Elder's Das Lied von der Erde

[jayne lee wilson]

Excellent link Austin, thanks - yes Petrushka, I think such attempts stem from a fallacious need "to hear everything"... I recall Debussy saying that he wanted - was it Jeux, or Pelleas? - the orchestra to sound "as if back-lit" but it's probably never been so played or recorded.

[Serial_Apologist]

Excellent link Austin, thanks - yes Petrushka, I think such attempts stem from a fallacious need "to hear everything"... I recall Debussy saying that he wanted - was it Jeux, or Pelleas? - the orchestra to sound "as if back-lit" but it's probably never been so played or recorded.

Pelleas - and the Boulez recording I've heard is pretty good in that regard, jayne.

[Petrushka]

Excellent link Austin, thanks - yes Petrushka, I think such attempts stem from a fallacious need "to hear everything"... I recall Debussy saying that he wanted - was it Jeux, or Pelleas? - the orchestra to sound "as if back-lit" but it's probably never been so played or recorded.

I once heard Simon Rattle and the CBSO play Jeux in Birmingham and - don't know how they did it - it seemed to float and border on the sub-conscious just out of reach. I think that Karajan manages to achieve the same other worldly effect in his recording of Das Lied.

[rajm]

Most things are just like in the original. The texture is lighter here and there, to allow the singer to be heard in a concert hall. Nothing outrageous from my point of view. Most people wouldn't even be aware of any changes.

I was there in the hall, I know the work fairly well but it was the first time I'd been present at a performance. I'm not sure that I could tell the difference, when you listen to a broacast no doubt there's rebalancing but in the hall I felt that the tenor was still fighting to be heard (he could be though). I'll take a listen to the iplayer with the score and see if I can tell what changes were made though if Matthews just reduced the (say ) number of hrns when playing against the tenor I'm not sure that I could tell!

[heliocentric]

Mark Elder says that Mahler "left us quite a lot of problems in that way, because he never heard it. And we know from the way his creative mind worked that he didn't always - first time - get the best effects, but when he heard what he'd written, he knew how to improve it." If you look at Mahler's earlier orchestral song cycles you'll see that he knew very well how to score sparsely in order to achieve a traditional kind of singer/orchestra balance. So clearly (IMO) what Mahler was doing in the first movement of his Lied von der Erde was something else. Elder and Matthews seem to assume that Mahler was more of a traditionally-minded musician than he was (ie. as traditionally-minded as they are). The Lied is so radical for its time in so many ways, after all.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

If you look at Mahler's earlier orchestral song cycles you'll see that he knew very well how to score sparsely in order to achieve a traditional kind of singer/orchestra balance. So clearly (IMO) what Mahler was doing in the first movement of his Lied von der Erde was something else. Elder and Matthews seem to assume that Mahler was more of a traditionally-minded musician than he was (ie. as traditionally-minded as they are). The Lied is so radical for its time in so many ways, after all.

... and Der Abschied is frequently astonishingly sparely scored: Harp (single line, rocking 2s against 3s) Flute (floating against the meter) accompanying the voice. A complete antithesis of the textures in the First Movement, and totally unlike anything Mahler had written before.

[Serial_Apologist]

... and Der Abschied is frequently astonishingly sparely scored: Harp (single line, rocking 2s against 3s) Flute (floating against the meter) accompanying the voice. A complete antithesis of the textures in the First Movement, and totally unlike anything Mahler had written before.

Interesting to learn that Colin Matthews was involved in Cooke's completion of the Tenth Symphony, the orchestration of which I have never found totally convincing. While we're talking about the works Mahler never had the chance of hearing, we do know that Arnold Schoenberg was approached at one point with a view to finishing the Tenth. Writers citing Schoenberg's orchestration or reduced orchestrations of other composers' works have often argued that he would have been the worst composer to have taken on the job, but listening to his reduced rescorings of this movement, and of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, leads me to a different conclusion.

