Mahler: Symphony No. 1 (CD review)

Mariss Jansons, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. BR Klassik 900179.

By John J. Puccio

During his career, the late Latvian conductor Mariss Jansons (1943-2019) made a slew of recordings, many of which were recordings of Gustav Mahler’s symphonies. Maybe we don’t always think of Jansons as a Mahlerian in the way we think of, say, Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, Leonard Bernstein, Georg Solti, Bernard Haitink, Simon Rattle, or Klaus Tennstedt as Mahlerians in the stereo era, but Jansons recorded the Mahler symphonies several times over with different orchestras and labels, and he often programmed Mahler on his concert schedule. The disc under review is from his last batch of Mahler recordings, this time with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Being his last recorded set, you might think it was his last word on the subject. That may be true, but it’s only his last word in the sense that it’s among his last recordings. Whether it’s the best of his Mahler recordings or the last word on the subject of Mahler performances in general are other, more open questions. In other words, although this interpretation from Jansons may be just fine and quite serviceable, one should not consider it definitive or “the last word” on the subject. The aforementioned conductors might have had more to say.
 
Anyway, Austrian composer and conductor Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) premiered his Symphony No. 1 in D major in 1889, called it a five-movement symphonic poem, and temporarily gave it the subtitle "Titan." It was not long after, however, that he revised it to the familiar four-movement piece we know today and dropped the "Titan" business altogether, which is what we have here.

Mahler explained that in the First Symphony he was trying to describe his protagonist (maybe himself) facing life, beginning with the lighter moments of youth and proceeding to the darker years of maturity. In the first movement, then, "Spring without End," we see Mahler's young hero as a part of the symbolic stirring of Nature before a long spring. In the second-movement scherzo, "With Full Sail," we find Mahler in one of his mock-sentimental moods, displaying an exuberance that he probably meant as ironic. In the third movement we get an intentionally awkward funeral march depicting a hunter's fairy-tale burial, which comes off as a typical Mahler parody. It might represent the hero's first glimpse of death or maybe Mahler's own recollection of a youthful encounter with the death of a loved one (his brother died a decade earlier). With Mahler, who knows. Then, in the finale, Mahler breaks the reverie and conveys the panic "of a deeply wounded heart," as his central figure faces the suffering of life and fate. Still, because Mahler was a spiritual optimist, he wanted Man to triumph in the end, so in the final twenty minutes or so Mahler pulls out all the stops and puts the orchestra on full throttle.

Now, how does Jansons handle all of this? As I say, in a serviceable manner. He creates a nice, leisurely opening as a long winter finally closes out and spring, the youth, enters. However, for me it’s a little too leisurely and tends to wear out its welcome before long. It may be an omen of things to come in Jansons’s reading. The movements start well but tend to get routine thereafter fairly quickly. If there’s any irony in the Scherzo it seems lost on Jansons, who plays it so straight-arrow he drains it of any significance. And so it goes.

Mahler said that his music was “a metaphor of the world in tones.” Fair enough. So the conductor should give the listener enough musical cues to relate the music to the real world, as in a tone poem. Jansons, however, doesn’t seem so interested in having his listener interpret Mahler as he does letting the listener know how beautiful the music can be. This approach wears out its welcome pretty fast. The parodic funeral also seems more than a bit flat. It’s only in the first half of the finale that Jansons appears energized enough to pull off some flair, yet even here he is restrained, and what should have been big and splashy sounds, instead, rather reserved by the end. That big victory chorus at the conclusion where Mahler wanted the horn players to stand up “to achieve the most powerful sound possible” doesn’t measure up to what we get from some of the best recorded performances, and the applause at the end of this live recording doesn’t improve things.

In the last analysis, I’d say this Jansons recording is an also-ran. It’s a good try, but it fails to compete with the conductors I mentioned in the opening, who provide the score with more color, more imagination, and more passion. Jansons, on the other hand, gives us a straightforward account of Mahler’s music, in a way taking it as Haitink always did, without adding much of his own personality and letting the music speak for itself. Yet Haitink was able to make the music come alive more than Jansons does, who doesn’t just let it alone but lets much of it lie inert. On a more positive note, the keep case comes with a cardboard slipcover, for whatever that’s worth.

Producer Wilhelm Meister and engineer Peter Urban recorded the symphony live at Munchen, Herkulessaal (Munich, Hercules Hall), in March 2007. For a live recording, it’s all right, a little close but not bright, hard, or edgy. Although there isn’t much depth to the orchestral sound, it is warm and smooth. OK, maybe too smooth as it leans toward the soft side as well. With dynamics that are a bit limp, the whole affair is less than audiophile; and, as I’ve said, the closing applause doesn’t help.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below: