Mahler 9, BFO, Leipzig Mahler Festival 23/5/23

Budapest Festival Orchestra, Iván Fischer conductor: Gustav Mahler — Symphony No. 9

I spent an agreeable 3 hours going to some Leipzig museums – first of all the contemporary history forum, which is about the history of the DDR (and very informative, with all signs in condensed form in English) and then, at the Town Museum, the exhibition ‘The Music City Leipzig under National Socialism – Clef and Swastika), where printed English guides were available; this too had a range of fascinating exhibits outlining those who left Germany in 1933, those who lost their jobs but had no option but to stay in Leipzig, those who carried on but lay low to the extent they could, and those who actively collaborated (including Richard Strauss at first). The other name I’d come across before was Hermann Abendroth, who’d initially been dismissed from a post in 1933 ‘because he employed too many Jewish artists’, but subsequently got a job with the Opera House. He had to join NSADP in 1937, but was quick to be de-Nazified after the war

So…..Mahler 9 with the Budapest orchestra, whose performance had received some rave reviews in London when they were visiting there last week. Expectations were high and were more than met by this performance, which must be just about the best of the 9th I’ve ever heard live (here we go again into my list of superlatives, but I can only tell it as it is).

Mahler 9 is both impassioned and resigned, about whatever we think it is about – one’s own mortality, the serious business of trying to live life honourably, whatever. There are some clues as to how Mahler felt about it himself – the reference to Kindertotenlieder right at the end of the last movement, and to Beethoven’s Les Adieux sonata, and there is even, Stephen Johnson told us before the concert, some evidence from recent research that ‘Abide with me’ was the hymn that Mahler heard being sung at the fireman’s funeral in New York that produced the muffled drum stroke for the 10^th, and which so sounds like the first few notes of the Adagio’s main melody. However, as again Johnson pointed out, this symphony more than most is surrounded by myths, and it’s important to remember that it is not a ‘farewell to life’, given that it was written long before Mahler’s last illness, and he had many months of energetic programmes in New York to conduct in, and the passion for life is just as important as the fear of or resignation to death in the work. However though the break-through moments which some of the other symphonies possess appear, they fail in this symphony. The most obvious one is the slow part towards the end of the third movement – the melody is too saccharine, and fails to take off, becoming merely sad, and mocked by the orchestra – the extraordinary clarinet passage which mocks the tune, for instance. I also detected somewhere – can’t remember where, maybe the first movement – that there is a flute solo which sounds extraordinarily like the flute solo. in the finale of the 2nd symphony but which here fades into nothingness, rather than a choral hymn to resurrection. One interesting thing I didn’t know – again from Johnson – is that ‘ewig’ and the same two note sequence represented by that word features in the ending of the 8^th, obviously the end of Das Lied vin der Erde and also – the two notes – at the beginning of the 9^th Symphony.

In performing this work well, I guess you need to have a first class orchestra, and a conductor who gets the right balance between passion and resignation, so that the work neither becomes overly-manic and fidgety or too slack and slow (Wagner’s conducting theories again about melos and tempi). The orchestra sounded magnificent – somehow a darker sound to the massed strings than some I’ve heard this week, and with very fine section leads – in particular horn, trumpet, flute, oboe and clarinet. However they didn’t have  – or weren’t encouraged to have – that slightly show-off sense of beauty for its own sake that one can sometimes get from other front-rank orchestras – everything fitted into a vision of the work. The orchestra was placed with double basses along the back of the stage, violins split, cellos to the left, which all seemed to make the string sound richer in texture. The first movement was quite phenomenal – taken at a relatively quite fast past, it gripped me in a way I’ve never heard live before – the opening theme achingly beautiful, the climaxes enormous and frightening, the sadness at the end of it almost overwhelming. The sheer volume of the climaxes was quite extraordinary. The second movement was also quite fast, but still clod-hopping and rough enough in feel, and still allowing for sufficient room to be able to speed up in the manic bits. The third movement on the other hand was slower and the steady tempo allowed all notes to be heard and a clear rhythmic pulse established, the contrapuntal detail to be audible, and a manic speed-up at the end to be achieved without a scrabble – all while being played with accuracy and venom. As a result the movement sounded grimmer than it sometimes does  more bitter and it never degenerated into just being an orchestral showpiece. The last movement was extraordinarily fine, with again not that slow a basic tempo. This emphasised the passion for life in this movement as well as the tragedy of the great climaxes. The strings digging in to their unaccompanied 4 note passage in the last of the climaxes was a sound so intense it was almost unbearable to listen to. Equally the strings slowly dying away at the end were very memorable.

Justifiably this performance got the loudest cheers and most people on their feet of any performance so far this Festival. Half way through the Festival it’s this performance and the Concertgebouw’s No 5 that have been the stand-outs.