Setting out to trace the lineage of Boston Symphony concertmasters back to 1962, we wind up trapped in the gigantic first movement of the Mahler Third Symphony

"It is well known that I cannot be without trivialities, but this time all permissible bounds have been passed, and 'one frequently feels he has landed in a tavern or a pigsty.' "

-- Gustav Mahler, writing to his 19-year-old assistant Bruno Walter
in July 1896 about his nearly completed Third Symphony, sarcastically
incorporating critical characterizations of his work as a composer

Joseph Silverstein, BSO concertmaster 1962-84,
talks about what it takes to be a concertmaster

From a December 2014 interview (Joseph S., age 82): "William Steinberg once said to me -- and he was certainly a marvelous conductor and a great man to work with -- said to me one day, 'You're playing everything louder, softer, longer, and shorter than everybody in the section.' And I said, 'I thought that was my job.' And he said, 'It is, but don't do it too well.' "

[NOTE: Eventually we'll have a fuller version of Joseph S.'s answer.]


We hear (sort of) Nathan C.'s two predecessors playing the lyrical
countersubject of the first movement of Mahler's Third Symphony

Joseph Silverstein, violin; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. RCA, recorded in Symphony Hall, Oct. 10-11, 1966

Malcolm Lowe, violin; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. Philips, recorded in Symphony Hall, April 1993

by Ken

I should look up the quote, but my recollection is that Bruno Walter expressed his diffidence about the Mahler Third Symphony in terms of a fear that somewhere in that gigantic first movement the devil had crept in.

Sorry, but for a change I haven't been able to piece together the post I was aiming for, a proper end to the series celebrating the accession of the Boston Symphony's new concertmaster, Nathan Cole. I hoped some of the fragments might stand on their own, and instead wandered into a trap. I'm sorry that my experiment with homing in on that lyrical second subject of the first movement of Mahler 3, as played by Nathan C.'s two immediate BSO predecessors, for whom he has expressed such admiration, didn't work out so well -- it just isn't so easy to hear either of our star fiddlers dispatching the solo.

But it's not a bad thing to make sure we all understand why I wanted to focus on the BSO concertmaster succession -- to appreciate by sight and especially sound the legacy that Nathan Cole is so aware of inheriting. It's also maybe a chance to linger a little over that gigantic first movement of Mahler 3 -- the movement where, Bruno Walter once wrote, he felt sure the devil had crept in. In his lifetime Bruno W. -- to whom the responsibility fell for conducting the premieres of Das Lied von der Erde and the Mahler Ninth Symphony, would remain probably the leading champion of Mahler's still-widely-patronized music, but even he turned his back on Mahler 3, 6, 7, and 8, which would have an even longer, more arduous path to repertorial daylight.


WOULD YOU BELIEVE WE HAD ONLY ONE RECORDING OF
THE FIRST MOVEMENT OF MAHLER 3 IN THE SC ARCHIVE?

We've actually heard quite a lot of Mahler 3 -- or at least of its other five movements. It seems I've ducked the task of "presenting" the gigantic and seemingly whole-universe-encompassing first movement. You can't just drop it on readers without at least a little "presenting." You can't just say, "Here you go, enjoy!" -- stupendously enjoyable a show though this super-symphony is.

And you know, I can't honetly recall how even the one recording we have of this movement in the archive came to be the one recording we have there. I imagine it was once used in a post, but I can't even be sure of that. Still, of all the recordings of Mahler 3, this one? Mahler 3 is, after all, as orchestrally demanding a symphony as there is in the repertory, in terms of both technical proficiency, sheer power, and endurance, and the Hallé Orchestra of Manchester, England, honorable an ensemble as it is, isn't among the first 20 or 25 orchestras you'd think of for the piece.

Yet rehearing the performance, I have to say I like it a lot; it's got tons of heart, and it turns out that plenty of heart is a great thing to have for this monster-symphony. We're going to hear the Barbirolli-Hallé first movement now for sure, along with the two Boston recordings we sampled above, plus a couple, including one that's directly connected to our tour literature. We're going to hear our performances interspersed with a portion of the fantabulous Mahler 3 creation story as told by that great Mahler spirit Jack Diether, from the booklet note he produced for one of the recordings.

My first thought was to reach back to the presentation by the great English critic (and Mahler enthusiast) Neville Cardus for the original issue of the Leinsdorf-RCA Mahler 3, but with all the musical examples as well as texts, that would have been simply too arduous a production process, whereas re-creating Jack D.'s presentation just required a hellish amount of typing. Maybe the next time we think about Mahler 3, we can channel Neville C.


