Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Symphony No. 1 in D (Titan) (1887-1888, 1893, 1898)
Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York/Bruno Walter
rec. 1954, Carnegie Hall, New York, USA
Pristine Audio PASC735 [48]

The sound’s the thing with Pristine Audio’s resuscitations, and Andrew Rose’s remastering is first-class. The orchestral image is forward and “present”, with solo winds emerging vividly from the sonic frame. The tuttis are opaque – “distortion” of a sort – but I didn’t catch much timbral discoloration You can hear some Carnegie Hall ambience in the general pauses, and, while Mr. Rose supposedly hasn’t applied his “Ambient Stereo” techniques to this recording, it suggests some directionality: the bassi that start the Scherzo emerge distinctly from the left channel. There is one sonic anomaly: at the start of the Funeral March, as we’ll see.

Bruno Walter’s stereo Mahler First – with the “Columbia Symphony Orchestra,” a nom de disque for a California-based pickup orchestra – used to hold pride of place with some listeners, which I never quite understood. For me, its flabby Finale alone ruled it out of court, and probably would have done so even compared to Horenstein’s hard-fought monaural account, with a game if scrappy “Vienna Pro Musica.” (The latter, incidentally, sounds quite vivid on the Vox CD.)

By contrast, in this older concert recording, Walter displays an almost palpable energy and involvement. If he would phrase some lyrical themes – like the Finale‘s second group – more expansively in the remake, his no-nonsense, incisive rhythmic address holds listener interest as the stereo version rarely did. We’ve heard this full-blooded manner even in the late recordings – his stereo Brahms First has a similar white-hot intensity – but he didn’t always do it.

The Finale, however, while far better than its thudding remake, remains problematic: Walter’s handling of tempi is questionable and uncertain. After a blazing introduction, he half-heartedly tries to slow down the first theme, but the orchestra doesn’t, quite: after a couple of bars’ tension, the tempo settles at something close to the original. (He did succeed in the remake, unfortunately.)  Later, there’s a soft fanfare for which almost everyone slows down – Horenstein and, of all people, Carlos Païta show how much better it works in tempo – but Walter literally grinds to a halt.

In the first two movements, Walter’s full-bodied, hell-for-leather approach took me by surprise, though he allows passages of runny, even slapdash ensemble, as at the end of the first-movement exposition. The conductor skips the repeat, as was his wont; he doesn’t give any particular significance to the quiet fanfare here, but it’s good and emphatic as it launches the return. In the vigorous Scherzo, the various elements keep getting slightly misaligned; he stays “quasi a tempo” for the Trio, phrasing it with a nice lift.

At the start of the Funeral March, the bassi and tympani sound oddly diffuse and resonant – I’ve not heard that effect on the low instruments in Carnegie, either before or after renovations – but it’s steady and deliberate, building inexorably. The oboe double-dots its mournful tune, and it prances a bit. The klezmer passages and other parodic bits are restrained; no wild, garish speedups as practiced by Bernstein and his imitators. The Wayfarer episode sings sweetly.

Walter completists and those studying the conductor will want at least to hear this, and it’s an artifact of a time when Mahler’s music hadn’t fully invaded the public consciousness. But veteran collectors can safely skip it: sorry.

Stephen Francis Vasta
stevedisque.wordpress.com/blog

Previous review: Ralph Moore (February 2025)