Mahler's Ninth

[moldyoldie]

The late Mahler symphonies were always difficult for me, something akin to reading and navigating Joyce's Ulysses, which for me is well-nigh impossible! I've always found Mahler to be very "listenable" and compelling, albeit challenging.

This morning, I finished my fourth or fifth listen to my lone recording of Mahler's Ninth, and just want to say: "Where has my mind been all this time!?!"

I had had my morning cuppa joe, the sun rose, and I wanted to call in sick due to emotional exhaustion, only slightly mollified by a strange spiritual transfiguration. Wow! I feel as if I died and went to heaven, or perhaps a nether region of resplendent nothingness.

Lesson learned:
If you want to truly comprehend Mahler's Ninth on its terms, don't listen to it if you're in a hurry, or as something to pass time between unrelated bookended events. Concentrated attention to this work yields an abundance of conflicting emotions, ultimately ending with what can only be described as...damn, I'm lost for words.

This isn't the first time this has happened to me with a piece a music, where it takes multiple hearings to "get inside" the piece. It happened with the works of Sibelius (other than his popular Second Symphony, which connected on first listen) and a few others.

My recording, a 2-CD set from 1988 and apparently out of print, was made in live performance, but there's hardly any hint of an audience. They must've been just as dumbstruck.

Mahler: Symphony No. 9; Symphony No. 10 (Adagio only)
Vienna Philharmonic
Claudio Abbado, cond.
Deutsche Grammophon

It appears Abbado re-recorded the Mahler Ninth with the Berlin Philharmonic in 2002, also in live performance -- with applause at the end , not appropriate here, IMO. However, it is on a single disc.

Please forgive my gushing, but I'm just curious what experienced Mahlerites (and others) on this esteemed board deem to be the most affecting recording(s) of this oft-recorded work.

[Heck148]

Mahler's Sym #9 is one of the greatest symphonies ever composed...it is one of my very favorite musical compositions...the combination of form and content is ideal - superb technical mastery combined with overpowering expression.

it is a great treasure trove, an inexhaustible one, that never ceases to reveal new facets upon repeated listening...
I first heard this work when I was still in high school - the Barbirolli/BPO recording had just come out...
then I latched onto Bruno Walter/ColSO which completely blew it away...

over forty years later, Walter still maintains a high place with me - but my overall favorite is Giulini/CSO on DG. this one is really marvelous, and comes closest to the ideal for me, so far...
Solti/CSO is really fine also, in fact I find his finale to be unsurpassed...
I know and have heard lots of others, many that are quite good, a few real messes...

I heard Abbado/BPO play this live in Boston Symphony Hall. it was exquisite, a great performance...

[Barry]

I also saw Abbado and the BPO play it live in NYC about six or eight years ago and it was one of the great concert experiences I've had. I'll probably pick up their live recoding of it at some point to see if it makes a similarly strong impact.

Of the number of Mahler 9ths I have on disc, my favorite is a live one that may not be commercially available by Tennstedt/Philadelphia. It's a wild affair, but in a way that is well-suited to the piece. I paid a fortune for it though when I bought it from Parnassus Records, which used to have a whole catalog of live performances, which I would think would be considered pirates; yet Parnassus is a legitimate business. I see that live catalog of theirs hasn't been updated in a few years though.

Among commercial recordings, my favorites are Barbirolli on EMI and Sinopoli on DG, although I'm actually not even sure if that Sinopoli is still in print. But if the Abbado/BPO is even nearly as good as the performance I saw by them, that might move to the head of the pack.

[piston]

Horenstein, Walter, Klamperer, Barbirolli, Haitink/

[jbuck919]

I've had moments like that, but it has been many years since something came to me like an epiphany, and several composers whose works many take for granted still present me with the greatest difficulty (and I do not mean the "obvious" candidates like Schoenberg, with whom I have no problem). If I do achieve an appreciation that eluded me before, it unfolds with difficulty, and a certain mistrust. I know enough about human psychology to know that I may be giving in to what I am supposed to believe, know, appreciate, love rather than really believing, knowing, appreciating and loving it. It has certainly been that way with Mahler. However, I don't recommend this kind of Angst to anyone else. Many posters here whose opinion and taste I deeply respect would take the Mahler Ninth for granted, and I sincerely wish them all the joy they can have from it.

