Luminous Mahler 10 Berliner Philharmoniker Harding

New in the Berliner Philharmoniker archive is Saturday's concert, Mahler's Symphony no 10. (Cooke III performing version). Six years ago, Harding made a ground-breaking recording of this symphony with the Wiener Philharmoniker. This performance with the Berliner Philharmoniker is even more stimulating. The Berliners, some of whom have worked with Harding for nearly 20 years, have a different, more muscular sound, supporting an even more intense interpretation.. Read my review of Harding's Mahler 2 at the Proms here)

Mahler's sketches for the Tenth may have been written towards the end of his life, but they represent a new beginning, not an end. As Professor Henri-Louis de la Grange showed in the fourth volume of his monumental biography, Mahler had undergone traumatic changes personally and professionally. Harding's clear, intelligent approach suggests  Mahler on the verge of a visionary creative breakthrough.

The Adagio begins with exquisite refinement : gossamer textures float, enhanced by the entry of a deeper, more resonant theme. The horns break away, as if they're leading us further into the mountains, into the realms of Mahler's creative imagination. This performance is tinged with more sadness than the Vienna recording. Finer pianissimo, so when the expansive theme returns, it surges like a heartfelt cry of regret. But, as in the Third Symphony, a panoramic vista opens. There are further, and higher peaks to climb.  Flutes and woodwinds whip forwards, like the winds on mountains. The dialogues in this movement are well defined. Perhaps they are a reference to Mahler and Alma, his "ewiger weiblicher" Muse.  But what do those chilling “scream” chords”suggest?  Harding observes the moments of near silence, hovering on the brink, so to speak, before those cataclysmic chords explode. The line seems to last forever, an almost electronic blast of near dissonance. Gone now are the allusions to summer and open horizons..Now very high flutes and harp suggest the "alpine" mood transformed into other-worldly stillness.

The Berliners are especially good at creating the swaggering Weltlauf  in the wild first Scherzo, brutally mocking the refinement of the Adagio. Harding deftly juggled the rapid changes of meter, tempo. Harding brings out the manic energy so it contrasts with the softer, more melodic theme. This time the dichotomy between themes feels dangerous, the throwing down of a creative gauntlet?  Small trumpets herald forward progress: the movement ends with glorious, exuberant vigour, tautly defined and energetic.

The Purgatorio is a small movement bridging the first and second scherzos but it's significant in that the duality that runs through the beginning of the symphony changes into a series of individual voices, much as will happen later.

On the title page of the second Scherzo, Mahler writes “The Devil is dancing it with me! Madness, seize me … destroy me! Let me forget that I exist, so that I cease to be.” But a careful observer will note that Mahler then adds “dass ich ver ….” (so that I ….) and trails off without completing the idea. It’s a preposition, but this whole work is a kind of preposition, open ended because it isn't complete.   A delicate yet quirky waltz circulates through this movement, in counterpoise to the demonic tensions. Listen to Daishin Hashimoto, the Leader, play a bittersweet melody: a lone voice distinct from the forces around him.  Then other voices join him : Jonathan Kelly the Principal Oboe, Andreas Blau, the Principal Flute and Daniele Damiano, Principal Bassoon.

Absolute silence, acutely observed to emphasize the transition to the Finale. This is supposed to depict the funeral march of a fireman, which Mahler and Alma watched from their hotel room in New York. The tempi are slow, even for a funeral. It's more symbolic than literal. Very muffled percussion, as if heard in a dream. Bassoons moan, trumpets and horn cry out. Harding's tempi suggest that sound and time hover suspended in some strange limbo. Uncommonly moving.

Then the orchestra springs to life again, revitalized and reanimated. The "soaring" expansive theme of the Adagio returns, this time firmer and more confident. When it builds to a climax, we can hear an echo of the "scream" chord, again held for what seems like eternity. This time the "scream" is not so much raw anguish as paralyzing numbness. Then the oboe reintroduces the "warm" theme. Perhaps it's meant to suggest balm or transcendence. We don't know, but for me that is part of the fascination.  It's much more difficult to play legato finely balanced and as sustained like this, but Harding and the Berliners can do it so well that the music seems to stretch into infinity, dissolving into something so pure and stratospheric that our ears can't hear it. Absolutely true to context.

