visited innards of the Sunday Classics blogworks
REVISED CAUTIONARY NOTE: This post as, er, "finished" grew really long ("hellaciously long" is how I put it in an earlier cautionary note). Feel free to jump around, picking at anything that may catch your eye. You can always go back and fill in. Note that there's a surprise at the end.
[PRE-CAUTIONARY LOOKBACK: In case anyone happens to have seen earlier versions of this post and remembers the post-in-progress "cautionary" notes, or if anyone who hasn't seen them is curious, I've snipped them out of here and dumped them in -- purely for the record! -- at the end.]
When Christa Ludwig (born March 16, 1928, and so now 92) made her splendid first (piano-accompanied) recording of the haunting Mahler Rückert setting "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen," in November 1957, with her voice still in its sunny prime, she was at 29 already a veteran, remarkably mature singer. When she made her final recording of the song, in January 1993 (again with piano), she was closing in on 65, but you may decide that this last version is her most beautiful -- because before we're done today we'll have heard five performances recorded over this 35-year period. (Do I have to underscore what a remarkable span this is for a singer? Not just to still be singing at 65 but to be singing with such poised beauty as well as artistic purpose.) Before we get back to Christa, however, we have other business to take care of, including hearing two other singers' differently special performances of what may be Mahler's best-known song.
"Pervaded by the familiar romantic mood of withdrawal from the hurly-burly of life into the quietude of the inner self, not untouched with sadness, the Adagietto has much in common with Mahler's great song 'Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen' ('I am lost to the world'), which ends with the words 'I am alone, in my own heaven, in my love, in my music.' "
-- Deryck Cooke, from a CD booklet note on the Mahler Fifth Symphony
MAHLER: Symphony No. 5:
iv. Adagietto. Sehr langsam (Very slow)
BBC Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Boulez, cond. Live performance, 1970
Vienna Philharmonic, Pierre Boulez, cond. DG, recorded March 1996
MAHLER: "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen"
("I have lost track of the world")
Janet Baker, mezzo-soprano; New Philharmonia Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli, cond. EMI, recorded May 4, 1967
José van Dam, bass-baritone; Orchestre National de Lille, Jean-Claude Casadesus, cond. Forlane, recorded April 1986
by Ken
Okay, folks, we have a game plan of sorts, and we're by golly gonna stick to it, sort of. Two weeks ago I was lost in wonder ("Hokey-smoke, it's like we're actually in Berlin (sort of) for Easter week") over the Berlin Philharmonic's four-event free live-streamed virtual Easter Festival, during the time when they were supposed to be in Baden-Baden for their annual actual Easter Festival. Each of the four episodes consisted of material -- interviews, conversations, and some chamber performances -- coming to us direct from the orchestra's audienceless Berlin home, the Philharmonie, surrounding performances by the Berlin Philharmonic itself of single movements or in some cases whole works drawn from the orchestra's extensive video archive in its Digital Concert Hall.
As it happened, the first of the four episodes I saw, and the only one I'd seen when I started writing that piece, was Episode 2, an all-Mahler extravaganza, so that's what I was most caught up in, and what I first thought we might sort of re-create here at Sunday Classics. (Note that all four episodes are now safely ensconced in the DCH, still free. In fact, as I noted, in recognition of the current world crisis the DCH is offering everyone a free 30-day subscription for its paid content. You have to register for the site, but registration has always been free, and has always entitled everyone access to some wonderful always-free content: some concerts, but most importantly a splendid collection of guest-performer interviews conducted by members of the orchestra. Be sure to check it out.)
A QUESTION: WHAT MADE ME FEEL SO "DANGLY"
HEARING THE FINALE OF MAHLER 5 ON ITS OWN?
By the time I came up for air, in a period of lots of preparing of new audio clips to add to the Sunday Classics archival ones for the "re-creation" of the Mahler event which was still in the blogpost works, even as I grappled with second (and third and maybe fourth or fifth) thoughts about where this was all headed, it finally occurred to me where I wanted to go, where we needed to go.
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| Gustavo D.: A properly rousing Mahler 5 Rondo-Finale |
The day the MahlerFest was streamed live, even though I knew it was coming, and had had the time, 2pm EDT, in my head all morning, somehow I managed to get caught up fussing over something else entirely, and by the time something in the recesses of my brain called out for a time check, it turned out to be already several minutes past 2pm. I surprised myself by the swiftness of my dash into action, making my way through my streaming portal to the Digital Concert Hall and logging myself in. Nevertheless, by the time I was connected, I had missed not just whatever introduction was provided but the first few minutes of the performance of the Mahler 5 finale. Probably not the ideal frame of mind for taking in the performance. So I took pains to tune in for the rebroadcast the following morning. Only that meant being up in time to do a less frantic DCH log-in and be planted in front of my TV by, ohmygosh, 7am EDT! On maybe four hours' sleep!
