Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Harding: Gustav Mahler – Symphony No 7
I spent the earlier part of the day in Eisenach, about an hour’s train ride from Leipzig, the birthplace of Bach with a fine Bach Museum, rather better than its cramped Leipzig equivalent, and including an hourly concert for 20 minutes of extracts from Bach’s keyboard music played on a domestic organ, a clavichord, a spinet and a harpsichord . By 5pm I was back in Leipzig at an English language talk by Anna Stoll-Knecht (Locarno) on Mahler and Wagner (it being Wagner’s birthday), with particular reference to conducting Wagner in Leipzig. One thing I hadn’t appreciated is that Cosima and Mahler collaborated closely on finding and training singers for Wagner roles and were in regular touch with each other from the early 1890’s to mid 1900’s, until she abandoned Mahler because of her indignation at the innovative Roller sets in Vienna. We were also played a brief extract from Karl Muck’s 1928 recording of Parsifal as the next best thing to hearing Mahler conduct – I used to have that recording in vinyl, and was reminded how good it was I took immediate steps to get a digital version this morning. The speaker focused on Wagner’s theories on conducting – that the key things are getting the melodic line clear, getting then the tempo right, and ensuring that transitions from one tempo to another are gradual and not lurching. Mahler’s early reviews suggested he hadn’t taken that advice yet when he was conducting in Leipzig – there are references to ‘jerkiness’, over-excitability etc
And so to Mahler 7…… Stephen Johnson made the – I thought quite helpful – comment in his talk before the concert started that (quoting Abbado) we shouldn’t be trying to make sense of this work; we should just enjoy its very different moments, its wonderful instrumentation, the thematic material. It’s in a way Mahler’s most mindful symphony. I think you can be a little bit bolder than that, personally, and that the comments in programmes notes that you find talking about the work as an evocation of ‘night’, is fair enough. There is a certain sort of darkness about the first 4 movements that I can relate to this (and, according to Johnson, Mahler is said to have announced loudly to an orchestra when he was rehearsing the work, when he got to the finale, “And now…….this is DAY!’ I followed that mindful advice, though, and found it helpful. If you take that view about mindfulness, however, almost automatically you’re going to prefer the clinical precision, the remarkable focus on detail that the Berlin Phil and Petrenko offered at the Proms last September, as I reviewed here at the time. Harding’s reading, with another great orchestra (now of course Rattle’s) did not have that degree of forensic detail and exquisite moments. What it did have was bundles of energy. With my mindful hat on, and not bothering overmuch about what the symphony is ‘about’, I loved particularly the finale, which gripped me more than any other live performance has done, and which was brilliantly played by the orchestra. But sometimes I felt that Harding was trying too much to emphasise certain points, to make things in a sense ‘meaningful’ . But there were superb solos by almost every section principal, and the orchestra was wonderful. The performance got a big ovation from the audience (though not on the scale of the Concertgebouw’s 5th on Saturday. Interestingly, having a drink afterwards with someone I’d met on Friday’s guided tour, afterwards, we overheard two blokes at the next table talking about Mahler and Wagner. They stopped to have a chat when they left and one of them turned out to the (excellent) conductor Mark Wigglesworth, who agreed that the 5 movement don’t fit together very well – they seem to come from different symphonies, he said
John's musical journey 