Déjà Review: this review was first published in March 2005 and the recording is still available.

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Symphony No. 8 in E flat
Christine Brewer (soprano); Magna Peccatrix; Soile Isokoski (soprano) Una Poenitentiam; Juliane Banse (soprano) Mater Gloriosa; Birgit Remmert (mezzo-soprano) Mulier Samaritana; Jane Henschel (mezzo-soprano) Maria Aegyptiaca; Jon Villers (tenor) Doctor Marianus; David Wilson-Johnson (baritone) Pater Ecstaticus; John Relyea (bass) Pater Profundus
City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus; London Symphony Chorus; City of Birmingham Symphony Youth Chorus; Toronto Children’s Chorus
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle
rec. live, 5-9 June 2004, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, UK
Originally reviewed as EMI Classics release
Warner Classics 5579452 [78]

There was a time when the ambition of any young conductor was to first get a recording contract and then be allowed to record a complete Beethoven cycle. Today just getting the contract is the major achievement but, contract signed, it seems to be the Mahler cycle that comes before the Beethoven.

With this recording Simon Rattle completes his Mahler cycle for EMI. I am sure that when he recorded the Deryck Cooke version of the Tenth with the Bournemouth Symphony in 1980 the young pretender had no idea that he would, twenty-five years later, have racked up the whole canon, including a second recording of the Tenth with the Berlin Philharmonic of whom he would, by then, be Chief Conductor. So this was not a “conscious” cycle, rather it was one to be made up as it went along.

While EMI’s publicity makes much of the “three cities” represented by it, the recordings have followed as individual projects and, more interestingly, projects that have represented the rise and rise of Simon Rattle: blue-eyed boy of British music, future Knight of the Realm and all-round glittering hope that is certainly showing fulfilment. Now with this Mahlerian finale back in Birmingham where it all properly got into its stride it seems a good idea briefly to take stock of these steps in the irresistible rise of Rattle.

The first thing that needs to be said is that it is surprising just how inconsistent the cycle now really seems; a work still in progress. This is over and above the fact that no conductor has ever conducted all the symphonies with equal consistency and irrespective of my personal predilections for Mahler interpretation. Neither do I think it has anything to do with the fact that some of the recordings come from early in Rattle’s career and so might repay re-recording now. His interpretation of the Tenth, for example, the only one he has re-recorded, is largely unchanged between his first recording in Bournemouth and its remake in Berlin. Indeed there are some grounds to believe that the first version is superior even though the second is still mightily impressive. I think the fault, if fault it really is, lies with Rattle himself and his own particular approach to Mahler. When it all works it works superbly. When it doesn’t the results are mildly disappointing though never without merit. A case of comparing the very good with the outstanding.

The cycle as a whole is far from being a central one, therefore. No shame in that and certainly no reason to pass it by. Mahler is nothing if not a conductor’s composer par excellence. So this is a cycle to be picked and chosen but certainly one that deserves attention because Rattle’s love and knowledge and insight into Mahler’s music shines through, even though there are times when he is his own, and Mahler’s, bane. Must-haves, for me, would be the Second, Sixth and Tenth in either version. These three should be on every Mahlerites already creaking shelf. Fascinating but flawed are the Seventh in a slightly cramped “live” recording made at Aldeburgh and the Fifth which, for me, exposed Rattle’s propensity to “micro-manage” the music into submission in a symphony I have never felt he was entirely at ease with. To be avoided are the Fourth which is too mannered where it should flow, and the Ninth which suffers from too wide a dynamic range in the recording and not enough experience of conductor and orchestra together. Rattle certainly needs to re-record the Ninth. The First and the Third are well recorded and well played, good choices, but they are not in the “killer” class of the competitors, old or new. The “Das Lied von der Erde” still impresses greatly with its focus and its crystal clarity, but there are more involved versions to be had and in that work involvement is crucial.

Which brings me, at last, to the new Eighth and let me say straight away that I would not include this in the “must-haves” rather in the “fascinating but flawed” group. Even though, as is so often with Rattle, the flaws are not without interest in themselves, as we shall see. You will certainly hear as good a set of soloists since Solti’s matchless constellation on Decca. The choruses are superbly prepared and capable of anything Rattle asks of them – and in faster passages he asks a lot – and they have depth and resonance when needed. The orchestra plays well also, especially in the solos and the chamber-like, pared-down, passages. But I think they could do with more critical mass in the closing peroration and at the climax to Part I particularly. The recorded balance is almost ideal between chorus and orchestra although the general sound picture is closer-in than I think benefits this work. Your seat is somewhere at the front of the first circle. There were times when I longed for the balance of the Royal Albert Hall from Rattle’s 2002 Proms performance with the National Youth Orchestra. However, this does mean that the particular character of Rattle’s approach to the work is heard to good effect and so I think it suits this performance very well.