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| Our new old friend Sarah W. teaches a master class. |
MAHLER: Symphony No. 5: v. Rondo-Finale: AllegroFor quite a while after the MahlerFest stream, I attributed my guarded enthusiasm for the program opener to those special circumstances. Until, amid that period of relentless audio-clip-making for the projected follow-up blogpost, my eyes lit on the program note by one of the Mahler mavens I most trust, Deryck Cooke, in my CD edition of the Wyn Morris Mahler 5, the performance we just resampled. I included Deryck's notes on Part III of Mahler 5 in last week's post), but to properly set up my "Aha!" moment, we should read this much again:
Boston Symphony Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. RCA, recorded November 1963
Symphonica of London, Wyn Morris, cond. IMP-Collins, recorded January 1973
[Let's stipulate that these are two quite different but both excellent performances of the finale of Mahler 5 and yet, even so, I don't particularly want to hear the movement on its own.]
Yup, there's my "Aha!" While I'm still not sure that Gustavo Dudamel gave the best possible representation of the Mahler 5 finale, I don't think that's what made it feel incomplete. It was more likely the simple fact that the Rondo-Finale, heard on its own, is incomplete. If you want to hear this for yourself, you can go back to the April 20 post and hear how different it sounds, how much more fulfilled and fulfilling it is, in context as the second half of Part III of the symphony.The third part of the symphony consists of the last two movements. First comes the famous Adagietto for strings and harp only, which is a quiet haven of peace in F major, after the strenuous activity of the D major Scherzo, and before the equally strenuous activity of the D major finale. Pervaded by the familiar romantic mood of withdrawal from the hurly-burly of life into the quietude of the inner self, not untouched with sadness, the Adagietto has much in common with Mahler's great song "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" ("I am lost to the world"), which ends with the words "I am alone, in my own heaven, in my love, in my music."
Our authoritative Mahler authority Deryck Cooke
The finale, following straight away, opens magically with a single horn note, like a call to action, answered by a quiet echo on the violins. . . .
Ohmygosh! As satisfyingly as the ultimately jubilant Rondo-Finale brings Mahler 5 to a close, when it's heard on its own the jubilation is empty; it comes out of nowhere, it's unearned. At least to me, it doesn't make its case, it just doesn't feel right. After all, it was never meant to be or do any of those things by itself. Which meant, in my mind, that at the very least we were going to have to proceed backward to the Adagietto, reminding ourselves that this undeniably gorgeous moment of unexpected calm, in a symphony that up to that point has been mostly sound and fury, has led an independent life that has made it probably Mahler's best-known symphonic moment.
MAYBE I SHOULD HOLD OFF BRINGING THIS UP --Did I hear someone sighing and groaning "Oh no!"? Well --
but the larger reality is that going back to the Adagietto isn't anywhere near far enough for us to understand and appreciate the jubilation of the symphony's culmination. As Deryck Cooke points out in his full note on Part III, this is a symphony that began in the gloom and turbulence of a Funeral March, and it has been a wild ride through Part I (the first two movements) and Part II (composed of just the Scherzo, the symphony's longest movement -- but really, a scherzo as the symphony's longest movement?)
THE FACT IS, THE ADAGIETTO ISN'T HEARD TO BEST
ADVANTAGE EITHER WHEN IT'S HEARD ON ITS OWN
We have two more Adagiettos, once again quite different but both really fine. If I tell you that one was a stand-alone recording and the other part of a complete recording of Mahler 5, can you guess (assuming you don't know) which is which?
MAHLER: Symphony No. 5: iv. Adagietto. Sehr langsamJust as with the pair of performances by Pierre Boulez we heard at the top of this post, they're a sort of study in contrasts -- in the case of the Boulez pair, a study in contrast sspanning the quarter-century that separates the two performances.
Philharmonia Orchestra, Paul Kletzki, cond. EMI, recorded Oct. 27, 1959
Philadelphia Orchestra, James Levine, cond. RCA, recorded Jan. 17-18, 1977
Oh yes, the Kletzki Adagietto -- it was recorded as a brief filler for Side 4 of the original two-LP release of Das Lied.
