Brahms knew, and so did Mahler: Being a for-real functional artistic genius is (gosh!) really hard work

"Mahler's way of thinking in music did not easily conform to the rules of the symphonic scholars. He could not contain himself in the A B A divisions of symphonic form. In this unique first movement he adapted large-scale sonata form to his own power of improvisation. He believed that music should continually grow, phrase by phrase, one section balancing another, by laws not only of musical form as usually obeyed but also by psychological and organic growth and the logic of contrast. . . ."

-- Neville Cardus, in his "Appreciation of Mahler's Third"
[reproduced in part in the last post in this Mahler 3 series]

"This final published version [of the Andante sostenuto of Brahms's First Symphony] is clearly both tauter and richer, for there is less repetition and more diversity, and Brahms has cast fresh light on his themes by bringing them into new relationships. Altogether these changes provide a deeply fascinating insight into genius at work."

-- Robert Pascall, vice chair of the New Complete Brahms Edition (and editor of the symphonies), in his notes for the Mackerras-Teldec Brahms 1

REMEMBER THE VERY DIFFERENT VERSIONS WE'VE
HEARD OF THE ANDANTE SOSTENUTO OF BRAHMS 1?

BRAHMS: Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68:
ii. Andante sostenuto

► A reconstruction of the "initial performing version":

► And this: the familiar published (i.e., final) version
(which we'll be hearing -- and thinking about -- a lot more!):

Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Sir Charles Mackerras, cond. Telarc, recorded in Usher Hall, Edinburgh, January 1997

WE'LL TALK ABOUT THEM, BUT FOR NOW MIGHT WE HAVE
MAESTRO M. PLAY US ANOTHER SYMPHONIC ANDANTE?

BBC Philharmonic, Sir Charles Mackerras, cond. BBC Music Magazine, recorded live in Bridgewater Hall, Manchester (England), Nov. 16, 2002 (published 2005)

by Ken

It's taken us a long time and a crazy path to get here, "here" being out-the-other-end of the first movement of the Mahler Third Symphony --

OUR CRAZY PATH TO WHEREVER WE ARE NOW:

► "Setting out to trace the lineage of Boston Symphony concert-masters back to 1962, we wind up trapped in the gigantic first movement of the Mahler Third Symphony," July 23

► "Coming momentarily (if not sooner): An adventure in musical metamorphosis -- presented in a pair of mutually accessible parts," Sept. 22

► "Part 1: Marching in anguish, or to triumph, or toward what? In the 1st movement of Mahler 3, we've sure left BrahmsWorld behind!," Sept 23

► "Part 2: Marching in anguish, or to triumph, or toward what? In the 1st movement of Mahler 3, we've sure left BrahmsWorld behind! (Then again, are we so sure?)," Sept. 27

► "Brahms knew, and so did Mahler: Being a for-real functional artistic genius is (gosh!) really hard work," today

BECAUSE THE ANDANTE SOSTENUTO IS SO DEAR TO ME,
THE SC ARCHIVE TEEMS WITH PERFORMANCES OF IT

While we've got another whole group of recordings coming up in this post, for immediate hearing I've plucked out two, from the Brahms symphony cycles I feel closest to, returning to them regularly with tingly expectation that's always rewarded. Kurt Masur's Andante sostenuto and Kurt Sanderling's are different; notably, though Masur sounds in no way rushed, Sanderling sets a still-more-spacious pace, which the Dresden players fill with glowing life. But both draw me back above all because the orchestras have achieved real identification with the music, playing not just with heart-enriching beauty and finesse but with a soul-stirring sense of really living the music, whether in melodic or accompanimental or ensemble writing -- all of it sounded and made to fit together with such fullness and depth and general "rightness" of expression.

(It sobers me to realize that I've been loving the Sandering-Dresden Brahms cycle for something like half a century now, especially enjoying, in the early decades, those beautiful Eurodisc LP pressings.)

BRAHMS: Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68:
ii. Andante sostenuto

The first 34 bars of the Andante sostenuto -- the published version, of course!


