Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, soprano; Hilde Rössl-Majdan,
mezzo soprano; Otto Klemperer, New Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus. HDTT (2
discs).
By John J. Puccio
The German-born American conductor Otto Klemperer
(1885-1973) was one of the few people recording well into the stereo age who
actually knew and worked with Gustav Mahler. And of all the Mahler recordings
he made, he apparently thought most highly of the Second Symphony, which
he recorded several times. Among these recordings, it is probably this 1961-62
release that stands out for the excellence of both its performance and its
sound, so it’s good to hear it so well remastered by HDTT (High Definition Tape
Transfers).
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) wrote his Symphony No. 2 between 1888 and 1894 and premiered it in 1895. Because it references his personal view of the virtues of an afterlife and a resurrection, the composer called it the “Resurrection Symphony.” In a survey of conductors carried out by the BBC Music Magazine, it was voted the fifth-greatest symphony of all time, and one can understand why it was so popular in Mahler’s day and in our own.
Incidentally, I’ve mentioned before that Mahler has always been popular, but his popularity appeared to soar to even greater heights at the beginning of the stereo age. Why? One may wonder. I’ve argued that Mahler’s music is filled with so much hustle and bustle, so much diversity and variation, so many instruments, so many highs and lows, and so many notes (thank you, Amadeus) that it made a perfect vehicle for showing off one’s new stereo rig. And with the stereo age came new proponents of Mahler, not only Klemperer but conductors like Leonard Bernstein, Georg Solti, and Bernard Haitink. By the early Eighties, Mahler was so well known to the general public that a movie like Educating Rita (Julie Walters, Michael Caine) could have a character use the wonderfully pretentious line “Wouldn’t you must die without Mahler?” and get away with it.
The first movement Mahler completed he initially designed as a stand-alone symphonic poem called “Funeral Rites” (“Totenfeier”). It took him the next five years or so to decide if he wanted to open a symphony with it. For the première, Mahler drew up a program for the music (which he later withdrew), saying the first movement represented a funeral and asking the question, Is there life after death? The music is appropriately somber and solemn, which is exactly how Klemperer plays it. While Klemperer’s contemporary, Bruno Walter, who also worked with Mahler, may have emphasized more of the music’s plainness, Klemperer underscores more of its contrasts. This is never more evident than in the first movement, which is like a small symphony (or tone poem, as I mentioned) unto itself.
The second movement is relatively simple and slow, a recollection of happy times in the life of the deceased. It is in the form of a delicate Ländler, and Mahler marked it “Sehr gemächlich. Nie eilen” (Very leisurely. Never rush). Klemperer was often criticized for being too slow and ponderous, but this is an overstatement. He did often take his time molding the musical structure of a work, but he was seldom ponderous. Here his conducting is exactly as Mahler instructs: leisurely and never rushed. It’s beautiful.
The third movement, a scherzo, reflects on life as a series of meaningless activities. How meaningless? Mahler called the climax either a "cry of despair" or a "death shriek." Mahler based it on a satirical poem about St. Anthony preaching to fish in a river, the fish comprehending none of it. Klemperer gives it the appropriate nuances to create an atmosphere of pointless desperation while still providing a most entertaining listening experience. I’ve always found this movement the most typically “Mahlerian” in the symphony, filled with pathos, yes, but a degree of playful, ironic joy as well. No one does it better than Klemperer.
Mahler marked the fourth movement "Urlicht" (Primal Light), the tempo “Very solemn, but simple.” It concerns a wish for release from a meaningless life, “relief from worldly woes.” That sounds pretty bleak, I know, yet in Klemperer’s hands it is enchanting and endlessly fascinating. The solo singing that opens the movement is delicate in the extreme, and for a change it isn’t recorded so closely that the singer dominates the rest of the score.
After such inspired gloom, the final movement gives us,
after more cries of despair, Mahler’s hope for renewal, resurrection, and
everlasting life. Mahler knew from the beginning that he wanted a big,
hope-filled choral finale, so he chose the opening lines from the poem “Die
Auferstehung” (“The Resurrection”) “Rise Again, yes, rise again” by Friedrich
Gottlieb Klopstock to begin the movement and filled in further lines of his own
devising, all accompanied by the full orchestra and chorus. It’s not exactly
Beethoven’s Ninth, but it is all Mahler, complete with the Dies irae
(the “Day of Wrath”). It’s also all Klemperer, who leaves his stamp of
monumental authority all over it.
