1 CD - 00289 477 5329 - (p) 2004

GUSTAV MAHLER (1860-1911)



Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen - Text: Gustav Mahler
 16' 51"
1. Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht 4' 12"
2. Ging heut morgen übers Feld 3' 53"
3. Ich hab ein glühend Messer 3' 09"
4. Die zwei blauen Augen 5' 37"



5 Lieder - Text: Friedrich Rückert 19' 36"
3. Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder 1' 18"
2. Ich atmet einen linden Duft 2' 37"
1. Liebst du um Schönheit 2' 45"
5. Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen 7' 02"
4. Um Mitternacht 5' 54"



Kindertotenlieder - Text: Friedrich Rückert
 24' 41"
1. Nun will die Sonn so hell aufgehn 5' 44"
2. Nun seh ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen 4' 51"
3. Wenn dein Mütterlein
 4' 57"
4. Oft denk ich, sie sind nur ausgegangen 3' 01"
5. In diesem Wetter, in diesem Braus 6' 08"


 
Thomas Quasthoff, bass-baritone (Gesellen) Wiener Philharmoniker
Violeta Urmana, soprano (5 Lieder) Pierre Boulez, Conductor
Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano (Kindertotenlieder)

 





Luogo e data di registrazione
Grosser Saal, Musikverein, Vienna (Austria) - giugno 2003

Registrazione: live / studio
studio

Executive Producer
Dr. Marion Thiem / Ewald Markl

Recording Producer
Christian Gansch

Tonmeister (Balance Engineer)
Rainer Maillard

Recording Engineer
Jürgen Buldrin

Editing
Rainer Maillard

Recording Coordinator
Matthias Spindler

Prima Edizione LP
nessuna

Prima Edizione CD
Deutsche Grammophon - 00289 477 5329 - (1 CD) - durata 61' 28" - (p) 2004 - DDD

Note
Cover Photo: © Harald Hoffmann










MAHLER: LIEDER

“I have written a cycle of songs, six of them so far [...]. They are conceived as if a travelling journeyman who has been buffeted by fate sets forth into the world and goes wherever his journey takes him."

