Simon Rattle scores a 5-star Mahler 7th
Album Of The WeekFrom the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
The seventh was the least understood of Mahler’s symphonies and the last to get recorded. Bruno Walter, Mahler’s closest apostle, never performed it. Otto Klemperer, next in line, distended it to 20 minutes over its regular length. At 75 minutes, it can tax an audience’s patience….
Read on here.
And here.
En francais ici.
Ha!
You overlooked the best of all — with the top Bavarian orchestra:
https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Gustav-Mahler-Symphonie-Bayerisches-Staatsorchester/dp/B08YS637TC
https://tickets.staatstheater.bayern/bso.webshop/webticket/itemdetail?itemId=1539
Maybe you and David Hurwitz should have a little debate; he’s not too keen on the performance and also takes issue with this being Sir Simon’s third (and evidently fourth; he left out the LSO) recording of the 7th.
https://youtu.be/ioXWktUvJec?si=9wYxbqN7gsHAGGSY
I’ve never understood the difficulty people have had with this symphony. I first heard it (in a live radio broadcast preceding the recording) with Abbado and the CSO and was blown away by both the piece and the performance. Been a fan ever since.
This is hilarious. I was telling my wife the exact same thing before I saw this comment. I did hear Rattle and Birmingham many many years ago in DC and liked it very much. Hurwitz is a nut and his critiques eccentric but quite enjoyable and sometimes very good
Any recording by Sir Simon – or Sir Roger – is going to get a Bronx cheer from Dave the Dude and his sycophants: this one was followed by an embarrassingly silly video in which Big Dave wondered if Rattle had lost his knighthood because he appead as plain Simon without the Sir on a recent recording. Like most demagogues, Boxed Set Bernie is against titles or honours.
He does seem unsure about the merits of [Sir] Colin Davis, calling him a true Schubertian in Classics Today but dismissing his recorded Schubert cycle with contemptuous silence on his YouTube channel which he might see as appealing to a less sophisticated audience…
You should understand that Dave is a shrewd businessman who knows his audience and, more importantly, knows how to manipulate it.
The article mentions Klemperer. Well, his Mahler 7th was recorded in 1968, near the end of his career when his tempi became slower. But if he performed the work before 1950, it is likely that it would have been 20 minutes faster, not slower than average.
But how often did he perform it? He attended the premiere in Prague, and its rehearsals. Alas, Philharmonia Orchestra does not main an online archive. But the few databases that I was able to consult (Concertgebouw Orchestra, Konzerthaus Wien, Musikverein Wien, Carnegie Hall) did not show any Klemperer performances of Mahler’s 7th symphony. Not do we have a recording from any label that issued live Klemperer performances (Testament ICA, Tahra, etc.)
As for Rattle, his concert of Mahler 7th on tour with the Brum orchestra was one of the few that I walked out of. And, looking at the roster of his Munich orchestra, I don’t see too many Czechs…
https://www.brso.de/en/orchestra/musicians/
Do people really walk out of concerts for not liking the interpretation? I hope you guys always buy tickets neat the aisle if you know you would storm out lol
No, not because I don’t like an interpretation. I do walk out when the presentation is substandard or, in that case, way less than what was advertised. Remember, at that time Sir Simon was the latest golden boy from the Perfidious Albion, who, in the eyes of their critics, could do no wrong. What we got was a third rate band with a sweaty kid with big hair dancing in front of them. No, thanks.
P.S. The only other time I walked out of a concert was when some russkies showed in lieu of the Berlin Radio Symphony under Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, since their tour was cancelled due to lack of funds in the 90s. I already had the tickets so I decided to give the russkies a try. Big mistake; life is too short for this crap.
Agreed. This and his latest Mahler 9th with the same band prove that even an English conductor can learn.
The interpretation doesn’t work because Rattle went micromanaging mode – again. Where the march theme is supposed to take off at the end of the first movement, it doesn’t, it’s very two dimensional. The slightly tubby sound doesn’t help either.
Rattle’s best is a live performance with Berlin in 1999 after Abbado laid the groundwork:
https://youtu.be/YtemjFaj2u8?si=QQah3JMNnJk72sBB
Personally I prefer Macal on Exton, Haitink’s first Concertgebouw and Maazel in Vienna !