This is astounding. It might not appeal to those who prefer "easy listening" Mahler or flashy showman conductors, but for me, it's incredibly profound. Harding shows that the sketchy nature of this piece can be an asset, reminding us that we'll never know what Mahler might have done if he'd revised it. The spare, gossamer orchestration reminds us that there are mysteries in life we're never meant to solve.

Exceptionally well written review Tippett Britten Elgar Prom 51

An exceptionally well-written review of Prom 51 Tippett, Britten and Elgar, Daniel Harding and Ian Bostridge. Read it HERE in Opera Today. It's by Claire Seymour, which is why it's so well informed and analyzed. If only more music writing were on this level!

On Tippett : "In the Adagio cantabile Harding placed more emphasis on the adagio than cantabile. The conductor took a risk not only with the tempo, but also with the dynamics, resisting the temptation to let the arching lines grow and swell, restraining the strings to a mezzo piano.

On Britten : "Bostridge totally immersed himself in this work, musically, emotionally and physically, at times leaning (dangerously?) far backwards, elsewhere thrusting his hands nonchalantly in his pockets, sometimes fixing his eye confrontationally on the audience. Willing to throw caution to the winds, Bostridge gave a technically flawless account, the arresting characterisation absolutely convincing. It is hard to imagine a better performance of Britten’s thrilling song-cycle. "

.On Elgar : "The racing scherzo, by contrast, wickedly transformed the theme of the first movement into a nightmarish vision of horror, and there was plenty of pomp and majesty in the final ‘Moderato e maestoso’, although here again the recapitulation did not fully achieve a sense of liberating affirmation. But, the final bars were wonderfully contemplative and whispered; a shame, then, that the spell-binding silence that Harding desired was shattered by overly hasty, impatient applause."

Dangerous Britten, Tippett and Elgar Prom 51

Rebels at the BBC Proms? In Prom 51, Daniel Harding conducted Tippett, Britten and Elgar with the LSO and Ian Bostridge. British greats, yes. But nothing Establishment.The Fanfare from Tippett's The Mask of Time might have heralded a conventionally stolid celebration of British music, but Harding drew out the "secret" background. This time, the Fanfare blasted us back to 1939, and the Concerto for Double String Orchestra. Context matters, for England was on the verge of war. Tippett, being politically aware could hardly have been confident or cheerful.  In the Concerto, Tippett builds conflict, pitting the two parts of the orchestra against each other and creates a sense of divisiveness by combining themes that seem loosely connected. Free of slogans and earnest wordiness, he expresses himself more effectively through abstract music. The Concerto works in purely musical terms because it isn't elevated agit prop (though that can make great music too). Its angular, jagged edges engage us in self doubt and contradiction. Prince Charles might find it all a bit too "modern" but this is Tippett at his best.

Benjamin Britten's Les Illuminations also starts with a Fanfare, but the strings are jerky and nervous, crackling with tension.  Les Illuminations was also written on the verge of war, when Britten was in despair about the future of Europe and his own future as a composer who wanted to create something new and original but hadn't quite found his mission. Although the text is in French, it is a mistake to assume that Les Illuminations is French music or that it must be performed in a French style.

It's vital, in performance, to appreciate what Britten (whose command of French was poor) was trying to do. Rimbaud's poems are short outbursts of feverish emotion. The imagery is highly condensed  meaning elusive. You can almost feel Rimbaud hyperventilating. Having escaped the bourgeois confines of provincial France, Rimbaud was intoxicated by London and its frantic sense of modernity but he was desperately poor. He completed Les Illuminations while working in a garrett in Reading, trying to scrape a living. Britten respects the almost kaleidoscopic fragmentation of ideas  by breaking words up into individual sounds, then elides lines into dizzying freefall. The last thing you want is "conversational". Bostridge captures the sense of surreal, almost hysterical psychic dislocation, so fundamental to interpretation. Again and again, the phrase ""J'ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage!" explodes  as ecstatic revelation, but each time with slightly different colouring. Perhaps there is no "key" other than the immediacy of the moment.