When James Levine recorded his Mahler 5, I was still more of a fan than I became, but was already feeling increasingly antsy about what an astringent, even clinical orchestral sound he seemed to be cultivating, especially from the strings -- and goodness knows that's not a sound that the Philadelphia Orchestra of those years (still in the Ormandy era) easily produced. And I think it really made a difference, in the same way that the same perfectly sensible, in objective terms, Levine "interpretation" of Parsifal (I once wrote that if I were to try to describe it, it might sound like the Parsifal of my dreams), which bored me silly at the Met, worked so much better at Bayreuth, where the orchestral musicians had the piece so completely in their bones. Obviously the Met orchestra was made up of highly skilled players who came to know the piece well, but had maybe gotten used to producing that "non-resonating" sound, in pretty much no-phrase phrasing, just one damned note after another, which for me so often added up to performances where the music had somehow gotten left out of the music.
But the Levine-Philly Mahler 5 Adagietto really does kind of sing, doesn't it?
LET'S FACE IT, THE ADAGIETTO OWES A LOT OF ITS
UBIQUITY TO ITS SUITABILITY FOR USE AS AN ELEGY
Here, for example, are Leonard Bernstein and New York Philharmonic members playing the Adagietto in New York City's St. Patrick's Cathedral on the day the assassinated Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
I don't think there's any question that the piece works this way -- I'm certainly enormously moved by the performance, and think I would be even if I didn't know its circumstances. In context, however, the effect for me is close to overwhelming.
Members of the New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded live in St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York City, the day of the burial of Robert F. Kennedy, June 8, 1968
We're going to come back to the Adagietto's elegiac properties, but for now let's consider whether this is really what the music is aiming for. I wonder, do we get any different sense of it if we tear it out of the context of Bernstein's first and last recordings of Mahler 5, the first made with the NYPhil five years earlier, the last made (like the in-between video recording) with the Vienna Philharmonic nearly two decades later. Note that the timings of the three performances aren't that different, though the RFK memorial is unmistakably broader -- and also audibly more fraught, laid on thicker, as unquestionably fit the occasion. As for the two ripped-out-of-context performances, while they many not be extreme examples of the interpretive shift from "early" to "late" Lenny, I do think they follow the general pattern: 1963 a bit more forward-focused, 1987 rather more searching. I don't think either of the ripped-out-of-context performances sounds satisfactorily self-contained in the way the performance from St. Patrick's does -- and they shouldn't! (We'll come back to this.)
Just one more pair of performances of the Adagietto --
New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded Jan. 7, 1963
Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded live in the Alte Oper, Frankfurt, September 1987
In that pair of Boulez Adagiettos we had at the top of the post, we heard Boulez's Adagietto stretching by more than two and a half minutes between the 1970 BBC Symphony broadcast and the 1996 Vienna recording that brought his DG Mahler cycle a step closer to completion. Somehow I wouldn't have thought of him as a Mahler 4-5 kind of guy, but in fact he had some kind of inner connection to both. I have to say I really like both performances of 5. While the gradualizing that Boulez's Adagietto underwent may be on the extreme side, it seems a natural enough progression -- "with maturity comes a deeper feeling for the serene beauty of the movement," or something like that.
So then explain this pair:
Only nine years separates these performances, but what a nine years they were! I have to wonder at my referring to them, as I just did, as "only nine years" (emphasis emphatically added).
Vienna Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. EMI, recorded live, Jan. 15 or 16, 1938
New York Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded Feb. 10, 1947
IF YOU'LL PARDON THE DIGRESSION, WE NEED TO TAKE A
CLOSER LOOK AT THOSE YEARS 1938-47 FOR BRUNO WALTER
Bruno Walter (1876-1972): What a difference nine years made!
Of course there was that world war raging in the years 1939-45 (or, in the U.S., 1941-45). To situate Walter properly in 1939, we have to track back to 1923, the year in which year he turned 47, on September 15. In 1922, the Wikipedia article on him (with lots o' links and footnotes onsite) tells us, he had ended his nine-year Munich tenure as "Royal Bavarian Music Director and General Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera," and the following year he had traveled to the U.S., where he apparently spent a good part of the year, conducting the New York Symphony (remember the Symphony Society was still a separate institution from the Philharmonic Society) and also conducting in Detroit, Minnesota, and Boston.
Berlin, Leipzig, ViennaSpecifically, we want to know about the period between Walter's coming Stateside in 1939 and that day in February 1947 when he found himself in Carnegie Hall recording Mahler 5 with the NYPhil, following up on their February 1945 recording of Mahler 4. Back to Wikipedia:
Back in Europe, Walter made his debuts with both the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1923, and was Music Director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (Städtische Oper) from 1925 to 1929. He made his debut at La Scala in 1926, and was chief conductor of the German seasons at Covent Garden in London from 1924 to 1931.
Walter served as Principal Conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra from 1929 until March, 1933, when his tenure was cut short by the new Nazi government, as detailed below.