BRUNO WALTER, NOT YET 20, IS INVITED TO VISIT GUSTAV
MAHLER AS HIS THIRD SYMPHONY NEARS COMPLETION
[From the booklet essay by Jack Diether for the Unicorn recording of Mahler 3 by Jascha Horenstein and the London Symphony]

(1) JACK D. QUOTES BRUNO W. ON MAHLER 3

In Mahler's Third Symphony, Bruno Walter writes,

nature itself seems to be transformed into sound. The movements follow a pre-determined sequence of ideas, and their original titles were as follows:

     1. Pan awakes: Summer marches in
     2. What the flowers in the meadow tell me
     3. What the animals in the woods tell me
     4. What night tells me
     5. What the morning bells tell me
     6. What love tells me

Night speaks of man, the morning bells speak of angels, love speaks of God. We can see the basic structural unity of the symphony. For this reason, Mahler could do without the titles, which were dropped like a scaffolding when the house is ready. It had become pure music.

Walter was the first musician to hear any of this, on Mahler's own piano.

MAHLER: Symphony No. 3 in D minor:
i. Kräftig. Entschieden. (Strong. Decisive.)

[violin solo at 5:19 -- Joseph Silverstein, violin] Boston Symphony Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. RCA, recorded in Symphony Hall, Oct. 10-11, 1966

(2) AN INVITATION TO MAHLER'S MOUNTAIN RETREAT

Walter was just under twenty years old, and Mahler's young assistant at the Hamburg Opera, when the composer wrote to him on July 2, 1896, from his mountain retreat Steinbach-am-Attersee. He was then in the final stages of the composition, and so he invited Walter to come in about two weeks' time and spend the rest of the summer with him. In the letter, Mahler indulged in his favorite pastime of mimicking his own critics in anticipation:

My sisters may have told you that I have not been completely idle. Indeed, I would hope that the entire Third wil soon be happily concluded. I am already at the orchestra score, as the first sketch once again will suffer from attacks of dizziness. But those who enjoy the pleasant strolls I offer will find them fun. The whole thing is, of course, tainted by my deplorable sense of humor and seeks opportunities to exercise my "predilection for the most brutal noises."

In many passages my musicians play without the slightest regard for each other, and my chaotic and bestial nature "reveals itself in all its vile nakedness." It is well known that I cannot be without trivialities, but this time all permissible bounds have been passed, and "one frequently feels he has landed in a tavern or a pigsty." So come soon, forewarned and forearmed! And if your taste has been purified in Berlin, be prepared to have it thoroughly corrupted.

[violin solo at 5:16 -- Malcolm Lowe, violin] Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. Philips, recorded in Symphony Hall, April 1993

(3) "I ARRIVED BY STEAMER ON A GLORIOUS DAY IN JULY"

Walter relates:

Mahler was there at the landing to meet me and, despite my protests, insisted on carrying my suitcase until he was relieved by a porter. On the way to his house I glanced up at the Höllengebirge, whose steep cliffs made a forbidding background to the charming landscape. Calling out, "No use looking up there, that's all been composed by me!," Mahler at once began telling me about the first movement of his symphony, whose introduction he had originally dubbed "What the rocky hills tell me."

In a separate, ivy-colored "composer's cottage," furnished with a piano, a table, an armchair, and a sofa, and the opening of whose door caused a shower of beetles to descend on one, Mahler spent his morning in work, undisturbed by the noises of the house. He went there at six in the morning, at seven his breakfast was silently placed before him, and only when he opened the door at noon would he return to normal life. Later he might walk about the meadow, or rush uphill and go for longer walks, always returning to "bring the harvest into the barn."

[violin solo at 5:50 -- Martin Milner, violin?] Hallé Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli, cond. BBC Legends, recorded for broadcast in Free Trade Hall, Manchester, May 3, 1969

(4) "AT LAST CAME THE DAY WHEN HE COULD PLAY
FOR ME THE FINISHED THIRD"

And, familiar as I had become with the spiritual atmosphere of the symphony, it was a shattering and undreamed-of experience to hear him perform it on the piano. I felt as if I was recognizing him for the first time. His whole being seemed to breathe a mysterious affinity with the forces of nature. Had he been only a "nature lover" in the ordinary sense of the word, his music, I thought, might have turned out more "civilized." But what I had always felt subconsciously -- his Dionysian saturation with nature -- was voiced now as a primitive musical sound from the very depths of his soul.