"Tourillons, tourillons", turbulent, sudden switches of timbre and pace. Bostridge draws out the extreme in the music, reaching ethereally high pitches, growling along low passages, colouring sounds with sensual nuance. The piece was originally performed by a soprano, perhaps because the deepest levels in the piece might have been too hard to cope with in Britten's buttoned-up Britain.. Bostridge brings out the profound danger in the piece, twisting his tongue and projecting sound as if savouring some mind-altering potion, enjoying the delicious challenge of things unknown. Perhaps the violin solo functions as the snake offering an apple in Eden? Bostridge and Harding have been doing Britten together for years, developing a singularly original and very perceptive approach. Their recording of Our Hunting Fathers is absolutely brilliant, as is their Billy Budd. (more here). Perhaps some might prefer their Britten sweeter and prettier, but for me Britten's music can't really be performed by "ordinary" tenors. Imagine Placido Domingo!

Elgar's Symphony no 2 (1911)  is stylistically so adventurous, (for its time and place) that one wonders if the composer might have felt he was entering new territory he might not want to examine too closely, rather like Sibelius on the completion of his last great works. Harding emphasizes the clarity with which Elgar contrasts divergent themes. We hear the familiar "warm" Elgar confidence, but also a more subtle sense of unease, in the best and most creative sense of the word. Without a degree of soul searching and questioning, can good art exist? Elgar, despite his worldly honours and clubbability, was essentially an "outsider" as all true artists are on some level.  Listen to the whole broadcast HERE.  And for an exceptionally well informed and well written review of this Prom, read Claire Seymour in Opera Today.

Mahler 10 Harding Mendelssohn Tetzlaff

Because Mahler didn't complete the Tenth Symphony, performance needs to be open ended, recognizing that we'll never know what might have been. What a conductor hears in the material is just as informative as what we might assume we know.

That's why I found Riccardo Chailly's Mahler 10th with the Leipzig Gewandhaus at this year's Proms so fascinating. Chailly brought out aspects of the Eternal Feminine: a concept quite explicitly developed in the 8th Symphony. Connecting the 10th to the 8th is perfectly valid, for Mahler is on both sides of the divide in his life, before and after the crisis with Alma.

Daniel Harding and the London Symphony Orchestra's Mahler 10 at the Barbican on 20th November was altogether tougher and sterner, more cognizant of the horrors in the piece, so in that sense is a more conventional reading. In the alternating themes of the Adagio, Harding hears duality too, but develops it into a complex shifting between polarities. The themes circle each other, interweaving rather than firmly connecting. Mahler and Alma, perhaps, since the composer marked his manuscript with so many references to the woman he loved.

But Harding hears the Adagio as a prelude for what is to come. As sao often in Mahler, beginnings set the stage for ultimate resolution in a different form. The Adagio isn't an end in itself. Perhaps Alma wanted only the Adagio to be performed because she wanted to maintain a romantic image of her marriage. Obviously Mahler adored her. But the manuscript shows that he was going further. As Harding has said, the “famous “scream” chord in the first movement, a nine-note dissonance, is an astonishing cry of anguish …. "it’s pure Edvard Munch in music”.

Dissonance of the soul, teetering on an abyss of something terrifying and new. The duality, in Harding, is unsettling, uncomforting. Some performing editions try too hard to "complete" the 10th, smoothing out the angularity, but Cooke III lets them hang. Thus, in the second scherzo, Harding kept the LSO tightly reined in, so they don't cover the jagged edges Mahler left incomplete by "normal" orchestral colour. In his recording with the Vienna Philharmonic, Harding's careful control was even more shocking, because the VPO is an orchestra for whom stark chiaroscuro almost doesn't exist. But that's the whole point. We don't know where Mahler was heading, we can't paper over the aural gaps.

Hence the hollownesss, particularly well shaped in the second (and most incomplete) scherzo and in the Finale : the drumbeats here truly sounded strangled, cut off in mid flow, minimal resonance. The fireman's funeral GM and Alma watched in New York moved him deeply, exactly why we'll never know. But the fireman was cut down in his prime, so the drumbeats are both dirge and truncated heartbeats. Good as the LSO is, the Vienna Philharmonic recording shows just how chilling a performance can be (for a review see link above).