New York Philharmonic, Kurt Masur, cond. Teldec, recorded live in Avery Fisher Hall, May 1994

Staatskapelle Dresden, Kurt Sanderling, cond. Eurodisc-RCA, recorded in the Lukaskirche, 1971

I can't say I've had the patience and will to undertake a systematic comparison of the two versions, but it doesn't take long for us to hear Brahms working some magic. If we go back to the Mackerras recording of the "initial performing version," it sounds fine -- for a whole four bars, at which point Brahms originally segued into the beautiful rising-then-dropping oboe theme that doesn't occur in the revised version until bar 17 (about 1:16 of the Masur performance, 1:27 of the Sanderling).

I imagine that Brahms heard the little melodic fragment in bars 3-4, sounded so purposefully by the first violins and bassoon with backup from the second violins and violas, a phrase that has inside it a rhythmic "catch" in the dotted eighth note on the G-natural, and realized that this dotted figure could perfectly set up the music he pulled forward to bar 5 from later on, thereby endowing a figure that other composers might have thought of as a mere throwaway with such imaginative force, and in the process brought the listener, in the space of a single bar from the movement's soft-and-then-softer opening, to a climax -- in bars 5-6 of the movement, for heaven's sake! For the rest of the movement, using mostly the same materials (more on this in a moment), he transformed this into something I would call transcendent.

(A point: Although I think of this movement as a font of matchless melody -- it plays easily in my head, and I can happily hum it! -- there isn't really "a melody" as such, is there? Just cunningly deployed melodic fragments.)


THE ANDANTE SOSTENUTO "REDO" IS APTLY DESCRIBED AS
"A DEEPLY FASCINATING INSIGHT INTO GENIUS AT WORK"

We recall -- always with Brahms! -- the two-decade-plus period in which, even while producing such a stream of remarkable music, he agonized nonstop over his felt need to produce the real goods: a symphony. When, finally, he had a symphony complete from start to finish, he wasn't ready to just release the thing. Instead he went for what we might call a "soft reveal," in the form of a series of performances, using autograph orchestral materials, of this "initial performing version." A piece of music has to be heard to properly judge its effect, and the composer, with the opportunity to ponder what he'd done, and bringing to bear his most sensitive listening powers, arrived at the decision that the Andante sostenuto needed major surgery, or perhaps he heard an inner voice telling him that he could fix the thing, making it sing in a way he himself hadn't dared to imagine in the earlier compositional phase.

When Telarc and Charles Mackerras recorded their Brahms symphony cycle, in 1997, part of the impetus was the availability of the new edition of the symphonies in the New Complete Brahms Edition, as edited by the vice chair of the project, Robert Pascall (Symphony No. 2 with Michael Struck). Pascall (1944-2018), who was at the time head of music at the University of Nottingham, contributed a booklet essay for Telarc's Brahms 1 CD in which he addressed the overhaul of the Andante sostenuto, offering this summary of the changes:

The earlier version of the slow movement had a rondo structure (A B A C A); this [Brahms] changed into the published ternary-form movement by deleting the central return of the main theme and by redistributing the first episode towards the peripheries of the movement (bars 9-17 and 76-90 in the published version). He also restored, from an even earlier sketch, the divergent chromatic lines in bars 5-8.

I don't think you have to be able to follow this bar-by-bar, or even to read music, to appreciate the extent and intricacy of the rewriting, to which Brahms clearly brought every tool at his creative disposal: cutting, redistributing, adding, recomposing, even re-inserting that chunk from the movement's still-earlier history. He didn't apply any formulas; he looked at the piece and reimagined it bar by bar -- winding up, interestingly, with a movement that, whether by chance or by design, runs almost exactly the same time!

But boy, is this ever not the same movement! I love the way Professor Pascall describes the transformation:

This final published version is clearly both tauter and richer, for there is less repetition and more diversity, and Brahms has cast fresh light on his themes by bringing them into new relationships. Altogether these changes provide a deeply fascinating insight into genius at work.

