Mahler 2: Rattled by Rattle

[Guest]

Perhaps this is very old news for many, but I've just been disturbed by the opening movement of Rattle's (in)famous account of Mahler's Symphony No. 2 with the CBSO. It's my first run-through of this newly-arrived CD.

I'm familiar with Tennstedt's LPO Live account, Mehta's famous account on Decca Legends, and Klemperer's take on EMI.

The rubato seems all over the shop in Rattle's version. I'm no musician and can't read scores, but is he taking liberties with the score? It sounds so different from the other three versions I have. The middle crescendo is slowed right down, losing its impact, as is the ending. It feels bizarre, but perhaps he is being accurate and the other conductors sped things up?

It sounds wrong to me, but perhaps Rattle's 'right'.

[rauschwerk]

If I remember rightly, Rattle paid close attention to the very first recording of this piece (Oskar Fried, 1924) in preparing this recording. Fried knew Mahler and had been invited to direct a performance in 1905.

[Ariosto]

Join the club. If you love Mahler don't get the Rattled version ... Rattle's only ever wrong.

[Roehre]

If I remember rightly, Rattle paid close attention to the very first recording of this piece (Oskar Fried, 1924) in preparing this recording. Fried knew Mahler and had been invited to direct a performance in 1905.

Rattle did. So far for HIP Mahler. And again the situation that quite a lot of people are more interested in X's Mahler or Y's Mahler than in Mahler himself.

[Thropplenoggin]

Rattle did. So far for HIP Mahler. And again the situation that quite a lot of people are more interested in X's Mahler or Y's Mahler than in Mahler himself.

Not so. I'm new to Mahler and was really taken aback by Rattle's interpretation, so unlike the other three I had heard. I wanted to clarify which one was closer in intention to Mahler's score.

[amateur51]

Join the club. If you love Mahler don't get the Rattled version ... Rattle's only ever wrong.

Well it is an opinion, I suppose.

But not one I happen to share

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The rubato seems all over the shop in Rattle's version. I'm no musician and can't read scores, but is he taking liberties with the score? It sounds so different from the other three versions I have. The middle crescendo is slowed right down, losing its impact, as is the ending. It feels bizarre, but perhaps he is being accurate and the other conductors sped things up?

Difficult to tell whether you mean the whole work or just the first movement, here, Thropple. The score of the First movement is peppered with "hold back" "suddenly in tempo", "not so fast", "there should be an imperceptible accelerando between these two points", "heavily" etc etc. How much "holding back" etc is up to the conductor, and, inevitably, listeners will react differently to different conductors' ideas about this. Fried, Walter, Klemperer (all of whom worked closely with the composer on this work) and Stokowski (who attended rehearsals for the premiere of the Eighth) differ widely (and wildly) from each other - as do Klemperer's various recordings: it's a matter of how they believe these instructions should be performed to reveal this overwhelming score at its incendiary best.

One thing you can do to check a conductor's fidelity to the score is play the opening of the First movement and then the last few bars (the falling chromatic scale from the whole orchestra) - the pulse should be "identical" - or at least as close as can humanly be expected after twenty minutes!

[Bryn]

I recall a Radio 3 programme from a few decades ago in which is was related that Mahler even walked with a rubato gait, no two successive paces being of equal duration.

[I will now go and listen to the opening of the 2nd as recorded by Rattle, and then the definitive recording under the baton of Sir Roger Norrington. ]

[Thropplenoggin]

I recall a Radio 3 programme from a few decades ago in which is was related that Mahler even walked with a rubato gait, no two successive paces being of equal duration.

I'm not sure that was supposed to be funny but it made me laugh anyway. Thanks.

[kernelbogey]

...The middle crescendo is slowed right down, losing its impact, as is the ending. ...

I remember a performance conducted by Maazel at the RAH in which that middle crescendo was slowed right down - to shattering emotional effect.

Ferney's post a very helpful explanation. (I don't know the Rattle.)

