BaL 7.01.23 - Mahler: Symphony no. 6 in A minor

[LHC]

The title's simply "Mahler" - KR made it for TV in 1974. I can't rememberr having seen it myself - something for Xmas viewing!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGq7TFoxB4E

A minor correction, Ken Russell’s ‘Mahler’ was not made for TV. It was made for David Puttnam's company Goodtimes and was entered into the competition at the Cannes Film Festival. It was released in cinemas worldwide.

KR went on to make the much more scurrilous Lizstomania for Puttnam, with Roger Daltrey in the lead role.

[RichardB]

A minor correction, Ken Russell’s ‘Mahler’ was not made for TV.

Indeed - I remember seeing it at the cinema when I was 18 or so, expecting something more "realistic" (!) - although some of the fantasy sequences were burned permanently into my memory. I've seen it once more in recent years, one of Ken's best films I think.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Surely the point about the coda to 6(i) is how the grim rhythms of the symphony's motto themes are gradually transformed into the Alma Theme, combining with it to create that overwhelming final climax - far from a restatement, it's a very meaningful development.
(With intriguing programmatic implications...the Triumph of Love, or the Triumph of Alma, or...perhaps rather more to it. Remember the (brilliantly devised) ending of the Ken Russell film...?).

Such a coda-combination isn't so far from similar procedures in other symphonies, especially the further one gets into the era of Cyclic Form.
Just listen to how César Franck uses all the main ideas in his D Minor Symphony's 1st movement to build up that dramatic coda. Schumann gets up to all sorts of thematic tricks in his ever-fluid, ever-evolving opening movements, e.g in No.2, where the "2nd subject" (if you can call it that - a very relativistic term with this composer...) leads off in the coda, then the quiet trumpet theme from the intro comes back in a triumphant blaze, driving the main allegro theme to the conclusion. And as for the revolutionary one-movement 4th, well....

So as with the Mahler, the forms are driven by the specific musical and emotional demands of the individual work...

Yes it’s much more than a restatement and I think you are right the Alma theme somehow subsumes and triumphs over the grim March like opening. There’s some wonderful harmonic compression and sequencing of elements of that theme in the final bars of that movement. Rather like Wagner the effort Mahler puts into the end of his movements never ceases to amaze. I can’t remember much about the Mahler film - other than it had the excellent Robert Powell and Georgina Hale in it.
Just watched it on YouTube - yes brilliant. Makes me wistful for when we made decent films about serious things.I had a mate who made a tv factual short with Ken Russell . He literally directed every shot feature film style which is very unusual in the telly world . What a talent he was and if I may make the comparison like Mahler completely dedicated to his art.

[Master Jacques]

Makes me wistful for when we made decent films about serious things.I had a mate who made a tv factual short with Ken Russell . He literally directed every shot feature film style which is very unusual in the telly world . What a talent he was and if I may make the comparison like Mahler completely dedicated to his art.

Quite so! Yet - typically - Ken Russell is more celebrated abroad than he is in his thankless homeland. The range, depth and quality of his work (not least that long series of TV and feature films on composers) is astonishing. And he bankrolled some crucial Lyrita Bax symphony recordings, too.

[RichardB]

Quite so! Yet - typically - Ken Russell is more celebrated abroad than he is in his thankless homeland.

He's not alone in that of course!

Returning to Mahler 6, another reason for preferring the Andante-Scherzo might be that no.5 already begins with two mostly faster movements, the second of which is more rhythmically propulsive than the first. The Scherzo of no.6 combines something of the structural-expressive function of the second and third movements of no.5 together, but obviously in a much more concise form, after which you have a slow movement succeeded by a finale that incorporates recapitulation with new material in a complex and many-faceted form. So Mahler may eventually have thought that the overall form of no.6 was too reminiscent of its predecessor and exchanged the order of the movements to minimise that. Some may feel that isn't a good enough reason. In any case Mahler's experiment with a more "traditional" four-movement form was a one-off: the idea of beginning and ending with greatly extended movements enclosing a diverse sequence of shorter ones, begun in no.2, seems to have suited his inspiration more precisely.

[jayne lee wilson]

The Mahler 4 is a "traditional" 4-movement work, surely? There is the vocal, but the song-finale is a classical Rondo formally. And the "scherzo" comes second...

Artistically, a probably necessary contrast to the previous epics, the 4th is the closest Mahler ever got to a neoclassical symphony, in shape, sound and sense....

[Serial_Apologist]

The Mahler 4 is a "traditional" 4-movement work, surely? There is the vocal, but the song-finale is a classical Rondo formally. And the "scherzo" comes second...

Artistically, a probably necessary contrast to the previous epics, the 4th is the closest Mahler ever got to a neoclassical symphony, in shape, sound and sense....

I've often thought that while the first and last movements of No 10 are clearly follow-ons from No 9, the central movements of that last great work foreshadow a more direction Mahler would have followed, had he lived to a good old age. To my ears they have a very Busoni-ish, very neoclassical feel and spirit to them. I also think Zemlinsky imagined he was doing it for him!

[RichardB]

The Mahler 4 is a "traditional" 4-movement work, surely? There is the vocal

Exactly.

