Unser musikgeschichtliches Verständnis orientiert sich an Eckdaten: Sie sind an...

Unser musikgeschichtliches Verständnis orientiert sich an Eckdaten: Sie sind an...

Unser musikgeschichtliches Verständnis orientiert sich an Eckdaten: Sie sind an...

Unser musikgeschichtliches Verständnis orientiert sich an Eckdaten: Sie sind an...

Unser musikgeschichtliches Verständnis orientiert sich an Eckdaten: Sie sind an...

Unser musikgeschichtliches Verständnis orientiert sich an Eckdaten: Sie sind an...

Unser musikgeschichtliches Verständnis orientiert sich an Eckdaten: Sie sind an...

The last time I reviewed a recording of Mahler’s Third Symphony I stated again my belief that in this work above all of Mahler’s we must look to a group of recordings made over thirty years ago. Only there can we reach into what I believe to be the real soul of this amazing piece. It is surprising that two of those recordings I consider indispensable were not even made for commercial release but for radio broadcasting. Sir John Barbirolli’s recording on BBC Legends (BBCL 4004-7), the recording I find I return to most often, was made for broadcast albeit under studio conditions; likewise a superb concert recording by Jean Martinon and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1967, only available in a commemorative box and crying out for single release. Among the commercial studio recordings from that time Jascha Horenstein (Unicorn UKCD20067) still shines out with Rafael Kubelik’s (only available now as part of a complete cycle from DG) running it very close. If you add Leonard Bernstein’s first version from the same era (Sony SM2K61831) you have a profile of recordings that musically will last you for a lifetime and which, for me, have yet to be equalled in true understanding of what makes this crazy work tick. The dedicated audiophile will, of course, need to purchase more up to date recordings but music making surely comes first.

It takes a particular kind of conductor to turn in a great Mahler Third. No place for the tentative, or the sophisticated, particularly in the first movement which will dominate how the rest of the symphony comes to sound no matter how good the rest is. No place for apologies in that first movement especially. No conductor should underplay the full implications of this music’s ugliness for fear of offending sensibilities. The lighter and lyrical passages will largely take care of themselves. It’s the "dirty end" of the music - low brass and percussion, shrieking woodwinds, growling basses, flatulent trombone solos - that the conductor must really immerse himself in. A regrettable trait of musical "political correctness" seems to have crept into more recent performances and recordings and that is to be deplored. If you want an example of this listen to Andrew Litton’s ever-so-polite Dallas recording. There is much to admire in some recent recordings by Tilson Thomas, Abbado and Rattle to name just three from recent digital years. However they don’t approach their older colleagues in laying bare the full implications of the unique sound-world Mahler created in the way that I think it should be heard. The edges need to be sharp, the drama challenging, Mahler’s gestalt shrieking, marching, surging, seething and, at key moments, hitting the proverbial fan.

Rafael Kubelik’s superb DG recording had one drawback in that the recorded balance was, like the rest of his Munich studio cycle, rather close-miked and somewhat lacking in atmosphere. It never bothered me that much, as you can probably imagine, but just occasionally I felt the need for a little more space. As luck would have it, this Audite release in the series of "live" Mahler performances from Kubelik’s Munich years comes from the same week as that DG studio version and must have been the concert performance mounted to give the players the chance to perform the work prior to recording in the empty hall. It goes some way to addressing the problem of recorded balance in that there is a degree more space and atmosphere, more separation across the stereo arc especially. It thus offers an even more satisfying experience whilst still delivering Kubelik’s gripping and involving interpretation with the added tensions of "live" performance. There is a little background tape hiss but nothing that the true music lover need fear. So here is another "not originally for release" broadcast recording of Mahler’s Third for the list of top recommendations.

Like all great Mahler Thirds this reading has a fierce unity and a striking sense of purpose across the whole six movements, lifting it above so many versions that miss this crucial aspect among so many others. Tempi are faster than you may be used to. It also pays as much attention to the inner movements as it does the outer with playing of poetry, charm and that hard-to-pin-down aspect, wonderment. In the first movement Kubelik echoes Schoenberg’s belief that this is a struggle between good and evil, generating the real tension needed to mark this. Listen to the gathering together of all the threads for the central storms section, for example. Kubelik also comes close to Barbirolli’s raucous, unforgettable "grand day out up North" march spectacle and shares his British colleague’s (and Leonard Bernstein’s) sense of the sheer wackiness of it all. Listen to the wonderful Bavarian basses and cellos rocking the world with their uprushes and those raw, rude trombone solos, as black as an undertaker’s hat and about as delicate as a Bronx cheer or an East End Raspberry. Kubelik also manages to give the impression of the movement as a living organism, growling and purring in passages of repose particularly, fur bristling like a cat in a thunderstorm. Too often you have the feeling in this movement that conductors cannot get over how long it is and so they want to make it sound big by making it last for ever. In fact it is a superbly organised piece that benefits from the firm hand of a conductor prepared to "put a bit of stick about" and hurry it along like Kubelik.

