Mahler 7

[jayne lee wilson]

You can pick up some individual KK Mahler issues here....
Best of them would be the Melodiya 1, 5, 6 and 7.
4 is wonderful too, if you don't mind the ruhevoll climax being dynamically limited to some degree.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=kondrashin+mahler+melodiya&i=popular&ref=nb_sb_noss

3 and 9 are riveting musically, but IIRC from memory are more affected by all-too-obvious DRC - dynamic restriction/manipulation.

There some Audiophile Gold discs around of 1 and 5, well worth it if you can find them for a good price.

And of course the whole Melodiya set, with its lovely Blake/Roller artwork, is on Qobuz....

[richardfinegold]

Walter did but Klemperer recorded the Seventh ???

Oh I see JLW already mentioned this. Walter of course only recorded 1,2,4,5 and 9 and Das Lied. Apparently, there were plans for him to re-record the Fifth when he died.

Klemperer labeled the Seventh a “mistake”

[jayne lee wilson]

Klemperer labeled the Seventh a “mistake”

The Symphony itself, or his own recording? Chapter and verse please?

According to Gramophone, he first conducted the 7th in Cologne in 1922, even before he became the highly innovative director of the Kroll Opera....but seems only to have returned to it for the 1968 recording. The Nachtmusik II, andante amoroso, is playing now....
...as EG said in his highly observant 9/69 G-review, it is absolutely exquisite.
Then the finale begins and you think....whoa...like this, really? Really? Yet all the rhythms and phrases are there, defined and articulated (well, most of the time..).... all 24'29 of it.
Wordless Functional Analysis, anyone?

Great shame we have no live recording from earlier in his career. He did seem to have trouble with those middle symphonies, never recording 5 or 6 of course, and referring (in the Heyworth conversations) to the Alma theme of the 6th as "highly questionable"....
I wonder if Klemperer ever played the Prokofiev 5th? One would have thought his typical sound-palette with the Philharmonia (and earlier tenures) would have been very well suited.

[Barbirollians]

The Symphony itself, or his own recording? Chapter and verse please?

According to Gramophone, he first conducted the 7th in Cologne in 1922, even before he became the highly innovative director of the Kroll Opera....but seems only to have returned to it for the 1968 recording. The Nachtmusik II, andante amoroso, is playing now....
...as EG said in his highly observant 9/69 G-review, it is absolutely exquisite.
Then the finale begins and you think....whoa...like this, really? Really? Yet all the rhythms and phrases are there, defined and articulated (well, most of the time..).... all 24'29 of it.
Wordless Functional Analysis, anyone?

Great shame we have no live recording from earlier in his career. He did seem to have trouble with those middle symphonies, never recording 5 or 6 of course, and referring (in the Heyworth conversations) to the Alma theme of the 6th as "highly questionable"....
I wonder if Klemperer ever played the Prokofiev 5th? One would have thought his typical sound-palette with the Philharmonia (and earlier tenures) would have been very well suited.

Anyone heard the Rattle recently? I recall being very taken with it back in the day....another one for the playlist...!

Anyone know if the story is true that Horenstein was due record either the 7th or 9th for EMI only for Klemperer to decide he wanted to and Horenstein ended up recording a not very well received Pathetique instead ?

[jayne lee wilson]

Anyone know if the story is true that Horenstein was due record either the 7th or 9th for EMI only for Klemperer to decide he wanted to and Horenstein ended up recording a not very well received Pathetique instead ?

Not sure about that, but there are several Horenstein 5ths and 9ths here....with 3 and 4....

https://www.pristineclassical.com/collections/artist-jascha-horenstein

There is the live NPO Mahler 7 of course, on BBC Legends and elsewhere....haven't heard it though.

[ChandlersFord]

My impression is that Klemperer felt most composers overreached themselves at some point, with the possible exceptions of Bach and Mozart. Hence, his bizarre Bruckner 8 with its savage cuts to the finale.

As for K’s Mahler 7 - it’s a long time since I last listened. I seem to recall it beginnings well but then going off the boil - but that may well reflect my own feelings about the symphony, which is not one of GM’s best.

[Bryn]

. . . but that may well reflect my own feelings about the symphony, which is not one of GM’s best.