[gperkins151]

...Barbirolli...

Yes, this one is great. he's on of my favorite conductors, his M6 is powerful and moving. I also have and enjoy HvK's live account of M9.

[Ralph]

This is one of my absolute most moving, most loved symphonies. There are many fine recordings but I always ask folks to check out the 1938 Bruno Walter/Vienna Philharmonic performance, shortly before the Anschluss. It's performed with an almost eerie adumbration of the horrors to follow and, yet, it ends on a note of hope (for me). Many of the VPO musicians performing that night were soon dismissed because they were Jews.

Dutton has the best transfer.

[diegobueno]

The first movement is shattering in its impact. The rest of it I'd rather do without, especially the interminable drawn-out finale.

[Ralph]

SOUND;Poignance Measured in Digits The New York Times July 16, 1989, Sunday, Late Edition - Final


The New York Times

July 16, 1989, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section 2; Page 19, Column 1; Arts and Leisure Desk

LENGTH: 770 words

HEADLINE: SOUND;
Poignance Measured in Digits

BYLINE: By Hans Fantel

BODY:
Normally the phonograph plays a casual accompaniment to our lives. We think of it, quite rightly, as a means of entertainment. Yet there are times when the machine suddenly shows a deeper aspect of its character, and the miraculous nature of the instrument stands revealed.

So it was for me last week. The mail brought a new CD for review. I opened the parcel and suddenly found myself holding a piece of my past - as remote as a previous incarnation yet as present as my heartbeat. The recording was made at a concert I attended more than 50 years ago. At first memory refused to fill in the details. But soon they crowded into me, in a chaos of remembrance, as the phonograph asserted its power of putting the past into the present.

The recorded concert took place at the Musikverein in Vienna. The liner notes confirmed the date: Jan. 16, 1938. Bruno Walter, the great conductor then in his prime, led the Vienna Philharmonic in Mahler's Ninth Symphony. Since this epochal work had never before been put on disks, a British record company then known as His Master's Voice (now EMI), had hauled its cumbersome recording apparatus to Austria for the occasion - a rare and complicated undertaking before the age of tape.

My father was a subscriber to the Philharmonic and had taken me along in the mistaken belief that, being a rather precocious teen-ager, I might be ready for the rigors of Mahler. Because almost none of Mahler's works were then available on records, my father probably looked on this concert as a welcome opportunity to acquaint me with a composer he deeply admired and had known personally.

The brand-new CD in my hand seemed strangely incongruous. Its curiously abstract digital concepts were unthinkable at the time the original recording was cut into soft, palpable wax. Here, in the latest technical guise, were echoes of a lost world. While I inwardly grappled with this, my recall sharpened, and I remembered the occasion of the recording with startling accuracy.

Mahler performances were rare in Vienna in those days because Mahler's city had already been contaminated by the acolytes of Adolf Hitler. By their reckoning, Mahler's music was loathsome - a product of ''Jewish decadence.'''' To put Mahler's music on the program was therefore a political act. It was to protest and deny the hateful faith that blazed across the border from Germany. That much I understood quite clearly, even as a boy.

We could not know on that winter Sunday that this would turn out to be the last performance of the Vienna Philharmonic before Hitler crushed his homeland to make it part of the German Reich. The music, captured that day by the bulky old microphones I remember strung across the stage, was the last to be heard from many of the musicians in the orchestra. They and their country vanished.

I put on the record. To hear that music again, after so long a time and in so distant a place, was a strange reprise. I now lived on another continent and even spoke another language. And I had become an adult.