Alma was Mahler's muse, but she wasn't a benevolent deity. She scratched out the second part of its title "oder Inferno", and cut away the bottom half of the title page which may have contained a poem she didn't like. GM loved her but he was smart enough to know her love for him was utterly conditional. He may have won her back but that didn't mean she might not leave again. Alma loved playing angelic nurse to ailing husband, but when he was gone, she went back to Gropius. And, by praising Alma's rather banal songs, Mahler was making compromises with his artistic instinct, even if that was understandable in the circumstances. So Harding's tense, disturbing approach to the symphony is psychologically as well as musically astute.

Most of the audience at the Barbican on Friday night seemed to have come for Christian Tetzlaff's Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. Tetzlaff's amazing and this is one of his showpieces. Divinely fluid playing, rewarded by unusually prolonged applause. Yet part of the magic was due to the orchestra, too, because Mendelssohn wasn't writing for a demented violinist-as-demon . Here the LSO got to demonstrate their delicacy, carefully micromanaged by Harding without losing the whimsical spontaneity in the piece. Pairing Mendelssohn with Mahler was a very good idea, for the poised balance in Mendelssohn contrasts with the wavering polarities in Mahler. Yet both pieces were executed with sensitive, musically informed intelligence.

More on Chailly's Mahler 10 Prom

Interesting performances grow in your mind. I thought I knew Mahler’s 10th pretty well, but Chailly’s performance at the Proms keeps generating new ideas. Another good reason to steer clear of “instant” opinions.

The Tenth feels like a departure, for of course every new work is a new venture. But it’s not a departure into death as commonly assumed, but something quite unusual even in Mahler terms.

The lyricism in the Adagio harks back to the Adagietto of the 5th Symphony, which was also a tribute to Alma. It also evokes the wide, open landscapes Mahler loved so much. These symbolize the limitless panoramas so many of the symphonies open out towards – “eternal light”.

When the Adagio is performed as a stand alone, it doesn’t matter so much what a conductor puts into it. But when it’s performed as part of the wider symphony, it needs to be shaped by wider considerations. Since the Tenth is a sketch, not a completion, it’s not going to be fully orchestrated, so the Adagio needs a lighter, more elusive touch than if it were a straightforward love song.

Right from the start it’s apparent that there are two voices here, the dark rich one and the light, beautiful string theme. Obviously, it may be a reference to Mahler’s marriage but what’s significant is that the “scream” chords” could refer to different things. Are they cries of pain, or sudden flashes of knowledge? Either possibility works even though the actual notes remain the same.

So this is a departure for Mahler on another level. All along what stands out in his music is the idea of an individual, usually pitted against vast forces. Of course dual themes occur everywhere in nearly all music but what’s interesting fort me in Mahler 10th is how duality is embedded into the symphony’s structure. The Purgatorio bridges two Scherzi. Is this an echo of the two Nachtmusiks in Mahler 7 ? Conventional middle movements can be heard as a climax but in the Seventh, the middle movement separates two different stages in the journey towards the glowing Finale. Incidentally the most wonderful performance of the Seventh I have ever heard was Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus. He placed the mandolin in the centre of the orchestra, not tucked away in a corner, so the “lone voices” were absolutely at the heart of the music, not some peripheral detail. There’s a reason!

I’ve written about the Purgatorio below and how it may represent the frailty of a needy child who dies before he can be fed. Song is so central to any understanding of Mahler that it’s not a coincidence. What was Mahler thinking about, returning to an early song at this time in his life, when he was, like the starving child, put aside by a woman who had other things on her mind ?

So like the Nachtmusiks, the Scherzi represent different stages. The first mocks the Adagio, but the second is altogether more complex: this was the part Mahler left most incomplete. See what I’ve written below about his markings and the prepositional nature of the section. It can never be completed because Mahler himself may not have known. In this performance, Chailly creates the sketch-like nature of the section so it really does feel incomplete, which may seem a bit shocking, like entering a room to find the floor opens onto the sky.

That’s why I think it is so important that an orchestra as good as the Leipzig Gewandhaus is central to performance. A really good orchestra can suggest sounds out of silence, creating reverberating echoes than span voids. The Leipzig strings are famous for their luminous, rich sheen : so the beauty of their playing registers on the mind even when they aren’t actually playing. Since the strings create so much of the “Alma” theme such playing warms the music even if it’s loosely orchestrated. Like perfume, an invisible presence.