In speeches in the late 1920s, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had complained bitterly about the presence of Jewish conductors at the Berlin opera, and mentioned Walter a number of times, adding to Walter's name the words "alias Schlesinger." When the Nazis took power, they undertook a systematic process of barring Jews from artistic life.
As reported by biographers Erik Ryding and Rebecca Pechefsky, when Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933, Walter was conducting in New York, but the next month sailed back to Leipzig planning to conduct his previously scheduled concerts with the Gewandhaus Orchestra in March. However, Leipzig's Chief of Police informed management that he would cancel the concerts if Walter was to conduct them. Management resisted and Walter led rehearsals, but on the day that the first concert was to take place, the police, "in the name of the Saxon ministry of the interior," forbade the dress rehearsal and the concerts; Walter left Leipzig. Walter was then scheduled to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic on March 20, but its management was warned by Joseph Goebbels that "unpleasant demonstrations" might occur at the concert, and the Propaganda Ministry clarified this by saying that there would be violence in the hall. Hearing of this, Walter chose to withdraw, saying to management, "Then I have no further business here."The concert in the end was conducted by Richard Strauss. Walter later wrote, "The composer of Ein Heldenleben ["A Hero's Life"] actually declared himself ready to conduct in place of a forcibly removed colleague." A concert that Walter was scheduled to lead in Frankfurt was also cancelled. Walter left Germany and was not to conduct there again until after the war.
Austria became his main center of activity for the next several years. He and his family moved to Vienna, where he regularly conducted the Vienna Philharmonic—with whom he made a number of momentous recordings during this period—and at the Salzburg Festival. In 1936 he accepted an offer to be Artistic Director of the Vienna State Opera, where he occupied the same office that had once been Mahler's. He was also appointed Permanent Guest Conductor (eerste dirigent) of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra from 1934 to 1939, and made guest appearances such as in annual concerts with the New York Philharmonic from 1932 to 1936. When the Third Reich annexed Austria -- the Anschluss -- in 1938, Walter was in the Netherlands conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra. His elder daughter Lotte was in Vienna at the time, and was arrested by the Nazis; Walter was able to use his influence to free her. He also used his influence to find safe quarters for his brother and sister in Scandinavia during the war.
Walter's daughter Gretel was murdered on August 21, 1939 in Berlin by her husband, who then killed himself; his motive was jealousy over her growing relationship with the Italian bass singer Ezio Pinza. Walter's wife fell into a permanent depression and died in 1945, and Walter blamed himself for the tragedy, as his daughter had met Pinza only because Walter had made special efforts to hire him to sing the role of Don Giovanni.
Return to the United States
On November 1, 1939, he set sail for the United States, which became his permanent home. He settled in Beverly Hills, California, where his many expatriate neighbors included Thomas Mann. . . . .
In December, 1942, he was offered the music directorship of the New York Philharmonic, but declined, citing his age; then in February, 1947, after the resignation of Artur Rodzinski, he accepted the position but changed the title to "Music Adviser" (he resigned in 1949). Among other orchestras he worked with were the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the NBC Symphony Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. From 1946 onwards, he made numerous trips back to Europe, becoming an important musical figure in the early years of the Edinburgh Festival and in Salzburg, Vienna and Munich. In September, 1950 he returned to Berlin for the first time since the aborted concert of 1933; he conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in a program of Beethoven, Mozart, Richard Strauss, and Brahms, and "gave a lecture for the students of the Municipal Conservatory -- formerly his old school, the Stern Conservatory -- at the students' request".So, let the record show that by February 1947, although Walter had returned to Europe, he still hadn't been back to Berlin. In Vienna he would of course resume his connection with the Vienna Philharmonic, the orchestra with which he had developed such a strong connection before being obliged to leave Europe. Of interest to our current inquiry: In 1949, in London's Kingsway Hall, he would record Mahler's five Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children), settings of poems by Friedrich Rückert, with the Vienna Philharmonic and the British contralto Kathleen Ferrier as soloist.
Why is this of interest to us? Because the period of the Fifth Symphony marks a major change in Mahler's musical focus which is mirrored in a change in literary focus. In the period of his first four symphonies Mahler was still gloriously absorbed in Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn), three volumes of Old German Songs, as they were dubbed by editors Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano when they were published in 1805-08 -- an indescribably vast collection of folk or folklike verse that lit up the German Romantic imagination throughout the 19th century, and in Mahler's case beyond. It's impossible to overstate the creative importance of Mahler's immersion in Des Knaben Wunderhorn, not to mention not only the wealth of extraordinary songs he created from the raw materials he found there but the influence it had on those first four symphonies.