I now had some musical understanding of what I had then heard uncomprehendingly. I could now recognize and appreciate the singular aura of that performance: I could sense its uncanny intensity - a strange inner turmoil quite different from the many other recordings and performances of Mahler's Ninth I had heard since. Knowing now what nobody could have known at the time of the concert, it seemed that perhaps the playing of the music carried within it a foreboding of what was to come. Terror and anguish, not yet experienced but divined, were transformed into song. Was it by chance that Mahler's Ninth - that supreme expression of farewell - was on the program that day?

But it wasn't the music alone that cast a spell over me as I listened to the new CD. Nor was it the memory of the time when the recording was made. It took me a while to discover what so moved me. Finally, I knew what it was: This disk held fast an event I had shared with my father: 71 minutes out of the 16 years we had together. Soon after, as an ''enemy of Reich and Fuhrer,'' my father also disappeared into Hitler's abyss.

That's what made me realize something about the nature of phonographs: they admit no ending. They imply perpetuity.

All this seems far from our usual concerns with the hardware of sound reproduction. But then again, speculating on endlessness may be getting at the purposive essence of all this electronic gadetry - its ''telos,'' as the Greeks would say. In the perennial rebirth of music through recordings, something of life itself steps over the normal limits of time.

[moldyoldie]

Barbirolli:
For what it's worth, Mr. Hurwitz hates it...so I just ordered it.

I'm certain I'll get to Walter/'38 eventually. If only his CSO recording with the interview were re-issued; it's commanding a hefty price on the used market. However, I see the performance is included in the reasonably priced imported box set.

Ralph, thank you for digging out that interesting NY Times piece.

[Sapphire]

For me: Barbirolli's version is perfectly fine. I acquired S9 solely because no collection can be complete without this work, and I chose this version because it sounded best among the samples I had access to. Also, I already had Barbirolli's S5, which to me sounded the best.

But do I like S9? Only moderately but it doesn't bowl me over. I much prefer 1, 4, 5. Nor can I see any other version of S9 making the slightest difference to my view. I often see such comments about the huge importance of different versions, but for me this is never make or break. In general, I think I agree with Jbuck's observations if I have understood him correctly: that it's possible to get to "like" some of these "great" works but if they weren't your first love, is it genuine? I'm afraid to say this work doesn't get much of time (or any Mahler if truth is known).

Basically, I move from late Mozart, to Schubert and Beethoven, to Schumann, to Brahms, some Bruckner, to early/mid Mahler, to Sibelius. I don't care for late Mahler or any Shostakovich. Great pity Brahms didn't live another 10 years to produce another 5 or so symphonies.


Saphire

[Heck148]

Barbirolli:
If only his CSO recording with the interview were re-issued;

what a PITA!!

this wonderful recording has been available consistently since its release in the early 60s...a real staple...

I see Arkiv lists it only availalbe in a full set for $$124.--

stand by - it may well reappear...

[maskedman]

There are many Mahler ninths that I like, but I would submit Ancerl, Czech Phil .....

[Wallingford]

Allow me to trot out probably the best-kept secret among Mahler conductors: GERARD SCHWARZ. I have an off-air concert dub of him doing the Ninth that does just fine, if I ever choose to listen to it. He also did some creditable First, Second, Fourth, and Sixth performances I can recall. (Usually, it's by force or circumstance that I'll hear it--the only LSO concert I could squeeze into my brief itinerary on my trip to London four years back, was a performance with Tilson Thomas doing it with them.)

I know the Mahlerites out there will protest this, but I've always thought of the Ninth as Mahler's suicide note to the world. The Tenth (which he didn't finish orchestrating) represents the delerium people going through a slow death might experience.

[pizza]

I have two favorites: the Giulini/CSO on DG 463 609-2, a studio recording whose orchestral execution is almost perfect. The Rondo Burlesk has to be heard to be believed. Of course the overall effect of the performance is marvellous.

