Gustav Mahler (1860–1911)
Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor (1902)
Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR/Gary Bertini
rec. live, 20 March 1981, Liederhalle, Stuttgart, Germany
Reviewed as download
SWR Music SWR19164CD [68]

There’s an alternative universe where this exciting new release from SWR could have been evaluated as an interesting addendum to Gary Bertini’s Mahler discography. It’s an earlier view of this extraordinary work before the complete cycle he recorded for EMI later in the 1980 and 90s with a different orchestra, the Kölner Rundfunk-Sinfonieorcheste. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that those recordings have acquired an almost legendary status. Tim Parry reviewed the reissued set for Music Web International in 2007 and concluded: ‘As a complete cycle of Mahler symphonies, Bertini’s box is second to none … an essential purchase for all Mahlerians ‘. Gramophone similarly recommended it as the best complete cycle in 2012, and my quick survey of more informal outlets on the web produced similar endorsements. These tantalising tributes however seem to be all we have. The CDs are no longer available, the set cannot be downloaded, nor is it available to stream. On this last possibility, I experienced a real Geisterstadt moment on one of the streaming services where an enthusiast had put together a playlist of the EMI recordings. It sits there forlornly, all its tracks greyed out and, should you attempt to play them, the superbly engineered app which houses it reacts by crashing. I think someone was trying to tell me something.

All of which it seems to me makes this new release more vital, a notable record of a great Mahler conductor working at the very core of the cycle. Tim Parry called Bertini’s approach to the Fifth ‘headlong’ in his review of the EMI set. There are elements of that in this live performance from 1981, but it’s clearly part of a consistent, considered reading, which is in general a little faster than some famous interpretations, but not excessively so. There is also no obvious sense of this being in any way a clinically calculated performance. Rather it sounds as if Bertini has looked carefully at the many individual tempo markings and thought about what they might mean in the overall context of the work and used them to inform a dramaturgically plausible exposition of the score. I use that last term advisedly. Whether Bertini had some secret, internal narrative in mind I don’t know, but the whole unfolds with the force of a five-act drama, which reaches a chaotic and pivotal point in the third movement Scherzo. I’ve never heard a performance of this work which so organically moves to the dissolution of that Scherzo as if it were an utter inevitability and I have never heard the movement so thrillingly realised as here.

What comes before is very fine. There is a slightly understated feel to the famous Funeral March, which Bertini underpins with complete fidelity to Mahler’s marking of ‘Strict’ so that when the score directs ‘Suddenly faster. Passionate. Wild’, it comes as a shock, regardless of how many times one has heard this movement before. The second movement has an almost playful atmosphere, brilliantly capturing Mahler’s required impetuosity, but which is also rendered with real drive and suspense. After the third movement, the famous Adagietto has a supremely healing quality and the strings of the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart are superb here, a cohesive, almost withdrawn quality to the playing. In the Finale Bertini and the orchestra manage to achieve a genuine Rondo feel and associated joyfulness whilst simultaneously dispatching Mahler’s fugal writing with incision and clarity. It’s prodigious music making.

I’ve already singled out the strings, but I was struck by the extremely high quality of the orchestral playing overall here and no allowances need to be made for this being a live performance – there’s nothing I heard which I wished could have been patched in the studio. Equally, one isn’t aware of the audience intruding at any point. The recorded sound is excellent.

I’ve always loved the recording of this work from Klaus Tennstedt and the LPO, made as part of their complete cycle on EMI (Warner Classics 3615722). It’s a broader, much more obviously emotional reading than Bertini’s. I found hearing the two in close succession a really instructive demonstration of the interpretative possibilities of this magnificent composition. Ironically, it was the existence of the Tennstedt complete cycle on EMI (recorded at the same time as Bertini’s) and its attendant critical fame which led Tim Parry to reason that EMI were happy to see Bertini’s ‘fade into the deletions list’ before the reissue he reviewed. I wonder what the reason is this time. It’s a shame. Not so much because having heard this recording I feel I need another Bertini Mahler 5, although I’d be delighted, but more because I’d be fascinated to hear what he was doing with the other symphonies around the same time. (For completeness I should mention that some of Bertini’s later Mahler cycle with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra on fontec are available to purchase as downloads but the Fifth isn’t among them.) Let’s hope the EMI set sees the light of day again. In the meantime, SWR have done us all a service with this essential release.

Dominic Hartley

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