[amateur51]

Difficult to tell whether you mean the whole work or just the first movement, here, Thropple. The score of the First movement is peppered with "hold back" "suddenly in tempo", "not so fast", "there should be an imperceptible accelerando between these two points", "heavily" etc etc. How much "holding back" etc is up to the conductor, and, inevitably, listeners will react differently to different conductors' ideas about this. Fried, Walter, Klemperer (all of whom worked closely with the composer on this work) and Stokowski (who attended rehearsals for the premiere of the Eighth) differ widely (and wildly) from each other - as do Klemperer's various recordings: it's a matter of how they believe these instructions should be performed to reveal this overwhelming score at its incendiary best.

One thing you can do to check a conductor's fidelity to the score is play the opening of the First movement and then the last few bars (the falling chromatic scale from the whole orchestra) - the pulse should be "identical" - or at least as close as can humanly be expected after twenty minutes!

Many thanks for this excellent post, ferney

I've highlighted the last para because I know that this is a contentious point in Rattle's live and recorded performances and my memory tells me that this is exactly what Rattle does, whereas many other conductors allow the fallingscale to gather pace, like a ball falling downstairs.

[Thropplenoggin]

Difficult to tell whether you mean the whole work or just the first movement, here, Thropple. The score of the First movement is peppered with "hold back" "suddenly in tempo", "not so fast", "there should be an imperceptible accelerando between these two points", "heavily" etc etc. How much "holding back" etc is up to the conductor, and, inevitably, listeners will react differently to different conductors' ideas about this. Fried, Walter, Klemperer (all of whom worked closely with the composer on this work) and Stokowski (who attended rehearsals for the premiere of the Eighth) differ widely (and wildly) from each other - as do Klemperer's various recordings: it's a matter of how they believe these instructions should be performed to reveal this overwhelming score at its incendiary best.

One thing you can do to check a conductor's fidelity to the score is play the opening of the First movement and then the last few bars (the falling chromatic scale from the whole orchestra) - the pulse should be "identical" - or at least as close as can humanly be expected after twenty minutes!

Yes, it was just the first movement. I was so perturbed that I didn't proceed with Disc 2.

A very interesting response - many thanks for explaining that. I lack the music vocabulary to always express myself freely but you got what I wanted to know.

[amateur51]

Very interesting - thanks for explaining that. I lack the music vocabulary to always express myself freely but you got what I wanted to know.

I'm the same Thropplenoggin - it's nice to have these musically educated types to tell us what we mean, I find s all round

[Roehre]

I'm not sure that was supposed to be funny but it made me laugh anyway. Thanks.

Funny or not so funny: Mahler himself was acutely aware of this (even referred to it in more than one letter of his) and recollections of Mahler by people who knew him and had worked with him -mainly musicians in Vienna and New York (recorded around his centenary in 1960) - unfailingly mention his irregular walking.
The irregular beat (including time changes) in the Scherzo of the sixth are said to be related to this too.

[Keraulophone]

I've highlighted the last para because I know that this is a contentious point in Rattle's live and recorded performances and my memory tells me that this is exactly what Rattle does, whereas many other conductors allow the fallingscale to gather pace, like a ball falling downstairs.

I've long been rattled by the tempo of these two bars of descending triplet quavers at the end of 2(i). The score says 'Tempo 1' at bar 441, which fhg suggests should be 'identical' to the pulse of the opening 4/4 Allegro Maestoso marking. Ignoring the accelerando in bar 4 and 'a tempo' in bar 6, the basic pulse at the start of Claudio Abbado's Lucerne Festival Orchestra performance of 21/8/03 is approximately 80 (crotchet) beats per minute, whereas that final descending scale is taken at a fast but steady 126 bpm; it's an entirely different speed from 'Tempo 1', although in this particular performance the triplets don't gather pace on their way 'downstairs'.

It may be that Rattle is more faithful to the score at this point than Abbado, but I find his performances strangely unsettling, and have no hestitation in placing this Abbado concert performance right at the top of the list of the many I have enjoyed listening to. The Swiss press gushed: 'It would be hard to find anything greater, more significant or more moving anywhere in musical life today: total harmony of mind, and heart, poetry and outcry, fear and consolation, knowing and feeling'.