In the second movement there is a superb mixture of nostalgia and repose with the spiky, tart aspects of nature juxtaposing the scents and the pastels. Only Horenstein surpasses in the rhythmic pointing of the following Scherzo but Kubelik comes close as his sense of purpose seems to extend the chain of events that was begun at the very start, still pulling us on in one great procession. The pressing tempi help in this but above all there is the innate feel for the whole picture that only a master Mahlerian can pull off and frequently only in "live" performance. Marjorie Thomas is an excellent soloist and the two choirs are everything you would wish for, though Barbirolli’s Manchester boys - all urban cheekiness straight off the terraces at Old Trafford or Main Road - are just wonderful. In the last movement no one offers a more convincing tempo than Kubelik, flowing and involving, never dragging or over-sentimentalised. Like Barbirolli, though warm of heart, he refuses to indulge the music and the movement wins out as the crowning climax is as satisfying as could be wished.

This is a firm recommendation for Mahler’s Third and another gem in Audite’s Kubelik releases.

The last time I reviewed a recording of Mahler’s Third Symphony I stated again my belief that in this work above all of Mahler’s we must look to a group of recordings made over thirty years ago. Only there can we reach into what I believe to be the real soul of this amazing piece. It is surprising that two of those recordings I consider indispensable were not even made for commercial release but for radio broadcasting. Sir John Barbirolli’s recording on BBC Legends (BBCL 4004-7), the recording I find I return to most often, was made for broadcast albeit under studio conditions; likewise a superb concert recording by Jean Martinon and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1967, only available in a commemorative box and crying out for single release. Among the commercial studio recordings from that time Jascha Horenstein (Unicorn UKCD20067) still shines out with Rafael Kubelik’s (only available now as part of a complete cycle from DG) running it very close. If you add Leonard Bernstein’s first version from the same era (Sony SM2K61831) you have a profile of recordings that musically will last you for a lifetime and which, for me, have yet to be equalled in true understanding of what makes this crazy work tick. The dedicated audiophile will, of course, need to purchase more up to date recordings but music making surely comes first.


It takes a particular kind of conductor to turn in a great Mahler Third. No place for the tentative, or the sophisticated, particularly in the first movement which will dominate how the rest of the symphony comes to sound no matter how good the rest is. No place for apologies in that first movement especially. No conductor should underplay the full implications of this music’s ugliness for fear of offending sensibilities. The lighter and lyrical passages will largely take care of themselves. It’s the "dirty end" of the music - low brass and percussion, shrieking woodwinds, growling basses, flatulent trombone solos - that the conductor must really immerse himself in. A regrettable trait of musical "political correctness" seems to have crept into more recent performances and recordings and that is to be deplored. If you want an example of this listen to Andrew Litton’s ever-so-polite Dallas recording. There is much to admire in some recent recordings by Tilson Thomas, Abbado and Rattle to name just three from recent digital years. However they don’t approach their older colleagues in laying bare the full implications of the unique sound-world Mahler created in the way that I think it should be heard. The edges need to be sharp, the drama challenging, Mahler’s gestalt shrieking, marching, surging, seething and, at key moments, hitting the proverbial fan.


Rafael Kubelik’s superb DG recording had one drawback in that the recorded balance was, like the rest of his Munich studio cycle, rather close-miked and somewhat lacking in atmosphere. It never bothered me that much, as you can probably imagine, but just occasionally I felt the need for a little more space. As luck would have it, this Audite release in the series of "live" Mahler performances from Kubelik’s Munich years comes from the same week as that DG studio version and must have been the concert performance mounted to give the players the chance to perform the work prior to recording in the empty hall. It goes some way to addressing the problem of recorded balance in that there is a degree more space and atmosphere, more separation across the stereo arc especially. It thus offers an even more satisfying experience whilst still delivering Kubelik’s gripping and involving interpretation with the added tensions of "live" performance. There is a little background tape hiss but nothing that the true music lover need fear. So here is another "not originally for release" broadcast recording of Mahler’s Third for the list of top recommendations.