Here I seemed to see him in the round: the oppressive weight placed on him by the stark majesty of the rocky summits, love for the tender flower, a sense of the shyness and drollery, and the untamable ferocity, within the primeval depths of the animal world, and finally the intuitive yearning of the human spirit to penetrate beyond the bounds of earthly transience. I carried this music with me when we parted, and yet it was a long time before its disturbing presence could pass into secure possession.

[violin solo at 5:06 -- John Georgiadis, violin?] London Symphony Orchestra, Jascha Horenstein, cond. Unicorn-Kanchana, recorded in Fairfield Halls, Croydon, London, July 27-29, 1970

(5) JACK D. INTRODUCES THE "HUGE" FIRST MOVEMENT

In the huge opening movement, with its "trumpet calls, beating of drums, drastic vulgarities, fiery marches, and majestic trombone solo," Walter perceives "two opposing moods from the nature-world of Pan: primordial inflexibility and lust-driven wildness, each transformed into a wealth of musical images." These opposing moods center about the trombone elegy in D minor and the "municipal" march in F major. Both elements are varied and recapitulated in symphonic style, but on a time-scale hitherto unknown. Mahler himself called the F-major march "quite the maddest thing I have written. I need practically a regimental band to get the effect. In a march tempo that sweeps everything before it, it gets nearer and nearer, louder and louder, until the din and the jubilation break out over our very heads."

In his final score, Mahler designated the first movement as "Part I" and the other five movements together as "Part II." . . .

HMM, WE SEEM TO HAVE USED UP OUR RECORDINGS --
AND SAY, WHAT ABOUT THIS "PART II"?

Now for sure we want to hear the whole of the first movement -- of "Part I," as it were. Listening back, I really like the two Boston recordings, which bring more sanity than you might think possible to this crazy movement. Sir John Barbirolli goes in the other direction, and as I said, I love the love he brings to the piece. If we've been missing some of its neurotic energy, I think Jascha Horenstein has that well in hand.

Let's say we wanted to hear just one more performance -- well, if there's one conductor we might want to check out on a Mahler matter . . . .


[violin solo at 5:33 -- Glenn Dicterow, violin] New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded live in Avery Fisher Hall, Nov. 25-28, 1987

As for Part II of Mahler 3 --

Bearing in mind that we're talking about five movements totaling more than an hour's worth of music -- music of many kinds, including two movements with vocal parts (wildly different ones: settings of Nietzsche and Des Knaben Wunderhorn), I thought we could get away with a quick raid on the Mahler 3-abundant SC Archive, but it's not proving so simple. So, rather than just slap it all together, let's say: tomorrow.

POSTSCRIPT: About the Barbirolli-Hallé Mahler 3

Sir John Barbirolli (1899-1970)

After rehearing more of the performance, in preparation for tomorrow's sequel post, and quite loving it, I finally -- after all these years! -- cracked open the BBC Legends booklet and took a look at Michael Kennedy's booklet commentary, in which he invokes the enthusiasm of Deryck Cooke -- still today, nearly a half-century after his death, one of our most trusted Mahler eminences. Cooke had described this Mahler 3 to Kennedy as "one of the finest Mahler performances I have heard," telling him in a September 1970 letter that he was urging the BBC to issue it commercially, while EMI was trying to issue a Mahler 3 Barbirolli had conducted with the Berlin Philharmonic two months earlier. (It was finally issued by Testament in 2004.)

Cooke (right; 1919-1976) hadn't heard the Berlin tape, but cited in particular "Barbirolli's special relationship with the Hallé" (of which Kennedy reminds us he was conductor from 1943 until his death in 1970) and the orchestra's "now complete familiarity with Mahler's music." The Berlin Phil, he wrote, "may be a finer orchestra, but they just haven't any Mahler tradition -- they hardly ever play his symphonies. In any case, the Hallé play most beautifully on the BBC Mahler 3 recording and the BBC's Manchester engineer achieved a superb balance, I thought." Kennedy goes on to point out that whatever Mahler tradition the Berlin Phil had, including a striking turnaround in its appreciation for Mahler, had come from performing nearly all the symphonies with Barbirolli, going back to its first-ever performance of a Mahler symphony: the Ninth with Sir John in 1963, which, happily, EMI recorded -- a performance I still have great fondness for.

I'm looking forward to rehearing the whole Barbirolli-Hallé Mahler 3, and most likely reordering my mental hierarchy of performances of the symphony. -- Ed.

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