The poems of Rückert weren't a "replacement" for Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Rather, they represent another kind of material that was attracting his attention even as he was conceiving his Fifth Symphony. It's not coincidental that from this point there would be no singing in a Mahler symphony until he came back to it with a vengeance in the Eighth Symphony. Meanwhile, the 10 Rückert songs Mahler -- in addition to the Kindertotenlieder set, five unconnected songs -- are treasured creations. Among the free-standing songs, I don't think there's any question that pride of place goes to "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen."
How's that for a neat transition? A transition to --
WE WANT TO HEAR "ICH BIN DER WELT ABHANDEN
GEKOMMEN" FOR ITS LINK WITH THE ADAGIETTO
Plus: The curious case of the doubled "in meinem Lieben,"
which called for an advanced-stage blog-graphics repair job
We left off with Bruno Walter, and we're going to pick up the second half of our quest today with guess-who. To restate the obvious: Walter began his career as a gonzo devotee of Mahler, and while a number of talented young conductors were drawn to Mahler and later became enthusiastic advocates for their hero's little-appreciated music, none was closer to the composer than Walter. Having come under Mahler's spell as a teen from hearing him conduct his First Symphony, which didn't entrance a whole lot of other audience members, Walter was overwhelmed to receive an offer, early on in his conducting career, of an appointment to Mahler's staff at the Opera in Hamburg, and went on to become something like a musical alter-ego.
We might recall that when it came to Mahler's last completed works, Das Lied and the Ninth Symphony, which were composed with, and under the powerful influence of, the composer's knowledge that he was dying, the composer, who as a matter of course had conducted the premieres of his life's worth of earlier orchestral works, deputized Walter for assignments he had a good idea he wouldn't live to undertake himself.
There are curious aspects to Walter's near-religious life-long advocacy of Mahler's music, notably his steering clear of the Symphonies Nos. 3 and 6-8, works that he must have known as well as any living conductor and, well, just steered clear of. Of the rest, he was tireless in his determined advocacy. It's hardly surprising that he seems to have felt a special affection for "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen," of which -- as with Das Lied and the Ninth Symphony there are live pre-war recordings with the Vienna Philharmonic (undertaken by EMI in the 78-rpm era, quite an undertaking for music that didn't have much of what we might call a likely market), and as with Das Lied there's also a postwar Vienna recording. He didn't remake the Ninth until 1961, when Columbia Masterworks green-lit it for inclusion in the late series of stereo recordings he made in Los Angeles with the "Columbia Symphony Orchestra."
And what a recording the stereo Ninth is! Some readers may recall that in general, and in particular with Mahler, I have strong preference for Walter's American recordings, which for me have a less by-the-book, more inner-infused quality than the general run of his European ones; I have a strong preference for his gorgeous 1960 NYPhil Das Lied over either of the generally much more admired Vienna versions. But the Vienna recordings have history, and "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" seems to have spoken to him of the Vienna of his good memories. Although he didn't make another commercial recording of it after the Vienna ones -- the 1936 and 1952 ones (the former with the stalwart Wagnerian mezzo Kerstin Thorborg, the latter with the much-loved, though not quite so much by me, Kathleen Ferrier), when he came to conduct a "Farewell to Vienna" concert in 1960 with his beloved Vienna Philharmonic, he included Mahler 4, with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf as soloist, and Schwarzkopf and Walter also performed, you guessed it, "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen." That performance has circulated widely, and we're going to hear it along with the versions with Thorborg (really nice, don't you think?) and Ferrier.
Again, some readers may recall that I'm not a great Schwarzkopf fan, and this isn't one of my top-tier recordings of the song, but it had some kind of effect on me when I relistened to it for this blogpost, which I'll share after we've heard these recordings.
MAHLER: "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen"
Kerstin Thorborg, mezzo-soprano; Vienna Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. EMI, recorded live, May 24, 1936
Kathleen Ferrier, contralto; Vienna Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. Decca, recorded May 14-20, 1952
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, soprano; Vienna Philharmonic, Bruno Walter, cond. Live performance, May 29, 1960
Now, as to the funny thing that happened when I
relistened to the Schwarzkopf-Walter performance . . .
It so happened that I had my trusty old Kalmus miniature score of the Mahler Seven Songs from his "late time" -- the five "free-standing" Rückert songs and the two great, later military-death songs derived from Des Knaben Wunderhorn -- which isn't invariable for me. More usually, when I'm playing around with a piece for which I own a score, it's not till something strikes me in the listening or thinking process that I'm moved to go to the enormous trouble of bestirring myself to go and fetch the damned score. This time, as I said, I had it ready (possibly to anticipate the obstacle that the miniature scores are on very high shelves that discourage sudden-impulse fetching), but naturally, seeing as how the confounded thing was within arm's reach the whole time, I hadn't touched it!