This is the earliest mention of Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and it comes from a letter that the composer wrote to one of his oldest friends, Friedrich Löhr, on 1 january 1885. The ambiguity of Mahler’s comment has meant that the genesis of these songs has been shrouded in obscurity, not least because of the lack of focus surrounding the term “song” at this time. Does it mean an already complete setting of a song text or merely a poem that Mahler intended to set to music at some later date, a setting that did not necessarily exist at this time? The surviving versions of these songs for voice and piano or orchestra all date from the 1890s. And yet it seems fairly certain that the piano versions of at least some of these songs - the exact number cannot be determined - already existed as a cycle and were written at the end of 1884 and more especially in 1885. But the texts of only two of these songs have survived from this period: Die zwei blauen Augen and Ich hab' ein glühend Messer, dated 15 and 19 December 1884 respectively. Described here as “I” and “II”, they were to become the fourth and third songs of the complete set. In his later letters, Mahler always referred to the piano version as a “piano reduction”, leading commentators to assume that it was preceded by an original version for orchestra that is no longer extant. But the term “piano reduction” could also mean that Mahler planned an orchestral version as the definitive form of the work, a version that still had to be written and which, to judge by the surviving sources, was not completed until 1891-93. Both the piano and orchestral versions were finally published after repeated revisions in 1897.
If this is true, it is conceivable that the first song in the published cycle, Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht, with its literal borrowings from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, was written around 1887, in other words, after Mahler had encountered this Romantic icon of German folk poetry in Leipzig. This would render otiose any further speculations as to why Mahler was able to write lines of poetry mysteriously similar to those from a source that he is said not to have known at this time.
The popularity of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen is no doubt based above all on the fact that they are clearly part of the rich and venerable tradition of German song that includes Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise. Like Schubert’s traveller, who has similarly been "buffeted by fate", Mahler’s wayfarer suffers from unrequited love, finding himself in an unhappy situation from which he seeks in vain to escape. Indeed, there are not only textual links between the cycles, but musical ones as well: in addition to their self-contained cyclical structure, there is also a walking rhythm, an incessantly pulsing movement in which the idea of searching, with its hope of fulfilment, is inextricably bound up with flight as a reaction to past sufferings. In turn, the theme of walking is linked to the march that underpins all the songs in the cycle - the final song of farewell is sung to the strains of a funeral march.
It may be helpful to attempt an overview of the works that were written at the same time as the Rückert Lieder:
Summer 1899: Revelge (Wunderhorn)
1899/1900: Fourth Symphony (Wunderhorn)
Summer 1901: Der Tambourg'sell (Wunderhorn) / Four Songs (Rückert) / Kindertotenlieder nos. 1, 3 and 4 (Rückert) / Fifth Symphony, 1st and 2nd movements
Summer/autumn 1902: Fifth Symphony, 3rd, 4th, 5th movements / Liebst du um Schönheit (Rückert)
1903/4: Sixt Symphony
Summer 1904: Kindertotenlieder nos. 2 and 5
Summer 1904/5: Seventh Symphony
It is clear from this that far from completing one work before moving on to the next, Mahler worked on several at once, the worlds that they inhabit interlocking with one another. The Wunderhorn world of the last two Wunderhorn songs and the Fourth Symphony forms the basis of an "instrumental world" comprising the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Symphonies, a world that not only takes up and refashions the earlier world (the Sixth Symphony) but also provides a transition to the composer’s later works: Mahler himself felt that his Ninth Symphony was “most closely comparable to the 4th”. And his lieder seem to be links that play a significant part in the transformation of one world into another. But whereas the large-scale settings of the Wunderhorn poems have symphonic aspirations, Mahler turned for his Rückert songs to an orchestral language of chamberlike transparency. Until now, texts had been important to him as raw materials imposed on the music in order to invest it with meaning, but in Rückert’s verse he encountered poetry which thanks to its own musicality conveys a sense of musical meaning. Mahler was now able to break free from an illustrative or psychologically interpretative relationship between words and music in favour of music with a latent linguistic character that emerges from the fusion between both these formative levels.
In Mahler’s own words, his Rückert songs are among his most personal works. The first, Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder, was "so typical" of him that he could have “written the words” himself. In Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft lay "the muted emotion of happiness that you feel in the presence of someone you love and of whom you are completely certain without the need for a single word to pass between their two souls" - it was in 1901 that Mahler was introduced to Alma Schindler. And finally Ich bin der Welt abend gekommen: “That is my very own self.”
On the strength of comments made by his wife Alma, commentators have repeatedly claimed that the impetus behind the Kindertotenlieder was biographical in character, namely, Mahler’s disturbing youthful experiences of rampant infant mortality and, above all, the notion of a link with the death of his elder daughter Maria Anna in 1907, a link that takes us into the realms of mystic speculation and supposes that, driven by baleful presentiments about the future, the composer had, as it were, anticipated her death and grieved over it through his art. Such speculations are baseless and best avoided, for even if personal experiences of the tragic aspects of existence undoubtedly found their way into Mahler’s music, they were all transformed into an artistic expression remote from pure self-representation - for all that Mahler demonstrably sought this in his art, in other words, however much he aspired to writing “programme music”.
To describe these five songs as a cycle is questionable. Although the individual pieces contain balladic elements, they can hardly be said to tell a “story” - a tale of children who, sent out by their mother “in this weather, in this tumult", have perished in the storm. We learn this only in the final song, which as a result comes closest to providing a narrative and which is cast in a relatively discursive form - this final song is almost twice as long as its predecessors. Why this curious imbalance? This impression is due in fact to the "circuitous" language of the final song, in contrast to which the four previous songs seem like scenes of reflection and painful contemplation on irrevocable events. There is also a suggestion here that time is out of joint: first we hear songs of grief and mourning at an event that is described in full only in the final song. And this shift clearly gives the final song the character of a finale: not only is it extended by means of a relatively lengthy instrumental introduction that includes dramatic accents avoided until now and a long coda-like final section that brings the turbulent scene to a peaceful conclusion, but the listener is bound to be struck above all by its much more elaborate orchestral forces, which draw additionally on piccolo, contrabassoon, two extra horns, tam-tam and celesta, the symphonic impact of which is in clear contrast to the chamberlike tone of the other four songs.
Mathias Hansen
Translation: Stewart Spencer