Prom 62: Mahler - Symphony No. 6, BRSO, Rattle

[Nick Armstrong]

I am an Andante -Scherzo man like Barbirolli’s live account but understand why others do not agree .

Les Enfants du Paradis - I saw that at the long closed council owned and run Anvil Cinema in Sheffield in the 1980s . I was entranced and went back and saw it again three days later and it was one of the last films it showed before it closed due to cuts forced upon the council by central government .

Funnily enough, the parallels with the film as described above are part of why I prefer Scherzo - Andante… It seems psychologically wrong suddenly to find oneself in a comforting idyll, it doesn’t seem to me to have been earned yet… Battling on into the scherzo feels the right sequence to me, followed by the respite of the andante before plunging into the finale.

It’s interesting when a conductor wants to do it the other way round so of course I wouldn’t rule it out - but the Prom performance did nothing to displace my preference

[oliver sudden]

It’s interesting when a conductor wants to do it the other way round

It's not just the 'interesting' caprice of some random maestro though. What you're calling 'the other way round' is the only order the composer ever performed. Scherzo-Andante was the beta version.

'You play Mahler your way, I'll play him his way'

[smittims]

On the other hand, Mahler said to Klemperer, 'if aftrer I am gone you feel something needs changing, you have not only the right, but a duty to do so.' In other words he was not a rigid believer in 'that's the way it's always done'.

[Barbirollians]

But Klemperer and Walter didn’t conduct the Sixth as I recall. Of the conductors who knew him like Mengelberg did any of them conduct it and in what order ?I think the fact Mahler conducted it Andante Scherzo is the most compelling evidence .Anyway of those I wanted to hear this is the last Prom I need to catch up on before Monday.

[oliver sudden]

But Klemperer and Walter didn’t conduct the Sixth as I recall. Of the conductors who knew him like Mengelberg did any of them conduct it and in what order ?I think the fact Mahler conducted it Andante Scherzo is the most compelling evidence .Anyway of those I wanted to hear this is the last Prom I need to catch up on before Monday.

This paper gives lots of the detail. (Not all of it. He presumably didn't know then that Alma Mahler told the Concertgebouw to play Andante-Scherzo (sic!) as late as 1955, for van Beinum's performances (one of which is on youtube by the way and is excellent, in particular an Andante dripping with lovely portamento).)

https://posthorn.com/Mahler/paper.pdf

Mengelberg didn't conduct the 6th in Mahler's lifetime but in 1909 Mahler asked Mengelberg to send his score so he could put in some revisions. They didn't affect the movement order. Mengelberg conducted it in 1916 (Andante-Scherzo) but in 1919 made the mistake of asking Alma what order the movements should go in, since a pre-premiere score had appeared which had lost its errata slip.

Mahler himself never conducted Scherzo-Andante in performance, or told a publisher or a conductor or any other colleague to do so. Alma told Mengelberg in 1919 to play Scherzo-Andante and then in her memoirs called the Scherzo the third movement and in 1955 told the Concertgebouw to play Andante-Scherzo. Then a couple of years later Erwin Ratz managed to get her authority to swap the movements back, gave that order the approval of the Mahler-Gesellschaft, and nearly everyone (Barbirolli and Rattle being notable exceptions) played Scherzo-Andante for 50 years. Walter never conducted it, but there is a letter from him saying that Ratz had asked for his approval for changing the order back to Scherzo-Andante and he had said, and I quote, 'not on your nelly'.

[richardfinegold]

It's not just the 'interesting' caprice of some random maestro though. What you're calling 'the other way round' is the only order the composer ever performed. Scherzo-Andante was the beta version.

'You play Mahler your way, I'll play him his way'

Who’s to say that if Mahler hadn’t lived another six months he wouldn’t have changed his mind half a dozen more times? At one time in his life he apparently sanctioned scherzo-andante so he opened the door. If every Bruckner symphony can exist in 38 different editions all apparently sanctioned at one point by their creator then I fail to see why we can’t have two versions of just one Mahler symphony. I also agree with Nick that it just sounds weird to have the Andante preceding the struggle of the scherzo

[oliver sudden]

If every Bruckner symphony can exist in 38 different editions all apparently sanctioned at one point by their creator then I fail to see why we can’t have two versions of just one Mahler symphony. I also agree with Nick that it just sounds weird to have the Andante preceding the struggle of the scherzo

And for me having the scherzo right after the first movement sounds redundant and to be honest just a bit silly… He composed the movements out of order, as soon as he heard them with orchestra he fixed Andante-Scherzo and there’s no credible evidence he ever changed his mind. ‘He might have done eventually’ isn’t a serious argument.