[RichardB]

I really don't understand the commonly encountered opinion that there's something "wrong" with the 7th, especially with its Finale, which ever since I first heard it I've thought of as a wondrous thing, changing perspective in such an intricate way between so many different densities, textures and colours, while unfolding its rondo structure in just as many different directions. I don't have a favourite among Mahler's symphonies, but the 7th is one I do come back to quite often. It's one of the best performances in Kubelik's set, I think, and the oft-mentioned Abbado in Chicago is wonderful too, especially the tenor horn in the first movement (although Abbado's later live Berlin recording is a bit of a mess in places). Looking through this thread I see that Gielen's Berlin recording is getting much praise. Seems not to be on Qobuz though, that's a shame.

[RichardB]

Bryn found the Gielen Berlin recording on Youtube, but I had to stop listening to it after a few seconds, remembering now why I had no recollection of his SWR recording - it's that he takes the notated tremoli in the strings at the end of bar 1, and subsequently, as repeated 32nd notes (demisemiquavers) rather than as desynchronised bowed tremoli, which, much as I love Gielen, I can't believe is right. I think Solti may have been the first conductor to have done it this way, since, among earlier recordings, Kubelik, Bernstein, Klemperer and Haitink all play the tremoli (as do Abbado, Fischer and Boulez). To me the way Solti and Gielen (and Barenboim) have these notes played makes the music sound ponderous rather than evocative. I'd be the first to abandon any prejudice caused by how I originally got to know this piece, but, having spent a long time with the score, I still don't see how those conductors could have thought the measured 32nds are the best way to do it, even given that the notation is somewhat ambiguous here.

[ChandlersFord]

There has to be a reason why it’s GM’s least-programmed and least popular Symphony (there may be fewer performances of the 8th, but that’s because it’s so difficult to co-ordinate; but it always plays to a packed house!) and why it achieved its greatest renown as an advertising aid for Castrol GTX.

[mahlerfan]

I really don't understand the commonly encountered opinion that there's something "wrong" with the 7th, especially with its Finale, which ever since I first heard it I've thought of as a wondrous thing, changing perspective in such an intricate way between so many different densities, textures and colours, while unfolding its rondo structure in just as many different directions. I don't have a favourite among Mahler's symphonies, but the 7th is one I do come back to quite often. It's one of the best performances in Kubelik's set, I think, and the oft-mentioned Abbado in Chicago is wonderful too, especially the tenor horn in the first movement (although Abbado's later live Berlin recording is a bit of a mess in places). Looking through this thread I see that Gielen's Berlin recording is getting much praise. Seems not to be on Qobuz though, that's a shame.

A wilfully 'misunderstood' work, I would say .....

And Abbado's Chicago DG is the first among some equals .....

[RichardB]

There has to be a reason why it’s GM’s least-programmed and least popular Symphony

Well, there has also to be a reason why The Lark Ascending is programmed more often than everything by Schoenberg put together! Some may find Mahler's 7th difficult to grasp or seemingly incoherent, but that doesn't make it inferior to the others in any way.

[Bryn]

Bryn found the Gielen Berlin recording on Youtube, but I had to stop listening to it after a few seconds, remembering now why I had no recollection of his SWR recording - it's that he takes the notated tremoli in the strings at the end of bar 1, and subsequently, as repeated 32nd notes (demisemiquavers) rather than as desynchronised bowed tremoli, which, much as I love Gielen, I can't believe is right. I think Solti may have been the first conductor to have done it this way, since, among earlier recordings, Kubelik, Bernstein, Klemperer and Haitink all play the tremoli (as do Abbado, Fischer and Boulez). To me the way Solti and Gielen (and Barenboim) have these notes played makes the music sound ponderous rather than evocative. I'd be the first to abandon any prejudice caused by how I originally got to know this piece, but, having spent a long time with the score, I still don't see how those conductors could have thought the measured 32nds are the best way to do it, even given that the notation is somewhat ambiguous here.

Agreed that, in the Dover replication of the 1909 Bote & G score which is all I have, the notation calls for unmeasured tremoli. It's not, however, something that I would allow to divert me from the rest of the performance. I take it that Gielen and co. had considered reasons for the way they approached those tremoli. Is the same notation found in the critical edition?

[RichardB]

I take it that Gielen and co. had considered reasons for the way they approached those tremoli. Is the same notation found in the critical edition?

I don't have access to the critical edition at the moment, but the fair copy prepared under Mahler's supervision looks exactly the same as the Dover edition. Of course Gielen had his reasons, and if he were still with us I might consider getting in touch and asking him what they were! But I still don't like it.

[Bryn]

By the way, though unavailable from amazon.de and is overpriced on amazon.co.uk, the Testament site had 41 copies of the Berlin Gielen Mahler 7 left at £10.99 including p&p within the UK.