However, something about the Schwarzkopf-Walter performance made me reach for the score. I still can't say what it was. I mean, I was kind-of-enjoying the performance, though not necessarily Schwarzkopf's frequent puff-breathed peeping at individual notes. Still, something -- and I don't think it was just Walter's sincerely felt conducting of the orchestra -- got my attention, and when we got to the final line my attention was drawn to something I knew but hadn't thought about. You remember Deryck Cooke making reference to the song "end[ing] with the words 'I am alone, in my own heaven, in my love, in my music' "? Well, that's not quite right, or not absolutely right. It's really: "I am alone, in my own heaven, in my love, in my love, in my music." Yes, "in meinem Lieben" is repeated. Now, in the reproduction of sung texts, it's generally understood that verbal repetitions aren't necessarily reproduced as such. Still, in this case, in the series of "in my heaven, in my loving, in my music" (to follow William Mann's slightly more accurate translation, as I've done in my German-English text box), only "in my loving" is repeated, and if you listen to it, you can easily hear how specific Mahler made the repetition -- he clearly thought it was important. And I thought my text box should reflect this.
I should explain that the making of text boxes here at Sunday Classics is done in just about the most primitive way imaginable. Everything gets typed out, both languages, straight across, not even using columns, just tabs, then manually italicizing the foreign-language text in each line, then trying desperately to catch all the (multilingual) typos before the next step, which is doing a screen grab, dumping that into Photoshop Elements and sizing it for the proper blog width and saving it as a graphic file for insertion into the blogpost file. (I can't do much in Photoshop. The one basic thing I can do is resizing stuff.)
So every time I find something in the image that needs fixing, since it is an image, I have to go back and, assuming I can find the "master" Notepad file, do the necessary fix, and repeat the whole image-making and -importing process. So if it's an improvement rather than strictly speaking a correction I'm pondering, it may just go by the way side, especially if I've already redone the graphic once or twice or three times. In this case I decided that the repeated "in my loving was indeed a correction rather than an improvement, and I went back in. I realized that whether I added the extra "in my loving" in my last or next-to-last line, it would produce a wider line than anything in the previous version, meaning that when it was sized for 520-pixel width, the type would be smaller. But what are you gonna do? So I did it, and got all the way to having the corrected version in the new-post-in-progress before realizing I'd doubled the "in my loving" in the English text but not the "in meinem Lieben" in the German text. But you know what that would have meant: going back in and doing yet another "correction routine."
Alas, there was nothing to do except for Pete's sake to do it, and I did, this time thinking more about whether the repeated phrase should go on the next-to-last or the last line -- until it occurred to me to put one on each line, which added the added virtue of making the repeated thought seem like a new thought, which I think is what Mahler's musical setting actually intends. And that was it, or almost. Because the version with just one "in meinem Lieben" and one "in my loving" had already appeared in last week's post, in both a 520-pixel-wide version and a 500-pixel-wide one -- I used to know how to change the size by just adjusting numbers in the HTML code, but I haven't yet cracked the current version of the code, so I'd made two separate files, and now faced making a pair of replacement versions, as I really wanted the upgrade to be there as well. Eventually I did just that. And it was done.
Until I notice something else in that image that needs fixing!
NOW FINALLY (FINALLY!) WE GET BACK TO CHRISTA LUDWIG
[NOTE: Originally I started writing this section in brackets, opening with "STILL TO BE WRITTEN," as you see it here. I kept writing, though, as a sort of down payment toward what I would eventually write. I stopped eventually, and on looking back at it, I'm inclined to think that this is going to be it. As you see, I've left the brackets in, just in case. Like, in case I decide to come back and write this section properly. Just between us, however, I don't think it's highly likely that that's going to happen.]
[STILL TO BE WRITTEN, but we all know the Mahler Song Rule, right? You know, the precept that says that if it's a Mahler song written for "low range" -- i.e., mezzo-soprano or contralto in the female voice, or baritone in the male voice -- we go straight for Christa Ludwig (mezzo-soprano) and Maureen Forrester (contralto). So here, as promised in the endless photo caption at the top of this post, are five performances by Christa L., ranging from 1957 through 1993 (the recording with Charles Spencer that was made, as I recall, at the start of her carefully planned extensive worldwide "farewell tour," which included a stop at Carnegie Hall that remains one of my cherished experiences.
[One thing we learn pretty quickly is that the piano-accompanied format of "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" sucks. It's not just that we lose the extraordinary colors of the orchestral version, though we do, but that no pianist I've heard or can imagine is able to sustain the very slow motion of this song. (I mean, straightaway on our list, if Gerald Moore can't, then who possibly could?) And yet, and yet, Christa gets -- as she usually did -- the best that's to be gotten from her musical partners. Longtime readers know I'm not a great fan of Geoffrey Parsons, but he makes a mighty fine job of this hopeless assignment in the 1978 live performance.