This they do, don't they? And there was nothing "theoretical" about the way Brahms applied his musical talents, tastes, and skills. Drawing on his experience of having imagined the earlier version(s), with the benefit of time to ponder it all, at the same time having really listened to what he had composed, he heard it, as much as possible, the way listeners would.


SAY, DOES THIS WORK PROCESS REMIND US OF ANYONE?

I'm going to take the liberty of requoting Neville Cardus's incisive take, most of which I quoted at the top of this post, on the work process he hears at play in the first movement of Mahler's Third Symphony -- except that this time instead of chopping it off with ellipsis dots I'm going to let it run to its conclusion, with the reinstated text set off in italics:

Mahler's way of thinking in music did not easily conform to the rules of the symphonic scholars. He could not contain himself in the A B A divisions of symphonic form. In this unique first movement he adapted large-scale sonata form to his own power of improvisation. He believed that music should continually grow, phrase by phrase, one section balancing another, by laws not only of musical form as usually obeyed but also by psychological and organic growth and the logic of contrast. This gargantuan first movement of the Third Symphony is truly well shaped, with natural and inevitable sequences: Chaos at the beginning is changed to cosmos.

In all the time we've spent with "this gargantuan first movement" of Mahler 3, I wonder how many listeners would have thought to describe it as "truly well shaped, with natural and inevitable sequences." Oh, I'm sure Mahler would have agreed, would probably have accepted this as a description of all the music of his he considered "finished." He also came to accept, as we know from that confident yet forlorn quote, "My time will yet come," that audiences would eventually catch up. Which has indeed happened. It just took longer than I imagine he expected. Nowadays Mahler 3, for so long thought of as a near-impossible and pointless challenge for symphony orchestras, is played by every orchestra -- not necessarily played effectively, but played.

Granted, there's not a lot of "chaos" in Brahms's music suitable for conversion to "cosmos." Brahms and Mahler weren't, after all, the same composer. Brahms took as his subject matter a pretty full range of the human experience, and worked tirelessly on the ways he could embody it in music. Mahler had the advantage, and perhaps challenge, of coming onto the scene later, when the world was ready -- he thought! -- for music to set its sights bigger and wider and more diverse, more everything.

At the same time Mahler had access to sheer beauty in a way that only Schubert could rival (think of "Urlicht," the radiant alto setting from Des Knaben Wunderhorn which sets the stage for the grand finale of the Resurrection Symphony). In addition, for all Mahler's command of musical tragedy, he was the genuinely wittiest composer the classical world has produced (think of "Father Anthony's Fish Sermon," a very different Des Knaben Wunderhorn settting).


I CAN'T HELP THINKING MAHLER HAD THE ANDANTE OF
BRAHMS 1 SOMEWHERE IN HIS CREATIVE IMAGINATION . . .

. . . when he created the other symphonic Andante we heard at the top of this post: the Andante moderato of Mahler 6, what I often think of as perhaps the most beautiful movement the composer ever wrote, and as beautiful as anything anyone ever wrote. Which, come to think of it, is the same thing I've been known to say about the Andante sostenuto of Brahms 1. I don't know, maybe you won't hear the connection. I'm not going to try to analyze or explain it. I'd rather just let the music sing for itself.

To this end, I've assembled four sets of performances pairing the two Andantes. Before we hear them, let me make clear that I'm not suggesting these two great composers were creative twins. For one thing, taking into consideration all the symphonic slow movements Mahler composed, in particular those that figure in an old-style "middle movement" structural pattern, M6's is the only one I can think of that's at all like Brahms 1. Then again, for as many hauntingly beautiful slow movements as Brahms composed for his symphonies and concertos, this is the only one of his that's quite like this.

What I am trying to suggest is that the two composers had similar understandings about the compositional process, which began with deeper and deeper exploration of their own multitude of musical "voices" and the range of their communicative urgencies and expressive resources, all of which had to be crafted with the most minute attention to detail of every kind, to make the communicative payload as rich and receivable as possible for listeners.

Okay, now let's hear our Brahms-Mahler pairings.