And here’s a fantastic one from Metzmacher where everything goes right:
https://youtu.be/8bcPgiW9Xdw?si=2ALHZkKnBECB9Hyz
As for the Symphony, Its documented that Mahler struggled with it. I believe the first movement following the rowing on the lake inspired introduction is a symphonic poem style work out based upon Mahler’s hiking trips in the Dolomites complete with an entire journey, a sunrise and a scramble home captured in sound. Had anyone written a finale like that with such virtuosity? I place the 7th as his finest achievement in terms of purely orchestral symphonies, and the 8th his finest overall.
Metzmacher is one of the best conductors today. He has, not perhaps undeservedly, the reputation of a modern music specialist. But just like Michael Gielen, he has a wide repertorie that he excels in.
Speaking about the Symphony itself, there is an overlooked fact which occurs in the last mvt. (from Wikipedia) :
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A further variation is a particularly strong pizzicato where the string is plucked vertically by snapping and rebounds off the fingerboard of the instrument. This is known as snap pizzicato or Bartók pizzicato, after one of the first composers to use it extensively (e.g. in the 4th movement of his Fourth String Quartet, 1928). Gustav Mahler famously employs this kind of pizzicato in the third movement of his Seventh Symphony, in which he provides the cellos and double basses with the footnote “pluck so hard that the strings hit the wood” in bar 401.
Bartok was in his 30’s when Mahler died, so he must surely have heard a performance of the 7th at sometime in his life. He liked this effect and continued to use it later on in his works, but unfortunately he wasn’t the first to do so.
This percussive technique should thus be attributed to Mahler, and included into the realm of his innovative genius and beauty.
I gave this a listen when Hurwitz’s damning appraisal came out; it’s not as bad as he said but not that great, either. I’ve never found Rattle’s Mahler convincing and I spent a lot of time in LA hearing it…the most dreadful live 7th ever back then. The 7th just needs to be played naturally and not be over-interpreted. The finale has to move. Kondrashin with the Concertgebouw is my top pick.
“None of the major Mahlerians quite get it right.” ” The first Nachtmusik no longer sounds like a car-oil commercial” Shaking my head. There is no one way to perform any great symphony so there are numerous valid approaches. Mahler 7 never sounded like a car-oil commercial, the opening of the second movement was used as an accompaniment to said commercial. Does the William Tell Overture sound like a Looney Tunes cartoon?
The William Tell Overture is very well-served by its association with Looney Tunes, just as Strauss’ Blue Danube is transformed into something far more than it theretofore had been by 2001. Sometimes, genius filmmakers – and the Looney Tunes guys were along with Kubrick – get the juxtaposition between music and image just right.
Kubrik was a classical music connoisseur who often used it in surprising ways. For instance, the seduction scene from Barry Lyndon is set to the funeral music Schubert’s slow movement from his piano trio in E flat.
As for Looney Tunes, when director Fritz Freleng was asked why he had Bugs Bunny play the Hungarian Rhapsody number 2, he replied that this is music that everyone knows. These were the times.
And if we speak of Looney tunes, one must have in mind the contribution of the great Carl Stalling. Who could count on the whole Warner Brothers orchestra.
No, but the Barber of Seville Overture does. There’s a whole cartoon called “The Rabbit of Seville” where the entire dialogue is sung to it. Bugs is Rosina, complete with mantilla.
Luckily the Composer of the Star Trek “Where no man has gone before” Opening theme listened VERY closely!
Mahler’s use of Perfect 4ths was far ahead of its time!
Rattle and the CBSO gave a fantastic performance of Mahler 7 at the 1989 Proms which converted me forever to this piece. SInce then, calling it difficult or the Cinderella of Mahler symphonies has just seemed lazy to me.
I still quite like Rattle’s CBSO recording of Mahler 7 (though the recording itself isn’t the best).
This new perfmance comes across as less spontaneous to me and also has a few rough edges. I have the impression that the sense of adventure that was so strong when Rattle was younger is now absent. The sound of the orchestra is impressive but I’m not convinced it’s best suited to this music.