Like all great Mahler Thirds this reading has a fierce unity and a striking sense of purpose across the whole six movements, lifting it above so many versions that miss this crucial aspect among so many others. Tempi are faster than you may be used to. It also pays as much attention to the inner movements as it does the outer with playing of poetry, charm and that hard-to-pin-down aspect, wonderment. In the first movement Kubelik echoes Schoenberg’s belief that this is a struggle between good and evil, generating the real tension needed to mark this. Listen to the gathering together of all the threads for the central storms section, for example. Kubelik also comes close to Barbirolli’s raucous, unforgettable "grand day out up North" march spectacle and shares his British colleague’s (and Leonard Bernstein’s) sense of the sheer wackiness of it all. Listen to the wonderful Bavarian basses and cellos rocking the world with their uprushes and those raw, rude trombone solos, as black as an undertaker’s hat and about as delicate as a Bronx cheer or an East End Raspberry. Kubelik also manages to give the impression of the movement as a living organism, growling and purring in passages of repose particularly, fur bristling like a cat in a thunderstorm. Too often you have the feeling in this movement that conductors cannot get over how long it is and so they want to make it sound big by making it last for ever. In fact it is a superbly organised piece that benefits from the firm hand of a conductor prepared to "put a bit of stick about" and hurry it along like Kubelik.


In the second movement there is a superb mixture of nostalgia and repose with the spiky, tart aspects of nature juxtaposing the scents and the pastels. Only Horenstein surpasses in the rhythmic pointing of the following Scherzo but Kubelik comes close as his sense of purpose seems to extend the chain of events that was begun at the very start, still pulling us on in one great procession. The pressing tempi help in this but above all there is the innate feel for the whole picture that only a master Mahlerian can pull off and frequently only in "live" performance. Marjorie Thomas is an excellent soloist and the two choirs are everything you would wish for, though Barbirolli’s Manchester boys - all urban cheekiness straight off the terraces at Old Trafford or Main Road - are just wonderful. In the last movement no one offers a more convincing tempo than Kubelik, flowing and involving, never dragging or over-sentimentalised. Like Barbirolli, though warm of heart, he refuses to indulge the music and the movement wins out as the crowning climax is as satisfying as could be wished.


This is a firm recommendation for Mahler’s Third and another gem in Audite’s Kubelik releases.

Rafael Kubelik was one of the first conductors to record a cycle of Mahler’s nine completed symphonies. Those recordings, all made with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, were set down for DG between about 1967 and 1970. Though highly esteemed by many, Kubelik’s Mahler has been judged by others to lack the expansiveness and sheer emotional weight that certain other conductors, such as Bernstein, Solti and Tennstedt offer. In recent years the Audite label has issued live performances by Kubelik of several Mahler symphonies (numbers 1, 3 and 5 have appeared to date). Last year they also put us greatly in their debt by issuing a superb live account of Das Lied von der Erde, a work that he never recorded commercially. Now along comes a concert performance of the Ninth recorded some eight years after his studio recording.


In an excellent essay on the Ninth the American writer Michael Steinberg points out the parallel drawn by Deryck Cooke between this Mahler symphony and Tchaikovsky’s Sixth. In brief, Cooke suggested that in composing his Ninth Mahler had in mind the formal model of the Pathétique, noting that both symphonies begin and end with a long movement, and that in each case the finale is an extended adagio. Both composers place shorter movements in quicker tempi between these two outer musical pillars. Steinberg adds that Mahler conducted a series of performances of the Tchaikovsky symphony in early 1910, after he had completed the full draft of his Ninth. He also reminds us that, though posterity has, perhaps inevitably, imparted a valedictory quality to both works, neither composer intended these respective symphonies to be their last compositions.


This last point seems to me to be of fundamental importance in approaching Mahler’s Ninth. Yes, it is the last work that he completed fully and he was deeply superstitious about the composition of a ninth symphony. However, he had no sooner completed the Ninth than he began frantic work on a tenth symphony, which he left fully sketched out at his death. The manuscript score of the Ninth includes a number of expressions of farewell in Mahler’s hand but there are even more of these scrawled in the manuscript of the Tenth. So, while there is a strong valedictory flavour to this symphony, most especially in the last movement, I think it’s a mistake to play it as if it were an anguished farewell to music.


