1 CD - 457 581-2 - (p) 1998

GUSTAV MAHLER (1860-1911)



Symphonie No. 9 79' 46"
- Andante comodo 29' 17"
- Im Tempo eines gemächlichen Ländlers. Etwas täppisch und sehr derb 16' 03"
- Rondo-Burleske. Allegro assai. Sehr trotzig 12' 38"
- Adagio. Sehr langsam und noch zurückhaltend 21' 25"


 
Wiener Philharmoniker
Pierre Boulez, Conductor
 





Luogo e data di registrazione
Medinah Temple, Chicago (USA) - dicembre 1995

Registrazione: live / studio
studio

Executive Producer
Roger Wright

Recording Producer
Karl-August Naegler

Tonmeister (Balance Engineer)
Ulrich Vette

Recording Engineers
Jobst Eberhardt / Stephan Flock

Editing
Karl-August Naegler

Prima Edizione LP
nessuna

Prima Edizione CD
Deutsche Grammophon - 457 581-2 - (1 CD) - durata 79' 46" - (p) 1998 - 4D DDD

Note
Cover: Gino Severini, The Boulevard, 1911, Private Collection.










The great music commentator Theodor Adorno saw in Mahler “the first composer since Beethoven to have a ‘late style’”, a statement that may perhaps explain why a majority of critics still believe that in writing his Ninth Symphony Mahler was gravely ill and haunted by the spectre of his impending death. In fact, at the age of 49, he was more active than ever. Each year he crossed the Atlantic to conduct long seasons of operas and concerts in the United States. And yet there is also no denying that, like its predecessor Das Lied von der Erde, the Ninth Symphony was, in a real sense, written in the shadow of death: two years earlier, Mahler had been shaken by a series of traumatic events, the death of his four-year old daughter, his break after ten years with the Vienna Opera and the diagnosis, in the course of a routine examination, of a serious - if not fatal - heart condition.
Within a year, however, lite had asserted its sway once more. At the end ofthe spring of 1908, Alma rented two floors of a large house in the mountains of southern Tyrol and had a wooden Komponier-häuschen built for her husband among fir trees. There Mahler once again regained his inner balance. He had always combined the hypersensitivity of genius with an invincible courage that enabled him to face up to all crises. When Bruno Walter enquired after his health and suggested he was suffering from a psychosomatic disorder, he replied, not without a trace of annoyance:
It is only here, in solitude. that I might come to myself andbecome conscious of myself. Gorr since that panic fear which overcame me that time, all I have tried has been to avert my eyes and close my ears - If I am to find the way back to myself again. I must surrender to the horrors of loneliness [...] But it is certainly not that hypochondriac fear of death, as you suppose. I had already realized that I shall have to die. - But without trying to explain or describe to you something for which there are perhaps no words at all. I'll just tell you that at a blow I have simply lost all the clarity and quietude I ever achieved: and that I stood vis-à-vis de rien, and now at the end of life am again a beginner who must find his feet.
In the same letter to Walter, Mahler spelt out the real reason for the panic that had seized hold of him: he had been obliged to give up all his favourite sports, including swimming, rowing, walking in the mountains and cycling:
I confess that [...] this is the greatest calamity that has ever betallen me. [...] Where my "work" is concerned, it is rather depressing to have to begin learning one's job all over again. I cannot work at my desk. My mental activity must be complemented by physical activity. [...] An ordinary, moderate walk gives me such a rapid pulse and such palpitations that I never achieve the purpose of walking - to lorget my body. [...] For many years I have been used to constant and vigorous exercise, roaming about in the mountains and woods, and then, like a kind of jaunty bandit, bearing home my drafts. I used to go to my desk only as a peasant goes into his barn, to Work up my sketches.
Gradually, however. the miracle happened. After he had discovered in Das Lied von der Erde the main features of his "late style", he set to work the following summer on what was to become his last completed symphony, the Ninth. It is clear, therefore, that Mahler had come to terms with the emotional crisis that had seized him during the months following the death of his daughter and his departure from Vienna, and it is no less certain that these events had changed him. Other thoughts had taken possession of him which had little to do with that ofdeath. Thus the Andante of the Ninth Symphony is shot through with a burning love of life. Alban Berg was not mistaken when he wrote in one of his letters to his wife:
