journey as a whole, an evolution of the heroic stamina in confrontation with adversity. Two contrary rhythmic impulses, ascending and descending, blast forward amidst of torrent of brazen, contrapuntal effects, to thrust us into an emotional maelstrom. From within this raucous tumult a melody of infinite regret arises, the source of much inspiration for Richard Strauss. Almost in anticipation of scenes from Ein Heldenleben, Mahler assembles his motifs for battle, and Steinberg does not stint of the sonic boom unleashed. A kind of heroic chorale will emerge periodically – made alert by a pregnant pause – and with iterations from previous movements. The music intends to land on a climactic C but over-reaches to a tidal D, a note of doom. The studied pauses Steinberg inserts already seem an adumbration of the poignant Adagietto of Symphony No. 5. With another martialing of an indomitable will, the music asserts a victory march, leading to nothing less than a Handelian proclamation that the heroic soul will endure, or rather reign, “forever and ever.” You will require a separate set of speakers for the ensuing applause.
—Gary Lemco
