Prom 32: Sunday 7th August at 7.00 p.m. (Brahms, Mahler)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Christian Tetzlaff plays Brahms' great Violin Concerto, with Edward Gardner conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra. And four top soloists and the BBC Singers join for the orchestra for the original version of Mahler's rarely-heard Das klagende Lied.

Featured artist Christian Tetzlaff has played many of the great violin concertos but this is his first Proms performance of the big-boned, technically demanding work by Brahms, all of whose concertos can be heard during this Proms season.
With his early Das klagende Lied, Mahler hit upon his own unique style. Tonight's account includes 'Waldmärchen', the emotive first panel dealing with the quest of brother knights for a flower that will win a queen's hand but leads to sibling murder. The score of this original three-part version of the work resurfaced as recently as 1969.

Brahms: Violin Concerto in D major
Mahler: Das klagende Lied (original version)

Christian Tetzlaff (violin)
Melanie Diener (soprano)
Ekaterina Gubanova (mezzo-soprano)
Stuart Skelton (tenor)
Christopher Purves (baritone)
Augustus Bell (treble)
Matthew Lloyd-Wilson (treble)
Oluwatimilehin Otudeko (treble)
Theodore Beeny (treble)
Thomas Fetherstonhaugh (treble)
Timothy Fairbairn (treble)
BBC Singers
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Edward Gardner (conductor)

[Tevot]

This should be an interesting one. I must admit that Das Klagende Lied is the one Mahler work that I least "get." It seems uneven and dare I say to me it outstays its welcome. What do other posters think of it?

Best wishes,

Tevot

[David Underdown]

I don't know it, but will be taking advantage of the Proms Plus Sing event to tackle some of the choral sections at first hand

[Roehre]

This should be an interesting one. I must admit that Das Klagende Lied is the one Mahler work that I least "get." It seems uneven and dare I say to me it outstays its welcome. What do other posters think of it?

Best wishes,
Tevot

Tevot, in its orignal 3-part form (as premiered on LP by Boulez in the 1970s) it gives a glimpse of what a Mahler opera might have been. As to its length: I do think that the 3 part Klagende Lied is too long, not in musical sense, but because of the "repeat" of the story of part 1 ("Waldmärchen"/Forest legend) in the following 2 parts. Mahler did appreciate this and simply cut the 1st part, while revising the 2nd ("Der Spielmann"/the minstrel) and 3rd ("Hochzeitsstück"/Wedding piece) parts.
Musically the first part therefore sticks in Mahler's 1879-1880 idiom, while 2 and 3 were revised according to Mahler's musical thinking from around the time of the 4th symphony. That it is not the musical quality itself which did make Mahler take the decision to cut the 1st part, is illustrated by the end of it, where material emerges which Mahler used slightly later in the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and eventually in the 1st Symphony.

Performing Das Klagende Lied by combining part 1 "Waldmärchen" with the 1900 revised other parts, produces a hybrid.
IMO this hybrid is even worse than including Blumine in the Symphony no.1 version after this piece was revised from its Titan-symphonic poem in 5 mvts original.

The non-revised scores are available, and it would make sense to use these in stead of the 1900-version (which is the generally available 2-mvt-one). It does mean however, that a choir of youngsters (or even a children's choir) should be used.
I haven't seen who is performing, but if there isn't such a choir employed, I am pretty sure the hybrid version will be performed.

Whatever, I like the piece, and it is amazing that it's a work by a 20-year-old composer without much orchestral/choral experience (as his symphony in a as well as the Nordic symphony even hadn't been played through -these scores most likely were destroyed by the attack on Dresden, February 1945)

[Petrushka]

Das Klagende Lied is the sole remaining Mahler work I still have to hear live and also as an admirer of Ed Gardner I think it is a win-win situation for me. I shall be in the RAH for this and am greatly looking forward to it!

[Roehre]

Looking at the performers (5 trebles !) it is very well possible that the original 1880 version of Das Klagende Lied is performed.

[Bryn]

I did not expect to be able to make this Prom, but today a new colleague started and I have been able to arrange for him to work the period I was scheduled to cover, and I get to finish before 4pm, thus allowing me to get the RAH around 5.15pm. Though I have always found the original version with the trebles a bit of a damp squib compared to the revision which got rid of them, I am hoping tomorrow will change my perception of the original.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Enjoy the Violin Concerto while you can. The piano concerto version is on its way soon.

[Serial_Apologist]

This should be an interesting one. I must admit that Das Klagende Lied is the one Mahler work that I least "get." It seems uneven and dare I say to me it outstays its welcome. What do other posters think of it?

Best wishes,

Tevot

I first heard "Das Klagende Lied" in a 1967 R3 broadcast, in which we were not if I recall correctly told that it was the shortened, revised version. I only came to hear the original version a couple of years ago, and, Having really enjoyed it that first time for its freshness, was really disappointed. As Harold Truscott wrote in the edition of The Symphony which I possess, its idiom seems constricted; I agree, and yet, at the same time, feel the original version far outstays its welcome by the end.

S-A

[Serial_Apologist]

Listening as this work draws to its close, I am most struck by Mahler's extraordinary ear for new combinations of timbres. Berlioz and Liszt would have been influences - possibly more than Wagner? - but Mahler goes far further than anyone else I can think of ca. 1880. There are passages here which clearly anticipate musical Impressionism. Dare one argue for Mahler being the greatest orchestrator at that time? Also I spotted what maybe could be claimed the first-ever instance of polytonality - even polymetricality - in a passage in which several ghostly thematic ideas briefly phase in and out, almost in anticipation of Ives.

Remarkable performance - just one wince from the children's choir on a high note, but could have been miking.

[Alison]

Lovely concert.

Ed Gardner deserves the highest praise for making the BBC Symphony sound the best of the house bands after all.

And not for the first time either.

[jayne lee wilson]

Remarkable indeed!
What a stream of melodic, harmonic and colouristic invention! Half-expecting to find it a long haul I was spellbound by the Klagende Lied tonight; those pastoral horn-calls against shimmering strings, so freshly evocative of that Wunderhorn-Symphony world, fresher for being so much less familiar. Beautifully controlled by Gardner - important to let a piece like this breathe, not to control it or drive it too tightly. I liked the balance tonight too, with solo voices more set back than in some earlier choral webcasts, the Trebles (and wind solos) darkly evocative of German Fairy-tale grotesquerie.

Those of a certain age may remember Boulez taking the piece up in the 70s, when the original was scarcely known. But then, newly intoxicated with the symphonies, it seemed to me a mere diffuse foretaste... well, not tonight.

Great Brahms, too - fleet-footed, light orchestral textures, but energy and dancing high spirits where needed - great coda to the finale.

A lovely evening!

[Anna]

Having read some of the comments prior to the broadcast I was unsure about this - but I absolutely loved the Mahler.

[makropulos]

Strongly agree with both of the above (Alison and janye lee wilson) - I found it all extremely impressive. Ed Gardner did a wonderful job (again) and it was a programme that ended up working very well, at least on the radio. Was I imagining it, or was that the amazing Anna Larsson appearing for the second time in three days, and not the advertised mezzo?

[Bryn]

Sorry, I found Tetzlaff's contribution to the Brahms a big disappointment. The phrasing seemed boringly unidiomatic, and the degree of vibrato quite a variance with what the concerto's dedicatee would have deemed appropriate. As ever, I enjoyed the Mahler, but my doubts about the trebles was reinforced. They just can't hold their own in the context of the other forces employed, to my ears. I reckon the composer was quite right to drop them from the revised version, though I wish he had retained Waldmarchen, even if modified.