I have once more played through Mahler's Ninth. The first movement is the most glorious he ever wrote. It expresses an extraordinary love of this earth, for Nature; the longing to live on it in peace, to enjoy it completely, to the very heart of one's being, before death comes, as irresistibly it does. The whole movement is based on a premonition of death, which is constantly recurring. All earthly dreams end here; that is why the tenderest passages are followed by tremendous climaxes like new eruptions of a volcano. This, of course, is most obvious of all in the place where the premonition of death becomes certain knowledge, where in the most profound and anguished love of life death appears "mit hochster Gewalt"; then the ghostly solos of violin and viola, and those sounds of chivalry: death in armour. Against that there is no resistance left, and I see what follows as a sort of resignation. Always, though, with the thought of `the other side`. [...]. Again, for the last time, Mahler turns to the earth - not to battles and great deeds, which he strips away, just as he did in Das Lied con der Erde in the chromatic morendo downward runs - but solely and totally to Nature. What treasures has Earth still to offer for his delight, and for how long?
The omniprescnce of the “farewell” motif from Beethoven's op. 81a Piano Sonata ("Les Adieux") in the first movement of the Symphony clearly confirms that this is the “subject matter” of the Andante. Yet in the Ninth Symphony other moods lead us far away from this initial sense of valediction. First and foremost, there is the intense love of life, mentioned by Berg, that pervades countless passages in the opening movement with its feverish ardour. Beyond serenity, Mahler rediscovers passion and, in the middle movements, even the grotesque visions of his earlier works. But in the Ninth, the demon of derision is unleashed with an aggressive violence never previously encountered in his works. The Scherzo and the Rondo-Burleske take to their very limits some of the features that had so disconcerted the composers contemporaries in his earlier music, grotesque distortions and grinning parody.
It has often been observed that in his final works Mahler distanced himself from sonata form. In the opening Andante of the Ninth Symphony he dispenses with the contrastive tonalities associated with it, if not with its traditional principle of thematic development. The dialeetic alternation between two subjects also survives, even if those subjects are in the same key and involve only a contrast in modes between leave-taking (major) and thirst for life (minor).
After a few bars of introduction, the opening movement (Andante comodo, 4/4, D major/minor), like so many others by the composer, adopts the rhythm of a slow march, which sometimes builds up speed, only to revert to its earlier inexorable tread. The dramatic intensity that had typified Mahler's previous opening movements gives way here to a sense of pained resignation that is nonetheless accompanied by great outbursts of passion (second subject: "etwas frischer”`). The initial rhythm is shared between the cellos and fourth horn; the harp then states the three-note motif (F# - A - B) that is to dominate the movement as a whole, after which the second horn (stopped) announces the third of the basic motifs, and the violas the fourth, a sextolet consisting of two notes a third apart. As in Das Lied von der Erde, the interval of a falling second on the violins plays a symbolic role throughout the entire movement. Unlike its model - the “farewell” motif from Beethoven's “Les Adieux" Sonata - this two-note motif (F# - E) does not descend to the tonic but remains in suspense, thus giving the work an element of openness: open to infinity. Moreover, it was precisely this two-note motif, comprising the third and second degrees of the scale, that had ended Das Lied von der Erde with the contralto solo's famous “ewig” (E - D[- C]).
The syncopated rhythm of the opening bars is of symbolic importance: it occurs three times within the course of the movement, where it seems to represent the imperious voice of fate. As pointed out above, Alban Berg saw in it a symbol of death. Following the double exposition of this initial theme, the violins introduce a new, impassioned, ascending thematic element in the minor. To this, the horns soon add another important element, a chromatic triplet motif before the return of the principal theme. In the final coda, all sense of time is suspended. The flute ascends slowly towards its highest register, before gradually returning to earth in a rarefied atmosphere. A distant, tender, memory of the principal theme brings the movement to an end on a note of unutterable resignation and ineffable fervour.
Of all Mahler's scherzos, that of the Ninth (Im Tempo eines gemächlichen Ländlers [At the tempo of a leisurely ländler], 3/4, C major), which Mahler had originally conceived as a minuet, is the most ironic and grotesque. It derives a good deal of its character from its orchestration, as is clear from the very first bars, in which rapid scalar motifs are entrusted to the violas and bassoons. Such sardonic humour was without precedent at the time, except perhaps in Stravinsky’s contemporary Petrushka and until the neo-Classical music written between the two wars. Three subjects and three principal tempi alternate with each other: a strikingly rustic ländler (the performance marking is "etwas täppisch und sehr derb" [somewhat ungainly and very coarse]), followed by a fast waltz that gradually builds up speed in a whirlwind of expressionist savagery, and finally a second ländler that is so slow that it calls to mind an oldfashioned minuet.