The other is Horenstein's live 1966 recording with the LSO, BBC Legends BBCL 4075-2; I think he recorded the 9th four times, and his concept of the symphony remains pretty much the same througout all of them. This performance is special in that the quality of the recording is much better than the others and one can get a clear sense of Horenstein's generally pessimistic and darker view of the music.

I think both these recordings are still available.

[Barry]

I'm normally a Giulilni fan, and I love his recording of Mahler's first symphony with the CSO, but for some reason, their ninth leaves me cold. It strikes me as more a clinic on orchestral precision and power than a great Mahler performance.
I know I'm probably in the minority on this one though.

[CharmNewton]

I'm certain I'll get to Walter/'38 eventually. If only his CSO recording with the interview were re-issued; it's commanding a hefty price on the used market. However, I see the performance is included in the reasonably priced imported box set.

It's interesting how Walter's 1938 recording has taken on a second (or perhaps finally) a fiirst life.

When I first began listening to classical music, it was the music of Mahler that first attracted my attention. That was in the late 60s at the beginning of the Mahler renaissance. I wanted desperately to hear this performance, but it wasn't to be had at that time. Finally, EMI Electrola re-issued it on LP around 1973 (in excellent transfers). In my opinion, it doesn't represent Walter as a conductor as well as the 1961 recording, which also features much superior orchestral playing and excellent sound, even by today's standards. Walter doesn't present Mahler as an emotional basket-case (like Bernstein, say in his Berlin and Concertgbouw recordings) in either recording, but rather as a profoundly expressive composer. Walter's readings are beautiful, and I do not feel depressed after hearing them. This is a Mahler who believes the future is a bright one.

In my opinion, the later recording is much to be preferred.

John

[Heck148]

I have two favorites: the Giulini/CSO on DG 463 609-2, a studio recording whose orchestral execution is almost perfect. The Rondo Burlesk has to be heard to be believed. Of course the overall effect of the performance is marvellous.

Giulini/CSO does the best first mvt as well - he gets the progressive build-up of the 4 big climaxes just right. when, at the 4th climax, the arrhythmia motif is finally intoned by the low brass - fortissimo - the effect is quite shattering....
also, the spells of relief between the storms are done so well - the contrasts are superbly brought forth.

[moldyoldie]

Barbirolli:
If only his CSO recording with the interview were re-issued;

what a PITA!!

this wonderful recording has been available consistently since its release in the early 60s...a real staple...

I see Arkiv lists it only availalbe in a full set for $$124.--

stand by - it may well reappear...

Just so people don't get the wrong impression from the edited quote, it's actually the Walter recording with the Columbia SO which is out of print and commanding high prices. The Barbirolli is readily available at retail under $10.

I know enough about human psychology to know that I may be giving in to what I am supposed to believe, know, appreciate, love rather than really believing, knowing, appreciating and loving it.

I often see such comments about the huge importance of different versions, but for me this is never make or break. In general, I think I agree with Jbuck's observations if I have understood him correctly: that it's possible to get to "like" some of these "great" works but if they weren't your first love, is it genuine?

If it isn't "genuine", what is it? Of course it's genuine, and if my fourth or fifth hearing hadn't occurred that morning, and perhaps also at that time, it would have been an irrelevancy. If I had instead heard it again at a future date under different circumstances and with a different attitude....

Believe me, it was "genuine". I was listening because I wanted to listen, not because someone told me I was supposed to listen. I listen objectively, but with every expectation that I'm going to like what I hear. The work or performance itself has to make me "not" like it.

A personal example apropos to the supposed pretense concerning different interpretations/recordings was my coming to appreciate the Sibelius Fifth Symphony after hearing a bargain bin disc by Malcolm Sargent. This was after an introduction to the work and several hearings of the touted Salonen/Philharmonia recording which I found absolutely depressing. What a difference with Sargent!

Same circumstance with Karajan's recording of Bruckner's Eighth; my introduction to the work which I simply couldn't "get". Then I heard Boulez's recording of the same Haas edition with the same orchestra...voila! I've now come to appreciate the Karajan very much and the Bruckner Eighth is an absolute favorite whose different recorded interpretations (and editions) offer a wealth of insights. (FWIW, I never did find Salonen's Sibelius very palatable and eventually gave it away.)

