MAHLER SYMPHONY NO.1O. LAPLAND CO/STORGARDS…BIS 24/96… (arr. for Chamber Orchestra by Michelle Castelletti)
(Qobuz Studio/Download/SACD etc)
The opening adagio is so beautifully and sensitively shaped & played it almost silences comment, but in what is, usually, a truly shattering experience, I initially found the central climatic sequence just a shade lacking in ultimate impact; with just a single trumpet and horn in the orchestra, the climactic discordance was carried by harmonic and melodic impact rather than textural or instrumental violence. The layering through of the chamber-orchestration was perhaps just a little too obvious (if enjoyable in the hi-res way.)…
But so eloquently phrased, so well-played and recorded as this, the emotional intensity remains high; earlier in the movement, the catching-up of the 9th Symphony’s sardonic elements is very vividly done, enriching the 10th with musico-biographical layers of meaning.
Towards the adagio’s end, the parallels with the deathly, hushed last phrases of the 9th’s finale are very vividly drawn, and the contrast with the wonderful harmonic fulfilment of the closing bars of this adagio very moving indeed. Gold stars all round to the performers here…this is very special.
As Cooke said, that sense of doom and resignation-unto-death of the 9th is, somehow, here faced and moved on from. No wonder some of us see the 10th Symphony, in 5 movements, as so important in Mahlerian listening and understanding.
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The first scherzo makes more explicit use of just those elements I’d missed earlier - horn, trumpet/winds very lively, with a chattering, clattering percussive brilliance expressively balanced by the warmth and frequent, overt portamento (out-and-proud in the strings); nice rhythmical bite to it too.
Perhaps this was the performers’ or arranger’s point though - to emphasise the contrast between the two movements of Part One, the adagio being more string-dominated, elegiac and yearning in its songfulness. (I still wish the adagio’s climax had been given its head more, allowed to shock us out of such reverie. But I carp - and my reservations faded after repeated hearings).
By the end of the Part One scherzo, I was transfixed by the beauty of the single horn and trumpet playing, so redolent of that Jewish-melodic inspiration from the trumpet solo of the 2nd symphony’s scherzo; and how strikingly Storgårds brings out the early-Mahlerian, Wunderhorn-freshness and innocence which the 10th often seems to echo with; I was moved to tears by the beauty of it, in the midst of all the hauntings of mortality.
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I guess what matters in - completions, arrangements, orchestrations - is surely that one must believe in it, in the moment, that it convinces the listening ear that this is how the music should sound and go.
I rarely felt the 14 strings and 4 winds (plus single horn and trumpet, piano/harmonium, harp and percussion) to be inadequate in either weight or variety of expression. The exposed, jagged string tremolandi and extensive up- and down-swooping portamento were startlingly ear-catching, as were the brightly coloured, occasionally shrieking winds. The percussion is very present and powerful. But there were a few times (in the adagio and purgatorio) when having just a single horn and trumpet seemed a shade underpowered or anti-climactic, in those turning-point climaxes themselves and in sudden punchier dynamic moments.
Storgårds seems a very instinctive Mahlerian, so I was able to sink into the music instinctively myself, most of the time. But in the 4th and 5th movements the full, overtly dramatic resonance of the gong appears, to fill out those yearning climaxes……
Occurring at the same point of each melodic return in the 2nd scherzo, this was one of the few aspects of orchestration that drew any attention to itself (becoming just a little predictable), as for the most part it is very delicately, sensitively done.
Where solo piano is used, it may not be very Mahlerian-idiomatic (somewhat theatre-orchestra redolent, and reminding me more of later 20th-C. composers like Stravinsky or Martinu) but still worked very well, reinforcing both the darker moods and and bass textures. Some lovely fresh string counterpoints sliding across the scherzo and finale too. So, while one is always aware of this being a smallish Chamber Orchestra, such is the sensitivity and subtlety of instrumentation & playing, the ear soon adjusts.
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Still, on with Part Two and a will-o-the-wisp elusiveness and levity to the purgatorio, unusual and a striking contrast with the impassioned delivery of the two scherzos’ extremes. No holding back here in emotional or melodic beauty and intensity. Dark, layered transparency through the transition, the drum thwacks dry-eyed and ashen, before the flute solo arrives to melt our hearts - and break them. I’ve never heard it more devastatingly tender than here; even after several hearings, I was wrung out by each encounter….I can’t go on; I can’t go on; I’ll go on.
Gong and piano reinforce both emotional and lower-register impact in the finale, yet the lighter orchestra and solo trumpet again intensify the Wunderhorn atmosphere. After the central crisis, the playing of strings and horn in the main melody is truly beatific; so touchingly, delicately shaped with a piercing tonal beauty. Then a stunning coup-de-theâtre at the end: a dramatic, upswept portamento and long-resonating gong-stroke into the final fade.
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I’ve come to adore this recording; completely under its spell. So much so that, trying comparisons with the Barshai version (which Castelletti mentions as a helpful source, in her note) was impossible; in context it now sounded too Straussian and overripe, too obviously Mahlerian-pastiche in some of its effects, and I soon gave up.
Perhaps the Cooke version will always be, inescapably, the template, the reference; but here’s a chamber-orchestral Mahler 10 to lend you new ears, new insights - and probably borrow your heart as well.
It may be some time before you are able to give it back, or to any other…
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