Spun off from today's main post: All of Mahler 5!

Today's main post, "We hear the kinship between the Adagietto of Mahler 5 and 'Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,' right? How about the differences?," is here.




The legendary Adolf Herseth, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's trumpet principal for an amazing 53 years (1948-2001, plus three more in "emeritus" status!), launches the opening "Funeral March" of Mahler 5 in recordings made near the beginning and end of Georg Solti's 22-year tenure as music director -- the first in Chicago's Medinah Temple in March 1970, the second a CSO-on-tour performance recorded live in Vienna's Sofiensaal Nov. 30, 1990 (where you'll note that Sir Georg, as he'd been since 1972, is much more attentive to Mahler's dynamic marking of p [soft] for the first two bars, with sudden sf attacks just on the downbeats).

"Those closest to Mahler found the Fifth Symphony a particularly speaking likeness of his personality, and he too may therefore have wanted to make it as accurate as possible a self-portrait of himself in a particularly happy period of his life."

-- William Mann, from a booklet note on Mahler 5 (©1969)

by Ken

As I wrote in today's main post, "We hear the kinship between the Adagietto of Mahler 5 and 'Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,' right? How about the differences?":

DON'T TELL ANYONE, BUT REMEMBER HOW I SAID
THAT WE REALLY NEED TO HEAR ALL OF MAHLER 5?

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. But for now, here it is.

No, here it is, all spun off!

We're not going to attempt anything fancy here. The idea is just to be able to hear the whole of Mahler 5. As I noted in today's main post, as quoted above, the audio clips were all made and ready to roll: of two performances, a 2002 live one by Lorin Maazel and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the 1947 recording by Bruno Walter and the New York Philharmonic that features in today's earlier post. We're just going to hear them part by part, each part prefaced by some helpful guidance from critic William Mann (from the same booklet note on the symphony which is quoted from above).


WE'LL START WITH A QUICK OVERVIEW FROM W.M.

Mahler's division of the Fifth Symphony into three parts but five movements is not one of convenience alone: the first and second movements are materially connected, and the finale takes some of its subordinate themes from the Adagietto; the central Scherzo stands alone, longer than the rest, effectively carrying the main symphonic weight of the piece. This Scherzo is in D major, so is the Finale, and it would be right, I think, to feel the whole symphony as being in D major. Part I of the symphony begins in C-sharp minor and ends in A minor: its two movements form a sort of prologue to the rest of the symphony, in which Mahler postulates a series of pessimistic ideas and argues them symphonically until they seem to be conquered by the bright, clean light of D major which is glimpsed in the second movement and emerges with the scherzo. -- W.M.

NOW LET'S HEAR THE SYMPHONY!

We hear the kinship between the Adagietto of Mahler 5 and "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen," right? How about the differences?

Including an unflinching glimpse into the rarely
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?

Preview: And now for something pretty different -- Beethoven's NEXT symphonic slow movement

Leonard Bernstein conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in the second movement of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony.

by Ken

I promised a companion piece to the one we heard in last night's preview, the flowing but muscular slow movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony). And pieces don't come much more companionable than Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, written in such quick succession that there must have been overlap in the composer's imagining of these two works, which nevertheless -- or perhaps for that very reason -- are staggeringly different works. But they came into the world together:

The Fifth Symphony was premiered at a mammoth concert at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna consisting entirely of Beethoven premieres, and directed by Beethoven himself. The concert went for more than four hours. The two symphonies appeared on the program in reverse order: the Sixth was played first, and the Fifth appeared in the second half. The program was as follows:

The Sixth Symphony
Aria: "Ah, perfido," Op. 65
The Gloria movement of the Mass in C major
The Fourth Piano Concerto (played by Beethoven himself)
[Intermission]
The Fifth Symphony
The Sanctus and Benedictus movements of the C major Mass
A solo piano improvisation played by Beethoven
The Choral Fantasy

Yikes!


FOR TONIGHT'S PREVIEW --