To sum up, you won’t find a better Mahler Second that this one by Otto Klemperer, both for its performance and sound. Klemperer was a master of subtlety and structure, and he brings out all the gradations and grandeur of the music and does so with consummate ease.
EMI producers Walter Legge, Walter Jellinek, and Suvi Raj Grubb and engineers Douglas Larter, Robert Gooch, and Francis Dillnutt recorded the music in November 1961 and March 1962 at Kingsway Hall, London. HDTT transferred the recording from an Angel 4-track tape. The total length of the performance is a little less than eighty minutes, and both EMI and currently Warner Classics fit it (barely) to a single disc. HDTT, however, chose to spread it over two discs, with the first two movements on the first disc and the final three movements on the second. In fairness, HDTT mark each section of the finale with its own track, so maybe that spacing accounts for the needed extra room. I dunno.
The Klemperer disc I had on hand for comparison was a Japanese import, very good and currently hard to find at a reasonable price (a check of Amazon showed prices from about $25 plus shipping to well over a $100). I put the discs in comparable CD players, adjusted the playback levels, and switched back and forth throughout my listening. The recording has always sounded good but even more so in EMI’s most-recent remastering. The Japanese copy bears a 2006 date but doesn’t say what source Toshiba-EMI used for the disc. When I got it (around the time of its release), I compared it to EMI’s “Great Recordings of the Century” remaster and found the Japanese product slightly clearer than its English counterpart. So, how did this new remaster from HDTT hold up?
The HDTT transfer holds up pretty well. Overall, both the HDTT and Toshiba-EMI sound excellent. The HDTT is slightly smoother, marginally softer of the two, with a bit more upper bass response making it sound a tad mellower. The Toshiba-EMI product is slightly more transparent but at the expense of a touch more edginess to the strings. Without the direct A-B comparison, I doubt these small differences would be noticeable to anyone but the most golden of ears. Of the two, I found the HDTT discs to a small degree more listenable.
By John J. Puccio
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) wrote his Symphony No. 2 between 1888 and 1894 and premiered it in 1895. Because it references his personal view of the virtues of an afterlife and a resurrection, the composer called it the “Resurrection Symphony.” In a survey of conductors carried out by the BBC Music Magazine, it was voted the fifth-greatest symphony of all time, and one can understand why it was so popular in Mahler’s day and in our own.
Incidentally, I’ve mentioned before that Mahler has always been popular, but his popularity appeared to soar to even greater heights at the beginning of the stereo age. Why? One may wonder. I’ve argued that Mahler’s music is filled with so much hustle and bustle, so much diversity and variation, so many instruments, so many highs and lows, and so many notes (thank you, Amadeus) that it made a perfect vehicle for showing off one’s new stereo rig. And with the stereo age came new proponents of Mahler, not only Klemperer but conductors like Leonard Bernstein, Georg Solti, and Bernard Haitink. By the early Eighties, Mahler was so well known to the general public that a movie like Educating Rita (Julie Walters, Michael Caine) could have a character use the wonderfully pretentious line “Wouldn’t you must die without Mahler?” and get away with it.
The first movement Mahler completed he initially designed as a stand-alone symphonic poem called “Funeral Rites” (“Totenfeier”). It took him the next five years or so to decide if he wanted to open a symphony with it. For the première, Mahler drew up a program for the music (which he later withdrew), saying the first movement represented a funeral and asking the question, Is there life after death? The music is appropriately somber and solemn, which is exactly how Klemperer plays it. While Klemperer’s contemporary, Bruno Walter, who also worked with Mahler, may have emphasized more of the music’s plainness, Klemperer underscores more of its contrasts. This is never more evident than in the first movement, which is like a small symphony (or tone poem, as I mentioned) unto itself.