The Rondo-Burleske (Allegro assai. Sehr trotzig [Very defiant]), 2/2, A minor) is dedicated in one of the autograph manuscripts "To my brothers in Apollo". Surpassing even its predecessors in its grimacing violence, it demands a high degree of orchestral virtuosity. Mahler deploys all his polyphonic skills in a quasi-permanent fugato in which all the different instrumental groups assume a solo role in turn, but he does so while appearing to make a mockery of contrapuntal techniques and thumbing his nose at the “academics” who, throughout his life, had showered him with endless insults.
In this often dizzying race to the abyss, two contrasting episodes claim our attention. The first, in 2/4-time, recalls the “Weiber-Chanson” from Act II of Lehár’s Merry Widow, while the second interrupts the febrile agitation of the Rondo ("Etwas gehalten. Mit grosser Empfindung" [Held back a little. With great feeling]). It is here that we first hear an anticipation of the final movements principal motif in the form of a simple gruppetto - a turning ornament with a glorious past in the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods. Twice (on the oboes and clarinets) it is followed with an impudent melodic leap of a ninth and given a parodistic air. The parody here is avant la lettre, for the same gruppetto and the same leap are quoted in the final Adagio in a purely expressive context.
The broad initial phrase on the violins serves as an introduction to the Finale (Adagio. Sehr langsam und noch zurückhaltend [Very slow and still held back], 4/4, D flat major), while at the same time announcing two essential motifs, the more important of which is the famous gruppetto already heard in the slow section of the Rondo. No other composer before Mahler would ever had dared to build an entire movement around so simple a motif. The solemn gravity of the principal theme suggests a hymn (“Abide with me” has been suggested as a model and Mahler might have possibly heard it in New York), but the obsessive gruppetti in the inner parts in quavers (eighth notes) or semiquavers (16th notes), the most unusual harmonic progression in the middle of bar 3, and the countless dissonances disturb the quasi-Brucknerian calm. The second subject is no less striking: it is anticipated in the lowest register of the first bassoon before being stated in full some time later in two voices separated by a yawning void of several octaves. Its simplicity, sobriety and, one might even say, its unadorned starkness have an almost frightening aspect. These two principal melodic elements are now varied, with the movement as a whole divided into four great sections. Perhaps the most astonishing feature of all is the way in which the motifs fragment and slowly disintegrate in the coda, with its gently muted strings. By the end, only the gruppetto remains. growing ever slower and ever more hesitant, as if somehow idealized.
The tenderness and limpidity of this ending recall the conclusion not only of Das Lied von der Erde but also - across a distance of many years - of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, which Mahler had written at the age of 24. The whole of this final movement, like that of Das Lied, is imbued with the feeling that God is present in all things and that man aspires to union, not to say fusion, with the consoling world of Nature. The reconciliation between these two worlds - man and Nature - is one that Mahler may well have wanted to suggest in the two main episodes of this Finale, and it is achieved at the very end of the work, with its sense of acceptance, silence and peace. It is eternal rest, infinitely gentle and fully accepted, that is suggested by what I have termed the final idealization of the material - notably in the last gruppetto, which may be regarded as an ultimate assertion of expressivity and, hence, of humanity.
Like that of Das Lied von der Erde, this ending is in no way pessimistic or tinged with despair. Whether one discovers here a message of hope, a farewell of heart-rending tenderness or the serene acceptance of fate, it cannot be denied that this final Adagio brings with it a sense of supreme fulfilment, an ideal catharsis. Fervent in its meditation, it crowns and completes the huge “novel” which constitutes Mahler’s oeuvre. Audiences are not mistaken when they feel an exceptional emotional charge as the music fragments and grows ever more rarefied. This work invariably carries the listener with it. It seems to compel its performers to surpass themselves and its audience to feel at one with each other.
Henry-Louis de La Grange