SIR JOHN BARBIROLLI IN VIENNA AND LONDON

Back when the Barbirolli Brahms cycle was on tape, being processed for release, I remember eagerly looking forward to it. Barbirolli and Brahms? What with his Italian heritage and his developed Classical sensibilities, it seemed a natural! And with the Vienna Philharmonic! Wow! At this remove, I chalk the disappointment up to a simple non-meeting of the minds between conductor and orchestra. When Sir John made his debut with the Berlin Phil -- with, of all things, Mahler 9 (which EMI had the good sense to schedule a recording, which still sounds lovely!) -- it seems to have been instant rapport. But they're just different animals, the Vienna Phil and the Berlin Phil. Nevertheless, when it came to the Andante sostenuto of Brahms 1, a piece so squarely in his "can't miss" zone, Sir John couldn't miss.

As for his New Philharmonia recording of Mahler 6: As I've written here before (notably the Mahler 6 post of July 2011, "Is Mahler's Sixth Symphony any more 'tragic' than life itself?"), it sounds better every time I hear it. It may communicate more of the essence(s) of this complex piece than any other performance I've heard.

Brahms 1: ii. Andante sostenuto

Vienna Philharmonic, Sir John Barbirolli, cond. EMI, recorded 1967
Mahler 6: iii. Andante moderato

New Philharmonia Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli, cond. EMI, recorded in Abbey Road Studio No. 1, London, Sept. 26-27, 1969

LEONARD BERNSTEIN AND THE VIENNA PHIL

Unlike Sir John, Lenny B. came to Vienna determined to win the Philharmonic over, and when I think of "later Lenny," it's generally the imbued-with-the-burnished-sound-of-Vienna version I think of.

And that's what we hear here, in both the expansive Brahms 1 Andante and the possibly more expansive Mahler 6 one. I might have happily gone with Lenny's 1967 NY Phil Mahler 6, one of the performances I love most unreservedly from his first recorded Mahler cycle, for Columbia-CBS-Sony; it's just that the 1988 Vienna performance pushes the music further. (Advance notice: We're also going to hear the whole of Mahler 6 from his 1976 Vienna video recording, which kind of combines aspects of the earlier and later versions, with a personality of its own.)

Brahms 1: ii. Andante sostenuto

Gerhart Hetzel, violin; Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded live in the Grosser Saal of the Musikverein, Oct. 3, 1981
Mahler 6: iii. Andante moderato

Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded live in the Grosser Saal of the Musikverein, September 1988

SEIJI OZAWA AND THE BSO

I've probably written too often of my experience stumbling upon Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony about to play Brahms 1 not long after the adjournment of that day's session of my first Annual Meeting of the Music Critics Assocation, during my first and likely only-ever Tanglewood Festival weekend, in 1974. Seiji and his troops must have been deeply involved in preparing the following day's first-ever BSO Schoenberg Gurre-Lieder, which would prove to be one of my life-long great musical experiences. I was unprepared for the effect of the BSO at its refinedly mellifluous best playing the Andante sostenuto in that at-one-with-nature setting. The Brahms 1 they recorded a few years later is pretty special too.

Seiji's seemingly effortless control of large-scale works could hardly have been more to the point than with Mahler, and with the BSO's strong yet beautifully balanced choirs, their recorded Mahler cycle remains singularly satisfying after all these years.

Brahms 1: ii. Andante sostenuto

Joseph Silverstein, violin; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. DG, recorded in Symphony Hall, Apr. 2, 1977
Mahler 6: iii. Andante moderato

Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. Philips, recorded in Symphony Hall, February 1992

KLAUS TENNSTEDT WITH GERMAN, U.K. & U.S. ORCHESTRAS

You'd figure that Klaus T., with all those years he toiled in relative obscurity (internationally speaking) in East Germany, and then the years in West Germany, must have had Brahms in his blood, but to my knowledge he never recorded the First Symphony. With a bit of hunting I turned up this outstanding 1992 live performance, a reunion with the NDR Symphony, whose chief conductor he'd been a decade earlier. It's a tautly vital Brahms 1, with a still full-bodied yet singing Andante sostenuto.