So here we have two voices in the symphony, not one. What did Mahler mean when he wrote on the pages of the “Fireman’s funeral”, that only Alma knew what it meant? For once Alma wasn’t telling. It must have been something quite deep, not simply a reaction to a stranger’s funeral. But the point is that the composer is no longer a lone figure, like the hero in the First Symphony. GM and Alma now stand together looking out of their hotel room, down at the city below them.

Daniel Harding’s recording is by far more attuned to the “Devil “ theme and the spiky, edgy anxiety in the Scherzi. His “fireman’s funeral” is truly horrific, the drumstrokes devastate. Chailly’s version isn’t nearly so dark, though both lead to the same transformational, transcending resolution. I’ve been listening to them both side by side, and it’s amazing what that reveals. It’s like hearing the same story from both sides. Harding expresses a Mahler perspective but Chailly emphasizes the role of Alma.

Hence Mahler’s references all over the manuscript. “To live for you, to die for you” and the poignant “Almschi”. He may not have finished the symphony but he had no illusions that it had no meaning.

There are several different performing versions of this symphony and they keep evolving, which is a good thing, because the very process involved understanding and informed choice. There are elaborate versions and bland : on balance Cooke 3 perhaps works best because it's sensitive to the idiom without attaching too much. I have a weakness for the Joe Wheeler version which is the most spartan of all, particularly as both performances I've heard are awful. But what would the Tenth be without Alma?
PLEASE see the other posts on Mahler 10 here (two on Chailly, two on Harding)) ! and also on other Mahler works/I'm "downloading" a lifdetime of listening.

Gergiev and Jurowski - overgrown path

Please read this article "Why I am sorely disillusioned by Gergiev" on the blog On an overgrown Path which you can click on via the link on the right of this page (further down). Now this is intelligent, analytical, well reasoned writing by someone who knows what he is talking about. Personally I couldn't care less about Gergiev's politics but they are symptomatic of G's approach to music. I love a lot of Gergiev's work, even when he's crass. But the scary thing is that his new popularity demonstrates something even more scary in this superficial soundbite era of "instant" thrills. People no longer seem to value listening, learning, thinking. Read Overgrown Path, it is what seriously good blogging can be. I wish I could write as well as that.

New BILLY BUDD Britten Harding LSO Bostridge Barbican

Brand new recording of Britten's Billy Budd. Daniel Harding conducts the LSO at the Barbican. This performance changed the whole way I listen to Billy Budd. Previously it wasn't a favourite as performances usually take the "talking heads" approach to the voices and action. But this performance is radically different. It makes a compelling case for Billy Budd as symphony, an orchestral work that uses voices to extend its impact, not "opera" in the usual sense of singers against a backdrop. Suddenly, Billy Budd is revealed as extremely sophisticated musical writing, where the real action is hidden in the orchestration, not what's happening with the actors. Captain Vere's dilemma "is" the central and absolute drama of the entire piece. "My life's broken. It's not his trial, it's mine, mine. It is I whom the Devil awaits". This opera isn't even about Billy, but about how people respond to difficult ethical situations.Billy Budd was written during the McCarthy era with its hysterical witch hunts. Britten was no fool.. It is significant how much he makes of the political paranoia of 1797, for it is pertinent to the "danger" the ship and its crew are in. Britten was emotionally reticent, knowing it could be dangerous to be too open, unsafe to be candid. So Billy stammers incoherently where he could save himself with clear explanations. Similarly, Captain Vere pulls back from the brink when he could have intervened. Billy Budd is an allegory where Britten expresses unfathomably deep emotions without revealing them except to those sensitive enough to listen.Harding’s emphasis on the orchestra is thus psychologically as well as musically astute. Here the ocean is a protagonist, every bit as much as the singing roles. Indeed, against the wild forces of nature, the 'Indomitable' isn’t indomitable; it’s vulnerable, and can be destroyed by fate as capriciously as Billy himself is destroyed. Through the orchestra, the ocean takes central stage, turbulent and intense. Huge crescendos build up like mighty waves, but even more impressive is the undertow of dark, murmuring sound that surges ever forwards. Above this, currents flowed diagonally across the orchestra, first violins flowing to brass and basses and back, just as ships lurch back and forth. You could get seasick if you focussed too hard, but that is the point, for Britten is showing that the “floating world” aboard ship is unsteady, far removed from the certainties of dry land. Just like the enveloping mists, all points of moral reference are hidden. “Lost in the infinite sea”, sings Captain Vere, a refrain that recurs repeatedly, in voice and in the orchestra.