[In the two orchestral performances we get a sample of the way Christa managed to mesh her own artistry with that of her partners. Otto Klemperer and Herbert von Karajan were worlds apart as conductors, but as we can hear in her three commercial recordings of Das Lied von der Erde -- one with Leonard Bernstein thrown in between versions with Klemperer and Karajan -- she manages to be the perfect soloist for what the conductors want to do and they somehow seem to be the perfect conductors for what she wants to do. A special shout-out here to Karajan, who often took heat, especially farther along in his career, for having no concern except producing beautiful orchestral sound. Well, he sure coaxes beautiful orchestral sound out of the Berlin Philharmonic here, but when he's functioning at this level we're left in no question of the man's brilliance: The sheer radiance of the performance goes beyond anything I've heard in this song, which seems designed for all the radiance it can muster.
[Which is no knock on the version with Klemperer, part of the group of Mahler orchestral songs Christa and Otto recorded for Side 4 of the original two-LP issue of their Das Lied, with Fritz Wunderlich singing the tenor songs for, pretty literally, all they're worth -- another automatic basic-library recording.
[And after all those, there's the final recording. Rehearing it, I thought it was just, like, my goodness gracious!]
Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Gerald Moore, piano. EMI, recorded Nov. 11-20, 1957
Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded Feb. 17-18, 1964
Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan, cond. DG, recorded May 8-9, 1974
Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Geoffrey Parsons, piano. BBC Legends, live performance, July 15, 1978
Christa Ludwig, mezzo-soprano; Charles Spencer, piano. RCA, recorded at Schloss Grafenegg, Haitzendorf, Austria, Jan. 15-18, 1993
WE'VE HEARD CHRISTA LUDWIG. OUR "MAHLER SONG
RULE" SAYS WE NEED TO HEAR MAUREEN FORRESTER
[If you're not familiar with the Mahler Song Rule (As Applied to "Low Voice" Mahler Songs), consult the section above. Maureen is in unusually fluttery vocal shape here -- maybe it's all that really hushed singing? -- but still, it's inescapably Maureen.]
Maureen Forrester, contralto; Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ferenc Fricsay, cond. DG, recorded Sept. 16, 1959
SO WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED FROM ALL OF THE ABOVE?
(i.e., from all this compulsive listening to our two pieces)
[STILL TO BE WRITTEN, but here are [UPDATE: not two, but --] three things:
(1) Well, sure, we can hear that they're connected, just from the general format, the gradual, quiet reflectiveness, etc.
(2) Where the Adagietto of Mahler 5 is scored, for reasons wildly specific to the symphonic movements that surround it, for just strings and harp, the orchestration of "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen," for all its seeming simplicity and ease, is something of a miracle, worthy of study by everyone interested in orchestration.
(3) Most importantly, what's different is, you know, everything! The Adagietto, especially as heard in proper context as the first half of Part III of Mahler 5, is a hard-won moment of serenity that emerges from the grim turbulence of the symphony's first three movements and sets up what follows in the fifth. The Adagietto sings, surely, of hope, which is brought to fruition as it slips so inconspicuously into the wild, sometimes wacky, and always wonderful to-do of the Rondo-Finale. Whereas "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" reflects almost the opposite of hope. Not despair necessarily, although if the performers wish to go that route, I think the words and music will support it. But at most the singer of this song has reached a state of calm, no-longer-struggling resignation, of giving up. Could this be any more different from what's happening in the Adagietto?
[Interestingly, the song, like the Adagietto, is often used for elegiac purposes -- as a send-off for valued persons who have just crossed to the other side. For all that the Adagietto can be made to work this way, as we heard in the RFK memorial performance, I don't think this is what it's "about" at all. But "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen," I think it kind of is.]
P.S.: OOPS, I MEANT TO SAY SOMETHING ABOUT
THE PERFORMANCES AT THE TOP OF THIS POST
P.P.S.: IF YOU'RE THINKING, "WHAT ABOUT 'MR. MAHLER,'
DIETRICH FISCHER-DIESKAU?" -- WELL, HERE HE IS
Note the timing of the piano performance with Lenny B. Eight minutes and counting? Strangely, it doesn't sound preternaturally slow to me. The lower part of Fischer-Dieskau's voice seems to have been in especially good, rich shape this day, enabling him to sustain lower-lying phrases with a pleasing richness of sound. The upper part of the voice, as was often happening by 1968, sounds less secure, and is correspondingly more problematic.