With Mahler 6, I had the opposite problem: too many Tennstedt performances. With no disrespect to the 1983 Mahler 6 in his EMI studio Mahler cycle with the London Philharmonic (I have high regard for the studio cycle), I was all set to go with their more pliant, almost ethereal (yet building to a splendid climax) 1991 live performance as also issued by EMI -- until I remembered the 1986 NY Phil broadcast performance, which turns out to have an Andante sostenuto that's almost lush! (In 1986 this was Zubin Mehta's NY Phil, sounding lovely.) Rather than make myself crazy trying to decide between them, I decided that I'm in charge here and I don't have to decide if I don't wanna!

Brahms 1: ii. Andante sostenuto

NDR (North German Radio) Symphony Orchestra, Klaus Tennstedt, cond. Live performance from the Alte Schloss, Kiel, June 11-12, 1992
Mahler 6: iii. Andante moderato

London Philharmonic Orchestra, Klaus Tennstedt, cond. EMI, recorded live in the Royal Festival Hall, November 1991

New York Philharmonic, Klaus Tennstedt, cond. Live performance from Avery Fisher Hall, Oct. 23, 1986

A QUICK (OR QUICK-AS-POSSIBLE) NOTE ABOUT
THE ORDER OF MAHLER 6'S MIDDLE MOVEMENTS

I'd hoped to steer clear of this contentious, battle-lines-drawn issue, since all but one of the conductors represented in this post follow the "official" sequence of Scherzo before Andante established by the composer while he was preparing the symphony, thereby reversing the order he had theretofore intended -- and butting the pounding driven-ness of the Scherzo directly up against the pounding driven-ness of the opening Allegro energico, offering no relief till we finally make it to the Andante moderato in third position. But the odd conductor out, Charles Mackerras, in the 2002 Mahler 6 with the BBC Philharmonic from which we heard the Andante sostenuto at the top of this post, the "other symphonic adagio" we heard there. You'd think I would have gotten around to mentioning this before now, but there you go.

In an interview in the booklet accompanying his performance, Sir Charles makes what seems to me an all but irrefutable case for Andante-then-Scherzo, but then, my sense of its irrefutability may be connected to the fact this this is also my general preference. A hardy band of outliers have anticipated Sir Charles's preference on records, notably Erich Leinsdorf in his lovely 1965 RCA recording with the BSO. Then again, I see that Maestro Leinsdorf was of a different mind when he conducted the 1983 live performance with the Bavarian Radio Symphony issued by Orfeo (which I haven't heard).


ONE LAST PIECE OF BUSINESS: I'M UNEASY CONSIDERING
THESE ANDANTES DIVORCED FROM THEIR CONTEXTS

So I hope you won't mind if I slip in some performances of their respective complete symphonies.
[NOTE: The Brahms is a straight pickup from the July 23 post.]

BRAHMS: Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68:
i. Un poco sostenuto (A little sustained) -- Allegro
ii. Andante sostenuto
iii. Un poco allegretto e gracioso (A little allegretto and gracious)
iv. Adagio -- Allegro non troppo ma con brio (Not too quick but with brio)


[ii. at 13:59; iii. at 23:21; iv. at 28:03] Vienna Philharmonic, Rafael Kubelik, cond. Decca, recorded in the Sofiensaal, Sept. 23-24, 1957

[ii. at 13:15; iii. at 22:00; iv. at 26:57] Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Heinz Rögner, cond. Weitblick, recorded live in Saal 1 of the Funkhaus Nalepastrasse, East Berlin, June 9-18, 1980

[ii. at 13:21; iii. at 22:49; iv. at 28:31] Italian Radio-Television Symphony Orchestra, Milan, Sergiu Celibidache, cond. Live performance, Mar. 20, 1959

[ii. at 14:29; iii. at 24:51; iv. at 29:59] Vienna Philharmonic, Wilhelm Furtwängler, cond. EMI, recorded live in the Musikvereinssaal, Jan. 27, 1952

We start with two outstanding-in-every-way Brahms Firsts, which -- as much as their histories differ -- are far from mainstream. The Brahms symphony cycle recorded by Kubelik [seen at right c1998] and the Vienna Phil between March 1956 and September 1957 really hasn't gotten the respect it deserves for its deep musical as well as sonic excellence; I find it interesting that Rafael K. seems never have felt a need to rerecord the Brahms symphonies.