This ship is in full sail, you can feel the wind and see the open horizon. This is an important to the narrative, because it reflects the sense that supernatural forces are propelling Billy and Captain Vere inevitably towards their fate. More subtly though, this also expresses something about why Billy loves being up high in the foretop, riding the rigging, high up on the mast. He’s such a free spirit that even death cannot extinguish him. That’s why, perhaps, that he moves ahead, always forward, instead of dwelling on past sorrows. “No more looking down from the heights to the depths !” he sings, “I’ve sighted a sail in the storm…I see where she’s bound for.” It's not for nothing that Britten starts the opera with Vere reflecting on the past and ends with him being liberated, at last understanding what Billy meant. Britten has been Harding’s speciality since he was in his teens, when he was conducting the Britten Sinfonia. Most of his career has been spent in European circles, where Britten’s music is perhaps less performed than in Britain, but this is an advantage because it makes his approach feel so individual. He has also worked with the LSO and with Bostridge for over 12 years, so the partnership is deeply rooted. Hence the vividness and cohesion in this performance. Take for example the Battle sequence, which bristled with vigour and alertness. There, extreme tension built up in the orchestra, instruments and voices traversing the music in stark staccato, and disciplined formation. Everything seems to be going on at the same time in different directions, voices interjecting, solo instruments leaping into prominence, the choir at full blast. Yet it’s all clearly defined and distinct. To stretch the maritime metaphor a little further: a conductor is like the captain of a ship and there are many reasons why precision gets results. Conductors, like captains, don’t waffle aimlessly and confuse their players, but lead their crew purposefully into action.
One of Harding’s particular strengths is his ability to focus on the fundamental direction of whatever music he conducts. Thus he understands the Battle in the wider context of the opera: jus as the men are about to board the French ship, mist descends and the French escape. The excitement builds to fever pitch but descends into anti-climax. Nothing is resolved. It’s another parallel to Captain Vere’s dilemma, when he pulls back from saving Billy even though he knows in his heart that he could /should do so, if only he dared.

Britten's writing for Vere is the most complex in the whole opera, for he is its true centre. The men call don't call him "Starry Vere", for nothing, and the "God Bless you, Starry Vere" chorus is beautifully transcendant. Like Billy, his natural habitat is way, way above the decks and hold where Claggart and his brutish bullies reign. Britten has him spouting about Scylla and Charybdis, for he's educated, an intellectual, someone who thinks and makes moral judgements. In contrast, the other characters, even Billy, merely act and react without much mental process. Captain Vere represents the finer part of mankind, capable of seeing beyond and above the immediate. Ian Bostridge is a perfect Vere, tortured and intense, utterly aware of the portent of what he must do. Even in old age, he can't find resolution until he realizes that each man is ultimately master of his own fate, and Billy's choice, so beautifully expressed in the song Through the port comes moonshine astray, was a vision Billy could live by and die with, whatever Vere might have done. Nathan Gunn's Billy at first bothered me because his voice is so light : yet why not ? Billy is a symbol, an ideal, and is a counterpart to Vere on a less sophisticated level. This performance showed how he, too, is 0ne of Britten's innocents, doomed because purity itself is doomed by fate itself, rather than by the actions of others, That's why Vere gets deliverance. Billy Budd deserves its place in the pantheon of Britten's most profound work.GET THIS RECORDING !

Harding Mahler 10 new !

Really interesting recording, this :

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2008/June08/Mahler10_Harding_4777347.htm

“Mahler goes in such an extreme direction. The music is in a way so modern and unexpected, that if you listen to it a first time it’s very possible to be confused by the modernity and the extreme nature of the musical language”.