It leads me to believe that there's such a thing as an "entry level" performance, though I'm not sure how to qualify one as such. Whether a musician or "serious" listener would hear or approach a piece differently from a non-musician (moi) or casual listener is a matter I can't address. I like hearing different things in different interpretations and recordings of the same work, but it's usually a work I've already assimilated and found appealing.

It's probably a personal or individual thing, but it's definitely "genuine".

Sorry to ramble off topic, and I'm not looking for a debate, but thank you all for your thoughts on Mahler's Ninth. If it so be, keep 'em coming.

[gfweis]

We wouldn't know this symphony as the great one it is without the great readings we are fortunate to have received. My favorites, in order: Klemperer/New Philharmonia, which pulls you right in and never lets you go---the coarse, awkward quality that Mahler sometimes calls for in his notation perfectly realized here; Ancerl/Czech Phil, direct and simple in style like Klemp, but sadder, with a deeply felt (iv) shorn of all theatricality; Barbirolli/BPO, the orchestra playing its heart out---he handles perfectly the difficult ploetzlich section in (iv); Bernstrein/BPO ("not for everyday," though, as they say) with a great burlesque (iii) and excesses in (iv) that the music tolerates; Bernstein/NYP---a little quick in (ii), but a perfect, not indulged, but deeply felt ending in (iv); Horenstein/LSO, with the best (ii) I have heard---somehow loveable, and a perfectly paced (iii); Abbado/BPO---great at presenting the clumsiness Mahler asks for in (ii). Abbado/BPO seems to me to have the best sound---I heard some lines I had not heard before---and truly virtuosic orchestral playing. I'd love to hear the Mitropoulos.

[CharmNewton]

I'd love to hear the Mitropoulos.

This was available as part of a 6-CD set on Music & Arts, and may be available overseas. It is one of the better performances in the set (the Eighth is the best, in my opinion). Mitropoulos has a very firm grasp of overall structure in Mahler which can result in compelling performances despite some pretty shoddy orchestral playing by the N.Y. Philharmonic. Individual details (and fluffs) seem less important when the performances have great overall sweep. The playing is better in the Ninth than it is in the earlier symphonies.

To me, Mitropoulos' readings sound strikingly similar to Bernstein's from his New York period. Mitropoulos was a major influence on Bernstein. His early exposure to Mahler was probably through Mitropoulos and Walter and may very well have influenced by them in that first cycle.

John

[gfweis]

...despite some pretty shoddy orchestral playing by the N.Y. Philharmonic.

John, thanks for this report on the Mitropoulos 9th. Such information is very useful. Your remark about the playing of the NYP reminds me of a Mitropoulos recording of the Emperor Concerto with Casadesus (which I have on lp). It has power and fluency, and I think it is even better accompanied---at least in concept---than the Emperor Casadesus did with Rosbaud and the ACO (saying so is probably heresy in some parts). But the problem is the quality of the orchestral playing. I know from hearing other recordings of the "Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York" from this era, conducted by Bruno Walter, that the orchestra could play splendidly. All this makes me wonder if what I read a few years ago in the biography of Mitropoulos is true, viz. that some members of the orchestra sometimes intentionally sabotaged his performances.

[gperkins151]

For me: Barbirolli's version is perfectly fine. I acquired S9 solely because no collection can be complete without this work, and I chose this version because it sounded best among the samples I had access to. Also, I already had Barbirolli's S5, which to me sounded the best.
Saphire

Have you heard his Mahler 6?

Its even better than his Mahler 5 or 9.

IMHO.

[DavidW]

The ninth is my favorite symphony. It is an amazing emotional roller coaster!

My tastes have waffled around alot when I was doing Mahler multiple-recorditis, but I've settled on Gielen, Boulez and Chailly as my favorites. I find modernist interpretations more emotionally profound these days.