I say this because Kubelik’s performance may be thought by some to be lightweight because it is comparatively swift and because long passages in the last movement in particular are more flowing than we commonly hear them. However, Kubelik’s performance is by no means the swiftest on disc. Bruno Walter’s celebrated 1938 live account with the Vienna Philharmonic lasted a "mere" 70’13" but broader conceptions seem to have become more the accepted norm as the years have passed.


The first movement of this symphony is a turbulent, seething invention. Indeed, I wonder if it may be Mahler’s single greatest achievement? Kubelik exposes the music objectively and without fuss. There’s a complete absence of excessive histrionics but the music still speaks to us powerfully. This is an interpretation of integrity – in fact, that description could well suffice for the reading of the whole symphony. Kubelik has a fine ear for texture and balance, as is evidenced, for example, in the chamber-like sonorities in the passage from 6’27" to 8’40". In these pages all the orchestral detail is picked out, but in a wholly natural way. Although there are one or two overblown notes from the brass (not a trait that is evident in the other three movements) the playing is very fine and committed. There is one unfortunate flaw, however: the timpani are ill tuned at two critical points (at 6’27" and 18’00").


The second movement is an earthy ländler and Kubelik and his players convey Mahler’s trenchant irony very well. There are innumerable shifts in the character of the music and Kubelik responds to each with acuity. I would describe his work here as understanding and idiomatic.


The turbulent, grotesque Rondo – Burleske that follows is also splendidly characterised. The contrapuntal pyrotechnics of Mahler’s score come across extremely well. The pungent fast music is interrupted (at 6’25" here) by a much warmer episode in which a shining trumpet line is particularly to the fore. This episode is beautifully judged by Kubelik. The brazen coda is well handled though I must admit that I’ve heard it done with greater panache in some other performances.


A few years ago I attended a performance of this symphony in Birmingham conducted by Simon Rattle. On that occasion he launched straight into the last movement with only an imperceptible break after the Rondo. The effect was tremendous and of a piece with his searing conception of the music on that evening. I suspect that Kubelik would never have made such a gesture for his way with the finale is less overt, less subjective. In fact the start of this movement is nothing if not dignified here. As the massed strings begin their hymn-like melody, singing their hearts out for Kubelik, we are back in the sound world of the finale to the Third symphony. There’s ample weight and gravitas from the strings in these pages. The subsequent ghostly passage that commences with the wraith-like contrabassoon solo is well controlled too.


At the heart of the movement is a long threnody, carried mainly by the strings (from 6’11"). Kubelik’s tempo is quite flowing here and it’s his treatment of this episode in particular that accounts for the relative swiftness of the movement overall. Prospective listeners may want to know that he takes 22’23" for the finale. By contrast Herbert Von Karajan (his 1982 live reading on DG) takes 26’49", Leonard Bernstein, also live on DG (his 1979 concert with the Berlin Philharmonic, his only appearance with that orchestra) takes 26’12". Jascha Horenstein on BBC Legends (a 1966 concert performance) takes 26’50". Somewhat quicker overall is Rattle in his VPO recording for EMI at 24’43". It will be noted that like Kubelik’s all these performances are live ones. However, there is one important precedent for Kubelik’s relative swiftness. Bruno Walter, the man who gave the first performance of the Ninth, dispatched the finale in an amazing 18’20" in his 1938 live VPO traversal. These comparative timings are of interest. However, I must stress that though Kubelik doesn’t hang about the music never sounds rushed. The phrases all have time to breathe and there’s no suspicion that the performance is overwrought. I found it convincing. The extended climax (from 12’56") is powerfully projected. The final pages (from 17’28") are not lacking in poignancy and as the very end approaches (from 19’08") there’s a proper feeling of hushed innigkeit and tender leave-taking. Happily, there’s no applause at the end to break the spell (indeed, there’s no distracting audience noise at all that I could discern).


The recorded sound is perfectly acceptable. The acoustic of this Tokyo hall is a little on the dry side and there isn’t quite the space and bloom round the sound not the front-to-back depth that might have been achieved in the orchestra’s regular venue, the Herkulessaal in Munich. However, the slight closeness of the recording means that lots of inner detail emerges.


There’s a good deal to admire in this recording and there’s certainly an atmosphere of live music making. Above all, this release gives us another opportunity to hear a dedicated, wide and committed Mahler conductor performing a great masterpiece of the symphonic literature with authority. This is a fine version that admirers of this conductor and devotees of Mahler should seek out and hear. I hope Audite will be able to source and release more such concert performances and, who knows, perhaps build up a complete live Kubelik Mahler cycle in due course.