[Petrushka]

Whilst I have great respect for both Colin Matthews and Sir Mark Elder I think that any attempt to dilute the wild abandon of this first movement is simply misguided. The implication that Mahler did not know what he was about is frankly insulting. As a great operatic conductor, Mahler wiould have known what he was doing. Yes, he has certailnly given conductors, tenors and balance engineers a headache but tinkering with the orchestration is cheating. Surely the point is that the tenor soloist has to sound like 'a bawling idiot'.

[Serial_Apologist]

Whilst I have great respect for both Colin Matthews and Sir Mark Elder I think that any attempt to dilute the wild abandon of this first movement is simply misguided. The implication that Mahler did not know what he was about is frankly insulting. As a great operatic conductor, Mahler wiould have known what he was doing. Yes, he has certailnly given conductors, tenors and balance engineers a headache but tinkering with the orchestration is cheating. Surely the point is that the tenor soloist has to sound like 'a bawling idiot'.

[heliocentric]

Cooke's completion of the Tenth Symphony, the orchestration of which I have never found totally convincing.

To be fair, what Cooke claimed to have produced was not a "completion" but a "performing version of the sketch". I don't find it very convincing either. There are several other versions of the piece which IMO deserve as much currency in performance as Cooke's does. None of them are totally convincing either, but how could they be? They're all trying too hard to "be" Mahler in some way. I'd be interested in a "completion" which went well beyond imitation and reverence, like the Schubert/Berio Rendering does.

[gradus]

I don't think Cooke was trying to be Mahler and nor I think did he. It is a performing version and Mahler left some of it in full score. Take it or leave it, I think it remains a magnificent achievement by two great musicians.

[heliocentric]

I don't think Cooke was trying to be Mahler and nor I think did he

And nor do I. It's the music (in a metaphorical kind of way) that seems to me to be "trying to be Mahler" and not really succeeding, however magnificent Cooke's achievement might be. And it will always be there, but it would be nice for some of the other versions to be as well, and for more thoughts on the piece to take concrete shape.

[Flosshilde]

Going back to Das Lied, & re-orchestration, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra is including it in their next season, in a reduced orchestration. The programme brochure doesn't say who it's by, just that it was premiered at 'the BBC Proms' - no year. Anybody know anything about it?

(Robin Ticciati is conducting, with Karen Cargill & Toby Spence singing)

[bluestateprommer]

Going back to Das Lied, & re-orchestration, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra is including it in their next season, in a reduced orchestration. The programme brochure doesn't say who it's by, just that it was premiered at 'the BBC Proms' - no year. Anybody know anything about it?

The SCO's on-line (non-pdf) calendar says (emphasis mine):

Haydn: Symphony No 60 ('Il Distratto')
Mahler (arr. Cortese): Das Lied von der Erde

http://www.sco.org.uk/concerts/2013-03

The Cortese in question is Glen Cortese. However, I'm not sure where the SCO gets their information about this version of DLvdE having been done at The Proms, because from a quick check of the Proms Archive, only Mahler's original of DLvdE has been performed at The Proms. I found this commentary about DLvdE which mentions the 1st performance of the Cortese version in 2005, in Oregon:

http://www.mahlerarchives.net/Mahlerites/reviews/dlvdenotgood.pdf

You can tell that the writer is dismissive of the Cortese version (among other things).

Haven't had a chance yet to listen to the Halle concert of DLvdE + Mozart yet, but hopefully can make time for it later.

[heliocentric]

Mahler (arr. Cortese): Das Lied von der Erde

... which is not only rescored but also (if it's the same one as performed in Oregon) sung in Chinese, which apparently involved - because Chinese uses less than a third of the number of syllables as the corresponding German - adding extra poems to the sung text. So any illumination that might have been wrought by using the original poems that Mahler set translations of is immediately nullified. Not only that but the last part of the Abschied, for which Mahler devised text of his own, reverts to German anyway. Sounds like a really silly idea.