In both Parts, but most especially in Part I, Rattle seems more aware than most conductors of the symphonic aspect of this work which might, for some people, be rather constricting and lead to an impression of slight stiffness in music that needs to burgeon. He presses forward from the very start with just enough weight to give power where needed, but this is certainly a great start with real propulsion. He holds back imperceptibly in the passages for the soloists but there is always that undertow drawing us on. In the crucial double fugue at “Accende Lumen Sensibus” the choruses perform miracles of ensemble with every line clear; a tribute to the engineers as well as the singers. The climax at the recapitulation of “Veni Creator Spiritus” sees Rattle applying the brakes for dramatic effect and this too comes off well. However I mentioned earlier the lack of real critical mass by the orchestra at climaxes and here this aspect did disappoint me. Horenstein on BBC Legends (BBCL 4001-7) has maintained a slightly slower overall tempo for the whole movement and doesn’t need to slow down so much when he reaches this moment. That aspect, the acoustic of the Royal Albert Hall, more choristers, and an orchestra that has that very critical mass missing from the CBSO delivers a climax here that could remove the cladding from a nuclear reactor, so shattering is the Part I climax in that great recording, something beyond the scope of Rattle’s performance. At the end of Part I Rattle maintains his fleet tempo to the end where Wyn Morris in his old Symphonica recording broadens very slightly to shattering effect and where Horenstein with his modular tempo simply holds on to what he has all through maintained and leaves us gasping and his audience applauding. No audience applause for Rattle and his performers, by the way, but more of that later.

In a recent interview Simon Rattle talked of what had brought him at last to the Eighth Symphony mentioning in particular “really going back to Bach and learning once again to fall in love with counterpoint”. This aspect is certainly in evidence in Part I and does make a positive contribution in terms of clarifying the lines, as I think I have indicated. However I think in Part II, where the Bachian impression seems in even greater evidence, it starts to become a disadvantage. Did Mahler really want Part II to have so much of a Bach cantata about it as I think it does? Listen in the orchestral prelude to the woodwinds’ contributions and to the pizzicati and then think of Bach and you will surely hear what I mean. Certainly I think that the fleeter tempo approach that is carried on from Part I does rather “dry up” this late romantic setting of Faust even though it knits it together structurally to a greater degree than usual. Call me old fashioned, but I think both Goethe and Mahler need a lot more elbow room than Rattle gives them in Part II. I’m all too well aware of each compartmentalised episode coming and going and not leaving very much of an impression which cannot be right. The symphonic imperative is in evidence again but here I think it just inappropriate, at least to this degree. There are virtues, of course. I love the passages for the children, and the three women have a chaste and limpid quality. But contrast these with passages when the music demands more heft, more romantic weight and old world passion. There is insufficient weight in the orchestral prelude when it demands it, for example, and the two great interventions by the tenor as Doctor Marianus are too contained where they should storm the very heavens. So there is little rapture in “Blicket auf” and the sheer effrontery of “Hochste Herrscherin der Weit” is only approximated. But what I miss most of all in Part II is a sense of occasion from this most public of Mahler’s works. A feeling that I am participating in a piece of theatre, a communal experience. Listening to recordings by Horenstein, Stokowski and Scherchen I think I get a whiff of what it must have been like to sit in the exhibition hall in Munich in 1910 when Mahler himself gave the performance of his life and that’s what I really want.

The new Rattle recording is flagged as a “live” recording but you would never know from listening to it and the three dates indicate a patching together of three different performances. No applause at the end of each part, no sense of an audience present, not even a sense of performers living through the drama of delivering this most complex of works in front of paying customers. For me “live” should always mean “live” with all the positive elements that brings to those truly “live” recordings I have already mentioned. Rattle’s recording should therefore be considered a studio recording but since I’ve heard even studio recordings which give a greater sense of a “live” experience – Morris, Solti, Bernstein, Tennstedt – it is even harder to know how to advise as to whether you need to buy this recording in particular over any other, but I must try. However, I would point you to my survey of Mahler recordings where my preferences for recordings of the Eighth are dealt with in detail.

What we are presented with here is, I am sure, the conception of Mahler’s Eighth Simon Rattle meant us to hear. By that I mean any shortcomings that I may find in it are certainly not as the result of any shortcomings on Rattle’s part. This is what he meant. It is a lean and direct Eighth, one that fits easily on to a single disc. Not one without expressive points but one which seems intent on a Bach-like clarity and sense of direction and structure as an imperative. This accounts for its apparent lack of some grandeur and that all-important sense of occasion when compared with more familiar versions. Especially those which genuinely capture the “live” experience in which this work surely needs to be heard best. I was not especially moved or inspired. Rather I was absorbed by a different, very refreshing approach. In the end that makes it recommendable as an alternative, if not cherishable as a must-have.

Tony Duggan

See also John Quinn’s review for a different view

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