The second movement is relatively simple and slow, a recollection of happy times in the life of the deceased. It is in the form of a delicate Ländler, and Mahler marked it “Sehr gemächlich. Nie eilen” (Very leisurely. Never rush). Klemperer was often criticized for being too slow and ponderous, but this is an overstatement. He did often take his time molding the musical structure of a work, but he was seldom ponderous. Here his conducting is exactly as Mahler instructs: leisurely and never rushed. It’s beautiful.
The third movement, a scherzo, reflects on life as a series of meaningless activities. How meaningless? Mahler called the climax either a "cry of despair" or a "death shriek." Mahler based it on a satirical poem about St. Anthony preaching to fish in a river, the fish comprehending none of it. Klemperer gives it the appropriate nuances to create an atmosphere of pointless desperation while still providing a most entertaining listening experience. I’ve always found this movement the most typically “Mahlerian” in the symphony, filled with pathos, yes, but a degree of playful, ironic joy as well. No one does it better than Klemperer.
Mahler marked the fourth movement "Urlicht" (Primal Light), the tempo “Very solemn, but simple.” It concerns a wish for release from a meaningless life, “relief from worldly woes.” That sounds pretty bleak, I know, yet in Klemperer’s hands it is enchanting and endlessly fascinating. The solo singing that opens the movement is delicate in the extreme, and for a change it isn’t recorded so closely that the singer dominates the rest of the score.
To sum up, you won’t find a better Mahler Second that this one by Otto Klemperer, both for its performance and sound. Klemperer was a master of subtlety and structure, and he brings out all the gradations and grandeur of the music and does so with consummate ease.
EMI producers Walter Legge, Walter Jellinek, and Suvi Raj Grubb and engineers Douglas Larter, Robert Gooch, and Francis Dillnutt recorded the music in November 1961 and March 1962 at Kingsway Hall, London. HDTT transferred the recording from an Angel 4-track tape. The total length of the performance is a little less than eighty minutes, and both EMI and currently Warner Classics fit it (barely) to a single disc. HDTT, however, chose to spread it over two discs, with the first two movements on the first disc and the final three movements on the second. In fairness, HDTT mark each section of the finale with its own track, so maybe that spacing accounts for the needed extra room. I dunno.
The Klemperer disc I had on hand for comparison was a Japanese import, very good and currently hard to find at a reasonable price (a check of Amazon showed prices from about $25 plus shipping to well over a $100). I put the discs in comparable CD players, adjusted the playback levels, and switched back and forth throughout my listening. The recording has always sounded good but even more so in EMI’s most-recent remastering. The Japanese copy bears a 2006 date but doesn’t say what source Toshiba-EMI used for the disc. When I got it (around the time of its release), I compared it to EMI’s “Great Recordings of the Century” remaster and found the Japanese product slightly clearer than its English counterpart. So, how did this new remaster from HDTT hold up?
The HDTT transfer holds up pretty well. Overall, both the HDTT and Toshiba-EMI sound excellent. The HDTT is slightly smoother, marginally softer of the two, with a bit more upper bass response making it sound a tad mellower. The Toshiba-EMI product is slightly more transparent but at the expense of a touch more edginess to the strings. Without the direct A-B comparison, I doubt these small differences would be noticeable to anyone but the most golden of ears. Of the two, I found the HDTT discs to a small degree more listenable.
For further information on HDTT products,
prices, discs, and downloads in a variety of formats, you can visit their Web
site at http://www.highdeftapetransfers.com/.
JJP
To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below:
JJP
Great review of great music! Just one little quibble -- Walter was a Mahler advocate long before the advent of stereo. As was Stokowski. But yes, Bernstein helped put Mahler on the map here in the USA. And don't forget Abravanel, who did the first Mahler cycle recorded entirely in America. The Klemperer is a wonderful rendition, the one I return to the most often. Again, thanks for the great review, I hope it encourages music lovers to Mahlerize their music collections.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Karl. Sorry, though, about not making myself very clear on the subject of conductors in the early age of stereo. I only meant for my comments about Walter, Klemperer, Bernstein, et al, in relation to their helping usher in the stereo age with the music of Mahler. Certainly, there were other great Mahler conductors before them.
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