Mahler: Symphony No. 4 (CD review)

Sabine Devielhe, soprano; Francois-Xavier Roth, Les Siecles. Harmonia Mundi HMM 905 905357.

By John J. Puccio

Les Siecles is a period-instrument ensemble, one we are more accustomed to hearing in works from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and maybe into the nineteenth centuries. But Mahler premiered his Symphony No. 4 in G major in 1901, which would seem well out of the range normally associated with “period” music and “period” performances. Here’s what conductor Francois-Xavier Roth said about his period recording of the Mahler First Symphony and which we can assume applies here: “Mahler already had in mind an ideal sound nourished by his collaborations with German orchestras and his studies in Vienna. We therefore decided to use the instruments with which he would have been familiar in the pit of the Vienna Court Opera and the Musikverein, and selected Viennese oboes, German flutes, clarinets and bassoons, German and Viennese horns and trumpets, and German trombones and tubas. These instruments are built quite differently from their French contemporaries! The fingerings, the bores and even the mouthpieces of the clarinets were completely new to our musicians. In the case of the string section, each instrument is set up with bare gut for the higher strings and spun gut for the lower ones. Gut strings give you a sound material totally different from metal strings, more highly developed harmonics, and incisiveness in the attack and articulation."

Of the current performance, when asked if a historically informed interpretation still means something when playing Mahler, Roth explains further: “Period instruments give us a lot of interpretative solutions. You can’t keep ladling on the fortissimi ad infinitum: the instruments have an organological limit that shows us how they should be played. They provide greater poetry. But more than the instruments themselves, which give us the envelope or the musical colour, the challenge of an informed interpretation is to understand where music comes from. In Mahler’s case, the question is all the more fascinating because he was a truly European musician and performer, a pure product of Mitteleuropa. He travelled a lot, he had absorbed Austrian, Hungarian, German influences. He was steeped in that music, which comes from Haydn and foreshadows Bartok; it runs in his veins. You have to respect that.”

Thus, we have a new reading of an old favorite, the Fourth being possibly the most-popular of all the Mahler symphonies (an irony, perhaps, considering that early audiences and critics pretty much hated it). Anyway, as you no doubt know, Mahler intended at least his first four symphonies as extensions of one another, one following  the other in a kind of symbolic progression. In the First Symphony the composer described, musically, Man’s suffering and triumph. In the Second he examined death and resurrection. In the Third he reflected upon his own existence and that of God. And one of his protégés, the conductor Bruno Walter, described the Fourth Symphony as “a joyous dream of happiness and of eternal life promises him, and us also, that we have been saved."

More specifically, the first movement, which Mahler marks as "gay, deliberate, and leisurely," begins playfully, with the jingling of sleigh bells and develops a complex pattern from seeming simplicity. The second movement introduces Death into the scene, with a vaguely sinister violin motif. The slow, third-movement Adagio, marked "peacefully," is a kind of reprieve from the dread of Mr. Death. Then, in the fourth and final movement, we get Mahler's vision of heaven and salvation as exemplified by the innocence of an old Bavarian folk song, a part of the German folk-poem collection Das Knaben Wunderhorn that Mahler much loved. Here, the composer wanted the song to sound so unaffected that he insisted upon the soprano's part being sung with "child-like bright expression, always without parody."

So, how does Maestro Roth and his period-instrument band handles all of this? Well, his interpretation doesn’t differ too much from the mainstream. His rubato, his slowing down and speeding up, appears more flexible than in most readings, but it adds a definite charm to the well-worn proceedings and spices things up nicely. In other words, you won’t confuse Roth with veteran Mahlerians like Herbert von Karajan, Bernard Haitink, Bruno Walter, George Szell, or Otto Klemperer. Nor will you confuse Les Siecles with the Berlin Philharmonic or the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Mahler’s Fourth calls for a slightly smaller ensemble than he had used in his previous three symphonies, and the sixty or so members of Les Siecles fill the job splendidly. What’s more, maybe because of the slightly smaller numbers and the period instruments, we get more transparency than we usually find in the orchestration.

The second movement under Roth is so eerie it can be downright unsettling. Mahler marks it “leisurely, without haste,” which is what Roth does, yet he infuses it with a bizarre, menacing tone that’s hard to ignore. It’s no wonder those early audiences had difficulty understanding what was going on. After that, Roth takes the Adagio in as tranquil, as serene a fashion as I’ve heard, and he does so without becoming tiresome or tedious. It’s really quite an endearing rendition.

Then we come to the finale, with its soprano voicing the innocence of youth and promise of the future. Here, the singer must be careful not to come off too coy, self-conscious, or artificial. The soloist is the noted French coloratura soprano Sabine Devieilhe, who provides the music with just the degree of straightforward, effortless spontaneity it needs. It concludes one of the best Mahler Fourth performances in quite a while. It’s different, never dull, and always engaging.

Producer and engineer Jiri Heger recorded the symphony at La Seine Musicale - RIFFX Studio NO. 1, Boulogne-Billancourt, France in November 2021. As with so many of Harmonia Mundi’s recordings, this one is beautifully full and luxuriant. Imaging is precise; depth is moderate; dynamics are more than adequate; detailing and clarity are good, without being harsh or bright; and imaging is precise. It’s realistic sound, never artificial, never too forward or too soft. It’s comfortable, lifelike sound.

JJP