[net.records] Late Afternoon Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth

cbf@allegra.UUCP (12/15/83)

I saved my favorites for last.  I was painfully saddened to read 
Oscar's dismissal of the Third.  I agree that it is not one of the
greatest ones, but it is *wonderful*, Mahler at his most serenely
beautiful, even more likeable than the Fourth.  The fifth movement
(based on a "Wunderhorn" passage) is the closest thing to Christmas
music Mahler ever wrote.  The fourth movement, a setting of a poem
by Nietsche, is the most eerily still music I've ever heard.  When
I hear Jessye Norman sing it in the stunning Abbado DG digital 
recording, I would swear that she utters those gorgeous chest tones 
without ever breathing, and I usually forget to breath in turn.
I get goose bumps just thinking about it.  Solti has a two-month
old digital recording on London which the reviewer in "Gramophone"
liked a lot.  However there is simply no way anyone can match Norman's 
singing on that Abbado set.

Now we come to the Ninth.  (Let's all bow in religious silence.)
Since I'll soon be talking about what is simply my favorite record,
I beg you to bear with me while I get carried away.  In 1981 (I think),
Herbert von Karajan conducted a performance of Mahler's Ninth at the
Salzburg Easter Music Festival.  It was followed by a 20-minute 
standing ovation.  Later, a prominent critic described that event as 
"the greatest performance of any single piece of music I've ever heard".
When his recording of the piece came out later that year, Karajan
said it was the finest thing he'd ever done.  Comparing that recording
to the recent Solti release, one reviewer wrote "The Berliners play as 
though their life depended on it."  Gramophone sums it up, "Karajan's is 
the Mahler Ninth for our time".  

Although I had a passing knowledge of the First, my love affair with
Mahler's music began the first time I heard that record.  It's one
of those moments, as when I first read "Cyrano de Bergerac" or
first saw "Children of Paradise", that I will never forget.  I've 
since listened to all the other performances of that piece I could.
The Solti was adequate, the Giulini tepid, the Levine laughable.
Haitink and Barbirolli made the best show, but none could give me the
emotional high I get every time from Karajan's final Adagio.  A week
ago, I heard Andrew Davis conduct the LA Philarmonic in a performance 
that was at best very good.  Although a few people walked out (I 
imagine those who didn't know the piece was more than 80 minutes long), 
I noticed about five different people crying through the Adagio.  I 
talked to one of them after, a woman with a slightly embarrassed 
boy friend who wasn't sure how to handle it, and she said it was the 
most moving thing she'd ever heard.  And throughout the whole thing
I was noticing how infinitely greater a performance the Karajan is.

The piece itself has been described by Bruno Walter as Mahler's
farewell to the world.  An early quotation from Beethoven's "Les
Adieux" has helped establish that notion.  The work exhibits a very
arresting structural resemblance to Tchaikosky's Sixth Symphony,
another farewell work.  Both works open with a passionate and
heartrending first movement, followed by an odd dance movement
(Tchaikovsky's a limping waltz, Mahler's a heavy landler); each third
movement is violent and vulgar (Tchaikovsky's a loud march and Mahler's
a grotesque 'Rondo Burlesque') and both works end with an adagio.  The
two works, though, express contrasting last looks on the world,
Tchaikovsky's is a cry of despair, Mahler's is a smile of love and
peace.  The first movement of the Ninth expresses an incredible love of
life and of the earth, the type of wistful love felt by someone who
knows he's about to leave it.  Walter considers it the finest thing
Mahler ever wrote.  The final Adagio is intense, but not at all
depressing.  After the final round of struggle with death (how the
Berlin strings soar in that awesome passage!) comes not despair but a
deep, glowing sense of repose, of fulfillment, of peace.  If
"Resurrection" ends on a note of joyful hope, the Ninth ends in utter
certainty.

Bump!  I just hit the ground again.  I'll try a simple statement.  If
there is one Mahler record to own, this one is it.  The question of
accessibility in such a great work is a moot point.  All great art will
find a way of communicating.  There I go again...

I've heard a rumor that, Karajan, prompted by the triumph following his
every performance of that work and the success of his 81 record is 
considering a new recording on compact disc.  The day it comes out is the 
day I get myself a CD player.
--
"Yes, but is it art?"
--Charles B. Francois (decvax!allegra!cbf)