Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Symphony No. 7 in E minor (1904-05)
Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks / Sir Simon Rattle
rec. live, 6-8 November 2024, Isarphilharmonie im Gasteig, Munich
BR Klassik 900225 [76]
My first exposure to this recording came when, with colleagues, I listened to the second movement in the MusicWeb Listening Studio. We were unanimously and seriously impressed by the standard of both the performance and the engineering (report). Naturally, that made me keen to hear the rest of Simon Rattle’s most recent account of Mahler’s Seventh.
Rattle has quite a long history with this work. He recorded it as long ago as 1991, during his days in Birmingham. I believe I’m right in saying that he had been dissatisfied with a previous attempt at a studio recording so EMI agreed to record the work live in Snape Maltings at the Aldeburgh Festival. I bought that recording when it was first released and I liked it very much though the sound of the CBSO in full cry seemed to strain the acoustic capacity of the Maltings concert hall at times. Much later, I heard Rattle in the symphony again, this time with the Berlin Philharmonic; that 2016 live performance was bound up in a big box containing all the Mahler symphonies, under a variety of conductors, which the orchestra issued on its own label (review). I think the CBSO recording is now only available as part of another boxed set, this time issued by Warner Classics, which includes all of Rattle’s Mahler recordings for EMI. So, if you want to hear Rattle in this symphony, this BR Klassik recording starts off with a considerable advantage in being contained on a single CD. In passing, I seemed to recall Rattle conducted the symphony towards the end of his time as Music Director of the LSO and when I checked on Seen and Heard I found that my memory was correct and that the performance in question had made a strong impression on Colin Clarke (review).
As I’ve commented before when reviewing recordings of the Seventh, this was the Mahler symphony with which I struggled for some time. Eventually, though, it ‘clicked’ and I came to realise what a great achievement it is. The score charts a progression from the darkness of the opening – Mahler seemingly not quite able to cast off the mood in which the Sixth concluded (he began the composition of the Seventh while finalising the Sixth) – to the jubilant abandon of the finale. Along the way, there are, as so often with Mahler, countless cross-references to previous symphonies; very often these references are as fleeting as a one- or two-bar snippet. Most remarkable of all is the scoring; I’m inclined to think that the Seventh is the most richly inventive of all the scores he’d composed to date. As a listener, I find the scoring absolutely fascinating but one must acknowledge that the symphony represents a formidable challenge to both conductors and orchestra: the late Michael Steinberg has related that he heard the work for the first time in 1948 when Dimitri Mitropoulos conducted the New York Philharmonic; afterwards, he was shocked to hear some of the players express “loathing” for the music as they left Carnegie Hall. We may wonder if the notoriously hard-bitten players in the orchestra at that time were reflecting the difficulties they’d encountered in the work. Let it be said at once that the members of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (BRSO) give no hint of problems in this music, which they play with consummate virtuosity.
Rattle leads an engrossing performance of the huge first movement. The march rhythms and dark colourings register in an ideal fashion and I find his tempo selections thoroughly convincing. As an example, at 4:56 we hear a richly romantic melody on the violins; the music invites lingering, which is what many conductors do – to varying degrees – but Rattle respects Mahler’s wishes and maintains momentum; the effect is excellent. A little later, there’s a slower episode (from around 10:40 to 13:41), prefaced by little trumpet fanfares. Here, Rattle does slow down, of course, and in this episode, I was struck by the tremendous subtlety of the BRSO’s playing; conductor and orchestra do full justice to the mixture of nostalgia and fantasy in the music. The movement as a whole teems with incident and the present performance enables us to savour all those incidents and points of detail, yet the performance never loses sight of the big picture. The performance achieves a huge final climax (20:26) before a coda of great urgency. This is a terrific account of the movement.
Nachtmusik I was the subject of scrutiny in the Listening Studio session, already referenced. Returning to the movement since then, I’ve been no less impressed. The playing of the BRSO is razor sharp, as is Rattle’s conducting, and the performance underlines the extent to which Mahler’s imagination runs riot in these pages. Every accent imparts character into the music and I love the tangy woodwind playing. In the last couple of minutes, especially, Mahler’s writing for the woodwind is amazingly piquant; here, his invention gets the absolute precision and character that it needs if it’s to make its full effect.
More feverish imagination is in evidence in the central Scherzo. Here, Mahler conjures up all sorts of aural images of scary creatures of the night. Rattle and his players give a marvellously acute reading of the movement. Rattle paces the music ideally; his tempo is swift, but not so fast that any detail is blurred or skated over. I love the energy of this performance.
Nachtmusik II oozes character here; the performance is idiomatic and has just the right degree of charm. The delicacy with which the BRSO plays really serves the music well and Mahler’s inspired addition of guitar and mandolin makes a telling contribution but is in no way over-emphasised.
The Rondo-Finale fairly erupts, shattering the gentle ambience with which the fourth movement ended. That effect is surely what Mahler intended. In this movement Mahler is in blatant, extrovert mood; Rattle and his orchestra go for it, and they’re surely right to do so. The opening is fast and exuberant, setting the tone for a rendition of the finale that sweeps all before it. Each variant of the Rondo brings a new dimension to the movement and in this performance, one is really conscious of this. Of course, not everything is an ebullient celebration; there are epidotes which call for delicacy and the BRSO delivers that delicacy in spades; this is a highly nuanced account of the movement. At times you wonder if Rattle is pushing the orchestra to its limits but then you realise that those limits have not been reached; this orchestra is up for every challenge that either composer or conductor puts their way. As the symphony hurtles to its conclusion there’s an ostentatious reappearance of the cowbells which we first met, adding a distant nostalgic memory, in the first movement. Here, the bells are loud and proud, just adding to the fun. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more exhilarating performance of this finale. My only question is how on earth the BR Klassik engineers successfully edited out the ovation which surely greeted the live performances.
This is a compelling, magnificent performance of Mahler’s Seventh, which enthralled me from start to finish. I have another performance on the BR Klassik label in the form of a 2011 performance in which the BRSO was conducted by Bernard Haitink, a conductor whose work in Mahler (and much else) I greatly respect (review). I made one or two comparisons but soon gave up; the comparisons were entirely in Rattle’s favour. Haitink adopts a wise – but arguably too cautious – approach to the symphony but his reading, though excellently played by the BRSO, is too sober. The only recent recording which I have heard which runs this new Rattle version close is the 2015 performance conducted by Iván Fischer. I greatly admired that recording when it first came out, as did my colleague Dan Morgan (review). I haven’t altered that opinion, though I see that Lee Denham was a bit more muted in his welcome when he discussed the performance in his survey of recordings of the symphony. Though Fischer gives Rattle a run for his money, I think the newcomer is a terrific addition to the discography of Mahler’s Seventh and I unhesitatingly prefer it to the excellent Fischer.
I wonder if Simon Rattle has embarked on a new Mahler cycle in Munich. BR Klassik have already issued a live performance of the Sixth, recorded in September 2023 (review) and an account of the Ninth which dates from November 2021 (review). There’s also a version of Das Lied von der Erde, which was recorded at concerts as long ago as January 2018 (review). I hope there will be more Mahler recordings from this source in due time.
Inspirationally conducted, fantastically played and stunningly recorded, this new Mahler Seventh demands the attention of all Mahler devotees.
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