The first symphony also exists in multiple versions and the early version is certainly worth a listen, but no one seriously pretends it has the same authority. With the sixth it’s the opposite: the only order he ever performed was for fifty years just a curiosity (and indeed still is in the minds of most of those of us who got to know it that way), while the order he rejected was the only one taken seriously. I don’t know another work of this importance that has suffered this indignity.

[smittims]

I prefer andante-Scherzo, if only because having endured the first movement it's too early to be battered to death by the start of the scherzo.

Joking apart, though, now that most of us listen to music via programmable recordings, surely it's up to each listener? I listen to the Mendelssohn octet 1-3-2-4 and to North Country Sketches 1-3-2-4 as Sir Thomas Beecham programmed it in concerts, as I think the music flows more logically that way.

[Nick Armstrong]

This paper gives lots of the detail.

https://posthorn.com/Mahler/paper.pdf

Absolutely fascinating, os

I’m glad I goaded you into posting this (plus other detail not least the van Beinum performance on YouTube)

[Petrushka]

Absolutely fascinating, os

I’m glad I goaded you into posting this (plus other detail not least the van Beinum performance on YouTube)

I seem to recall that Alastair Hinton, I think it was, posted the Posthorn paper quite a few years ago when the subject of the Mahler 6 order of movements came up for the zillionth time. I remember saving it to an ancient laptop but was unable to recover it when said laptop expired.

Anyway, I've saved it again!

[Nick Armstrong]

I seem to recall that Alastair Hinton, I think it was, posted the Posthorn paper quite a few years ago when the subject of the Mahler 6 order of movements came up for the zillionth time…

I confess to having had ahinton on silent for long periods as his syntax gave me panic attacks and headaches … so I’d have missed that

[oliver sudden]

I prefer andante-Scherzo, if only because having endured the first movement it's too early to be battered to death by the start of the scherzo.

Joking apart, though, now that most of us listen to music via programmable recordings, surely it's up to each listener? I listen to the Mendelssohn octet 1-3-2-4 and to North Country Sketches 1-3-2-4 as Sir Thomas Beecham programmed it in concerts, as I think the music flows more logically that way.

My guilty listening secret: I’ve done a version of the Mahler 1 finale on my computer, with not one but _two_ gear-change modulations since I always feel a bit let down by the fanfare coming back and just staying in key the second time. Ends in E major. Exciting stuff.

[oliver sudden]

Absolutely fascinating, os

I’m glad I goaded you into posting this (plus other detail not least the van Beinum performance on YouTube)

I am so easily goadable on this subject.

[richardfinegold]

And for me having the scherzo right after the first movement sounds redundant and to be honest just a bit silly… He composed the movements out of order, as soon as he heard them with orchestra he fixed Andante-Scherzo and there’s no credible evidence he ever changed his mind. ‘He might have done eventually’ isn’t a serious argument.

The first symphony also exists in multiple versions and the early version is certainly worth a listen, but no one seriously pretends it has the same authority. With the sixth it’s the opposite: the only order he ever performed was for fifty years just a curiosity (and indeed still is in the minds of most of those of us who got to know it that way), while the order he rejected was the only one taken seriously. I don’t know another work of this importance that has suffered this indignity.

It’s not an indignity. As I said Mahler might have changed his mind half a dozen more times had he lived past 50. With the First he at least had a few decades to be consistent with his final thoughts. As to “any work of importance ” not “suffering” “t see the my Bruckner comments. I wonder if Anton would care that there are versions being recorded of the wildly different Fourth. Maybe he would be thrilled to be able to compare the alternatives. Is Vaughn Williams losing sleep in Hades because the first version of the London Symphony has been gaining some currency? Perhaps Mahler might also like to hear different alternatives? We can never know and it’s inappropriate to be dogmatic about it when the composer himself left the door open.

[smittims]