Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Symphony No. 9
Minnesota Orchestra/Osmo Vänskä
rec. 2022, Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis, USA
Reviewed as a digital download from a press preview
BIS BIS2476 SACD [82]
In a 1971 filmed rehearsal of Mahler’s Ninth with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein said:
“I have tried in the past in performing this and other Mahler symphonies to underplay early climaxes, for the sake of my own sanity and for the orchestra, so they don’t give their all and have nothing left. But it is impossible with Mahler – here [in the first movement]you have to give everything you have to bar 39 – and then again 8 bars later.”
Mahler’s score has nothing more to say at these points beyond new dynamics of sf and ff. He saves his mit höchster Gewalt (“with utmost force”) for the movement’s much later climax, at two bars before Fig.15.
BBC Music Magazine made this disc its recording of the month for July 2023. The reviewer writes “In the […] outer movements Vänskä’s approach is different from the kind of hyper-intense psychodrama associated with Leonard Bernstein”, and praises Vänskä for “allowing the music’s expressive extremes to speak for themselves without the need for exaggeration [my italics]”.
David Phipps’s review on this site also notes Vänskä’s telative restraint. He finds it less exciting than Ricardo Chailly’s 2004 recording with Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra on Decca: ‘In Amsterdam these [moments] are all rightly exaggerated [my italics again] completely beyond the bounds of “good taste”’.
Both reviews describe the performance accurately but differ in judging the role of “exaggeration” – or let us just call it heightened expressiveness – in interpretation.
This is the great divide in Mahler performance, perhaps especially of the Ninth Symphony. Or maybe not a divide but what I call the “Boulez-to-Bernstein spectrum”. The great Frenchman’s analytically cool approach at one extreme contrasts with Bernstein’s “giving everything you have”. Both can satisfy, and Boulez’s Mahler is affecting enough for many. It is clear that Vänskä is somewhere in the middle.
In the Andante comodo first movement, Vänskä’s timing of 27:57 is matched by numerous others, give or take a minute or so. A minute either way does not change the feeling of such a long movement but outliers do. Oddly enough, the two first-movement tempo extremes in modern recordings I know are live performances by the Philharmonia Orchestra in London’s Royal Festival Hall. Esa-Pekka Salonen (review) took only 25:44 in March 2009. Lorin Maazel (review) was the slowcoach at 35:48 in October 2011 – and 95:11 for the whole work spread over two CDs with no coupling. John Quinn was cool about Salonen, echoing something of that interpretive divide; Dan Morgan was more welcoming to Maazel. Given London’s parsimonious rehearsal time, one has to admire the flexibility of the Philharmonia players switching between these interpretations!
Vänskä is also in the middle in interpretation of the first movement in terms of the distinction I made earlier. He is steadily expressive but rarely searing; there is fire at times but hardly incandescence. There is, though, a welcome sense of a narrative line, of each episode necessarily following its predecessor. The same could be said of the Adagio finale, when Vänskä’s 23:39 is swifter than standard. Even Salonen takes 24:03, while Maazel needs 29:09 and Bernstein (in his Amsterdam Concertgebouw version) 29:45. Even so, there is as much expressiveness as the molto espressivo marking requires, if not that “exaggeration” which some interpreters practice and some listeners admire, even require.
The score’s markings are generally well observed here. Even if they are adjusted, that is what Mahler would have done had he ever heard this work and made his usual many post-performance changes. Mahler’s Ninth, not premiered till after his death, is in that sense an unfinished symphony (if hardly as much so as the Tenth). The intensity of the playing in the valedictory finale is high enough, but there is no sense of neurosis. By the time the finale reaches its “time-stands-still” coda, with Vänska’s haltingly whispered envoi, we know we have been on a journey of the utmost significance to its creator.
The two inner movements are splendidly realised. The rhythmic profile of the Ländler is emphasised just to the point of making the Lederhosen-clad stamping properly parodistic. The winds and horns (such trills!) do all that the conductor asks; they have been collaborators for nearly twenty years, after all. The Minnesota Orchestra play impressively all along. The athletic Rondo-Burleske pulls no punches in the fast, aggressive music, with clarity of articulation in the bustling polyphony, and an exhilarating edge-of-the-seat coda. There is affectionate playing too in the less frenetic central passages of the movement.
The recording is up to the high standard expected of an SACD from BIS, with good surround ambience, and a tactile quality to the realism of instrumental solos. Jeremy Barham, a noted Mahler scholar, wrote a very good booklet essay.
So this version joins the – admittedly absurdly long – “short list” of fine Mahler Ninth recordings which collectors should hear. It is often said that the work has been “lucky on disc”, with so many superb accounts. I like to think that is to do with the score’s existential truths close to the composer. That makes orchestra and conductor rise to their best, or even beyond, when bringing their skills and insights to bear upon it. The home listener has a large choice, probably confusing for anyone new to the work. But no novice – what an experience awaits them – will be misled about the power and character of this score if this issue is their introduction to it.
Roy Westbrook
Previous reviews: David Phipps (April 2023) ~ David McDade (July 2023)
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