Mahler Symphony no. 9

[gurnemanz]

Prompted by this thread, I've just re-listened to Barbirolli/Berlin which was my only version for many years. I was struck by Laurie's old man image above and it's easy to see what he he is getting at. It made me think a little bit of the aged minstrel in Schubert's Nachtstück taking up his harp for one last time before heading off to the forest for his final rest.

[LaurieWatt]

spot on!

[soileduk]

[QUOTE=Stanfordian;300318]
In addition I also admire the version with the Berliner Philharmoniker under Leonard Bernstein recorded live 1979 at the Philharmonie, Berlin on Deutsche Grammophon 477 8620.
[w/QUOTE]

I bought this a while ago now and I thought it sounded a right shambles. Perhaps it's just me so I'll give it another go.

I'M listening to this right now and I have no idea why I thought that this album wasn't any good. Please ignore the above comment.

[jayne lee wilson]

Very interesting. As you say it is very difficult to bring off. At the beginning the symphony staggers into existence like an old man getting out of bed and then covers the widest gamut of his life, from banality albeit sardonic, through to the most intense of emotion in the last movement. I will be very interested to see what everyone likes or not.

My favourites are:
Solti with the LSO in the late '60's on Decca - a very fine performance with well judged speed relationships and a state of the art recording for its time.
I have a radio recording I love of Kurt Sanderling with the then BBC Northern SO. Also one in the LPO archive with Sanderling which is not well recorded although a fine performance.
I also love both Karajan in his last manifestation and Abbado from Lucerne although the end of the first movement, with Abbado, is far too fast c/f Karajan in the same passage. The horn and flute are supposed to float and intertwine around each other not have a race to the end.

I heard Bruno Maderna do it at a Prom which I believe is now available on Legends or something like that. The performance was so slow I thought it was going to stop, especially in the last movement. BM, poor man, looked dead on his feet and, indeed, was only a few days later.

Laurie - the BBC Legends issue was taped at the RFH on 31 March 1971 - it's a remarkable performance, well-played and recorded, very boldly, even daringly interpreted, and not slow at all at 79'16 overall (just 21'28 for the final adagio). Any Mahlerian should be gripped by such a fresh approach.

You'll find Richard Osborne's review in Gramophone for 8/2006. Good old archive.

Anyone mentioned Ancerl/Czech Phil yet? I think it may have won BaL a while ago, and it is far more than "an alternative view"... my first was the Haitink/RCOA, but as with Brahms 2 I could never choose just one (and Mahler 9 is in my personal moratorium for now anyway!).

[Thropplenoggin]

Laurie - the BBC Legends issue was taped at the RFH on 31 March 1971 - it's a remarkable performance, well-played and recorded, very boldly, even daringly interpreted, and not slow at all at 79'16 overall (just 21'28 for the final adagio). Any Mahlerian should be gripped by such a fresh approach.

You'll find Richard Osborne's review in Gramophone for 8/2006. Good old archive.

Anyone mentioned Ancerl/Czech Phil yet? I think it may have won BaL a while ago, and it is far more than "an alternative view"... my first was the Haitink/RCOA, but as with Brahms 2 I could never choose just one (and Mahler 9 is in my personal moratorium for now anyway!).

Only in my original post.

Fancy skipping to the end - this isn't a Somerset Maugham novel, you know!

[jayne lee wilson]

Only in my original post.

Fancy skipping to the end - this isn't a Somerset Maugham novel, you know!

There's too much going on tonight! Look I'm starving, so I'm off, sadly not for Rabbit Pie...
(but definitely for more Holmboe later...)

[Bryn]

I think it is very plausible

Except that I recall a radio broadcast of several decades ago in which it was asserted that Mahler's gait was such that we walked 'rubato'. No two successive paces were said to be in the same tempo.

[Ah, here's his daughter Anna on the subject:

"I remember his walk--his very strange walk. I know exactly what it was, because I walked with him. People say it was a nervous tic. It wasn't. It was irregular, but it was a change of pace. Every few paces, he just changed--he shifted gears--he shifted--yes, that was all. Why he did it, I don't know. It was somehow nervous apparently, but it was not a tic, it was not, you know, it, it just shifted. I walked with him as a child often, so I know these things."]

[Barbirollians]

Only in my original post.

Fancy skipping to the end - this isn't a Somerset Maugham novel, you know!

No I mentioned Ancerl too - I think his Brahms 1 is even finer .

[LaurieWatt]

Laurie - the BBC Legends issue was taped at the RFH on 31 March 1971 - it's a remarkable performance, well-played and recorded, very boldly, even daringly interpreted, and not slow at all at 79'16 overall (just 21'28 for the final adagio). Any Mahlerian should be gripped by such a fresh approach.

You'll find Richard Osborne's review in Gramophone for 8/2006. Good old archive.

Jayne, I must go back to it, as I have not re-visited it via the recording. I just have this recollection of Maderna looking like a walking - well, standing, corpse - and it all felt very static at the time. I was going to make a tasteless allusion to him and my description of the opening of the symphony but I will resist the temptation...
... this is me with a major edit of my post - in fact,I have just re-read what you say about the date because the performance I heard was much later and at a Prom and just a couple of months before he died in 1973. I pretty sure that is right but it could be my memory still playing games!

[Barbirollians]

He did not die till November 1973 Laurie is it the same performance ?

[LaurieWatt]

QuIte! See my edit!
L

[Barbirollians]

I have found it - 31 August 1973 coupled with the Schumann Violin Concerto no less .

http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/archive/search/1970s/1973/august-31/8533

[akiralx]

[QUOTE=soileduk;300664]

In addition I also admire the version with the Berliner Philharmoniker under Leonard Bernstein recorded live 1979 at the Philharmonie, Berlin on Deutsche Grammophon 477 8620.
[w/QUOTE]

I bought this a while ago now and I thought it sounded a right shambles. Perhaps it's just me so I'll give it another go.

I'M listening to this right now and I have no idea why I thought that this album wasn't any good. Please ignore the above comment.

The snag with this version is the failure of the entire trombone section to enter at the climax of the finale - which was recently confirmed as a result of an audience member in the choir seats collapsing right behind the trombones.

[LaurieWatt]

I have found it - 31 August 1973 coupled with the Schumann Violin Concerto no less .

http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/archive/s...august-31/8533

[soileduk]

[QUOTE=akiralx;300816]

The snag with this version is the failure of the entire trombone section to enter at the climax of the finale - which was recently confirmed as a result of an audience member in the choir seats collapsing right behind the trombones.