For me the principal innovation of no.10, apart from its almost "post-tonal" harmony at times, is the integration of thematic material between the movements to an extent that Mahler hadn't done before, for example in the way that the climactic passage of V parallels that of I but "ornamented" by a motive from III. The central movements may sound "neoclassical" in Deryck Cooke's version, but the orchestral sound of that version can't really be taken as indicative of what Mahler "might have done". (In my opinion Mazzetti's last version comes much closer to being convincing in that regard.)

[jayne lee wilson]

Exactly.

For me the principal innovation of no.10, apart from its almost "post-tonal" harmony at times, is the integration of thematic material between the movements to an extent that Mahler hadn't done before, for example in the way that the climactic passage of V parallels that of I but "ornamented" by a motive from III. The central movements may sound "neoclassical" in Deryck Cooke's version, but the orchestral sound of that version can't really be taken as indicative of what Mahler "might have done". (In my opinion Mazzetti's last version comes much closer to being convincing in that regard.)

But of course (as Deryck Cooke describes in his Faber guide) the 4th is itself very closely integrated, as the finale was composed first (originally as a song, then recast as a 7th Movement for No.3) and significant themes and motifs are drawn from it for the first three movements of No.4. The slow movement's climax brings back the trumpet theme (itself a transformation) from that of the first movement, a forerunner to the lovely lilting phrase that begins the finale. (I've just been sampling these passages from the Roth Recording. What amazing record, the sheer sound of it - talk about remake and remodel...).
More obviously, the finale's rondo-refrain is taken from the symphony's opening idea. And so on.

Mahler often brings back themes from earlier movements in his finales, combining them with other ideas, as in the 5th's final climax, where the great chorale from the 2nd movement's climax is led up to by a jaunty version of the adagietto's first theme. So maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not sure that the 10th was so very different in this regard. As for the 6th itself, it is so obsessively and repeatedly self-referential it can be quite dizzying!

*****
Right with you on the Mahler 10/Mazzetti II.... its my favourite too! I've just been looking for mine and can't find it.... major Mahler crisis going on here....

[Alison]

I believe Ed Seckerson prefers S-A. Didn’t he claim to have seen a handbill proving that Mahler changed his mind before death?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I believe Ed Seckerson prefers S-A. Didn’t he claim to have seen a handbill proving that Mahler changed his mind before death?

Do you mean he changed his mind again???

[RichardB]

Right with you on the Mahler 10/Mazzetti II.... its my favourite too! I've just been looking for mine and can't find it.... major Mahler crisis going on here....

BUT I was listening to it this evening and I think there's still too much routine instrumentation in it, especially in the last movement, too much of which resolves into a simple texture of melody + sustained chords with unvarying timbre, a kind of sound you don't often find in Mahler and particularly not in the 9th and the Lied von der Erde... so it's still IMO the best way to hear what Mahler wrote, without the too-spartan sound of the Cooke version or the overwritten fantasies of Barshai, but there's still room for a more creative and delicate approach.

[jayne lee wilson]

BUT I was listening to it this evening and I think there's still too much routine instrumentation in it, especially in the last movement, too much of which resolves into a simple texture of melody + sustained chords with unvarying timbre, a kind of sound you don't often find in Mahler and particularly not in the 9th and the Lied von der Erde... so it's still IMO the best way to hear what Mahler wrote, without the too-spartan sound of the Cooke version or the overwritten fantasies of Barshai, but there's still room for a more creative and delicate approach.

Wonder what you'd make of the Michelle Castelletti arrangement now? As with the Mazzetti II, I feel a chamber-orchestral texture works very well with the 10th, especially in the context of where Mahler was heading ("the undiscovered country..."), with the Song of the Earth and at least parts of the 7th and 9th Symphonies....

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?20169-New-Release-Special-Mahler-10-Remade-Again

As I said at the time "please ignore the flippancy about typefaces..."
Musically it is a wonderful experience, with the reservations as noted in the review...


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[Alison]

Do you mean he changed his mind again???

I believe that is Secko’s hypothesis.

[Bryn]

I believe Ed Seckerson prefers S-A. Didn’t he claim to have seen a handbill proving that Mahler changed his mind before death?

It is true that the Andante’s E-flat major is at farthest remove from the A major at the close of the first movement offering a telling remoteness by contrast – but all my musical sensibilities scream for the original ordering and I cannot imagine a Bernstein or a Tennstedt being persuaded otherwise. Indeed when I visited Klaus Tennstedt to talk Mahler at his home in Kiel back in the 80’s he thumped the table in that way he had of punctuating passionately held views when I dared broach the question of the alternative ordering.

But more persuasive still was Mahler’s biographer Henri-Louis de La Grange who wrote to me following my review of Simon Rattle’s CBSO recording of the Sixth (originally spread over two CDs so you couldn’t ‘re-programme’ his choice of the Andante/Scherzoordering!) and was himself unequivocal about Mahler’s final preference. What’s more he was in possession of a handbill which proved conclusively that Mahler did in fact perform the Sixth in its original ordering before he left us. Case closed? Each to his own, I say.

from https://www.edwardseckerson.biz/revi...t-august-2020/

If Henri-Louis de La Grange was, indeed, "in possession of a handbill which proved conclusively that Mahler did in fact perform the Sixth in its original ordering before he left us", why does it appear not to have been reproduced anywhere? Looks like a clear case of hearsay on Seckerson's part, to me. Note that he (Seckerson) makes no claim to have actually seen this handbill.