The Kubelik-Vienna Brahms cycle (which by the way can be downloaded on Amazon in excellent mp3 sound for a mind-bnumbing $2.76!) would have been one of Decca Records' early "big" projects in the Sofiensaal, the concert and dance hall (built in the 1820s as a steam bath!) freshly converted, with the advent of stereo recording, into the company's new Vienna "home" studio. There over the next three decades Decca's whiz-bang technical team would commit to tape such an abundance of sonically legendary and often musically noteworthy recordings -- most noteworthy, no doubt, the 1959-65 Solti-conducted Ring cycle.

Rögner (1929-2001) is the case of a genuinely top-quality conductor who led a busy career mostly in the media-sheltered shadow of East Germany (it's hard not to think of Klaus Tennstedt, in fact a few years older, 1926-1998, who emerged from a similar GDR bubble to such an acclaimed international career), and is known now mostly thanks to a wealth of live broadcast recordings. (There's a nice 2022 biographical sketch and appreciation by Gregor Tassie on Music Web International.) There's nothing shy or unexpressed in this smartly shaped, dynamic Brahms 1.

For the full grandeur of Brahms 1, you couldn't do much better than the live performances of Celibidache and Furtwängler. The Milan radio-TV orchestra plays its collective heart out for C, and the Vienna Phil is in prime shape for F, in one of his great performances, which suggests not so much "unhurried" as "taking the music as quickly as it will allow."


MAHLER: Symphony No. 6 in A minor:
i. Allegro energico, ma non troppo
ii. Scherzo: Wuchtig (Powerful)
iii. Andante moderato
iv. Finale: Allegro moderato


[ii. at 18:02; 111. at 31:13; iv. at 46:02] Radio Symphony Orchestra Saarbrücken, Günther Herbig, cond. Berlin Classics, recorded live in the Congresshalle, Nov. 26, 1999 (with applause)

[ii. at 18:39; iii. at 30:16; iv. at 44:43] WDR (West German Radio) Symphony Orchestra (Cologne), Dimitri Mitropoulos, cond. Live performance from Cologne, Aug. 31, 1959

[ii. at 21:31; iii. at 34:39; iv. at 51:06] Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG-Unitel, video-recorded live in the Grosser Saal of the Musikverein, Oct. 22-23, 1976

[ii. at 23:50; iii. at 36:49; iv. at 53:09] Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Jascha Horenstein, cond. Live performances from Stockholm Concert Hall, Apr. 15&17, 1966

The Herbig performance is, in general, what we might consider a "quickish" Mahler 6 -- note in particular the more-driving-than-pounding opening Allegro energico; compare Mitropoulos's pacing and weight. Note that Bernstein and Horenstein divide similarly between driving (Bernstein) and pounding (Horenstein) -- L.B. did switch over to "pounding" mode in the 1988 Vienna-DG recording, from which we heard the Andante moderato earlier.

Note too that the longer timings of the Horenstein and Bernstein performances reflect both conductors' observing the exposition repeat. Considering that this is the only symphony after No. 1 where Mahler indicated such a repeat, we ought to take it seriously, I suppose, at least in theory. In practice, though, I wonder. If the performers have found the real life of this section on the first go-through, do we really need to hear it again? And if they haven't, do we want to hear it again?

I'm happy to have the Herbig performance here as a well-brought-off representative of this (overall) lighter-weight approach to Mahler 6. I'm especially happy to have the Horenstein performance here, because even if the Stockholm Philharmonic's playing isn't of the highest virtuoso caliber, the orchestra has certainly absorbed from the conductor a sense of almost unbearable power and urgency. Even among the now-vast field of Mahler 6 recordings, this one stands out for the intensity of its vision of the piece.

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