The very nice orchestral performance, by the way, comes from an LP that's the only instance I've ever encountered of Karl Böhm conducting Mahler -- an extreme instance of the once-frequent dichotomy of being a Bruckner conductor vs. a Mahler conductor. Our Karl does a fine job, don't you think? I guess conducting Mahler was just something he chose not to go out of his way to do -- and why not leave it to people who want to do it? (Partial answer: Because sometimes the people who want to do it aren't that good at doing it, and likely less good at it than a conscientious craftsman like our Karl, who believed in putting in an honest day's work for an honest day's wage.)
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Gerald Moore, piano. EMI, live performance from the Salzburg Festival, July 1962
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Berlin Philharmonic, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded June 18, 1963
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Leonard Bernstein, piano. CBS/Sony, recorded 1968
P.P.P.S.: I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THIS CLIP
"Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" seems a natural for Jessye Norman, and as you can hear, she sings it very beautifully here. But do we really want to hear yet another piano-accompanied version? Unfortunately, I don't know of an orchestral performance with Jessye, so I'm thinking, yes, maybe we do have to put up with yet another piano-accompanied version.
Jessye Norman, soprano; Irwin Gage, piano. Philips, recorded c1971
P.P.P.P.S.: A COUPLA RANDOM NOTES RELATING TO THIS
POST FROM THE TIRELESS SC BLOGWORKS TEAM
• During the making of the audio clips, not to mention the typing of the actual text, the Sunday Classics Typing Dept. probably typed "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" about 200 times, easy. You'd think it would've been easier just to keep copying it, and sometimes it is, but other times it's actually more cumbersome. That's it, that's the note -- I didn't say these were going to be spellbinding notes.
• Most of the Sunday Classics typing, especially the extensive re-typing, is done by our Head Typist, a not-all-that-fast and not-all-that-accurate typist who has the overriding virtue of working cheap -- practically for nothing (OK, for nothing). This makes him practically the most important member of the team, since most of the stuff here, at any rate most of the good stuff, is retyped from other sources.
• "Adagietto" had to be typed maybe more often even than, you know, that long song title (for which, by the way, we've found no acceptable shorthand version -- "Ich bin der Welt" doesn't work because of the grammatical case of "der Welt," which is gibberish without what it refers to). Unless you've tried retyping "Adagietto" a few zillion times, it may not occur to you that an easy typo to make when one is typing in haste with addled fingers, not to mention brain, is: "Adagietoo." This seemed really funny each time it appeared on-screen! (I don't know, maybe you had to be there.)
P.P.P.P.P.S.: A COUPLE OF LEFT-OVER ODDITIES
(i.e., audio files I should probably just delete)
• Q: Do we wonder how "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" would go as sung by a tenor?
A: That might be interesting, and I've often enjoyed Siegfried Jerusalem, but this isn't a very good performance, is it?
Siegfried Jerusalem, tenor; Siegfried Mauser, piano. Virgin Classics, recorded Sept. 1989
• Q: Say, didn't the great Ljuba Welitsch record "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen"?
A: Um, Ljuba Welitsch did, but alas, it wasn't "the great Ljuba Welitsch" anymore. Unless we want to be reminded of how quickly that once-so-stunning voice turned into, well, this, we don't need to hear it. I made the clip, though, so . . . . (Really, I think I should just junk it.)
Ljuba Welitsch, soprano; Paul Ulanowsky, piano. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in New York City, March 30, 1953
DON'T TELL ANYONE, BUT YOU KNOW HOW I SAID
THAT WE REALLY NEED TO HEAR ALL OF MAHLER 5?
You know, to really make sense of the Rondo-Finale? I've already made up audio clips for two complete performances. I may yet spin this off into a separate post, or postlet, with some added comment.
UPDATE: Now, it's spun off!
CAUTIONARY LOOKBACK: In case anyone happens to have seen earlier versions of this post and noticed my post-in-progress notes, I've snipped them out and dumped them in -- just for the record! -- at the end.
CAUTIONARY SUNDAY 2pm NOTE: This post isn't finished yet, but there's so much of it done that I thought I'd put it up and keep puttering at it. Note too that when it's "done," it'll be very, very long. [UPDATE: I think hellaciously long is what I was groping for. -- Ed.] Feel free to jump around, picking at anything that may catch your eye. You can always go back and fill in. Note that there's a surprise at the end(if it loads!). [See the end for explanation. -- Ed.]
AND THIS 5:15pm UPDATE: I messed up a 2pm virtual walking tour I'd been really looking forward to, but now I think we're basically done -- except, of course, for the nerve-racking business of eventually looking at what's here and making the more obviously necessary fixes. Oh, and figuring out what to add to the all-of-Mahler 5 spinoff post. Whew!
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