I took a chance last Saturday and drove to the Kennedy Center to see
if I could get a senior citizen's half-price ticket for that evening's
symphony concert.  I could.

The 8:30 concert was Leonard Slatkin conducting the NSO in Mahler's
arrangement of Beethoven's Serioso Quartet for string orchestra and
Mahler's revised orchestration of LvB's Eroica.  It was preceded by a
lecture at 5 that afternoon by David Pickett, who was Professor of Music
and Recording Arts at Indiana University, has published some papers on
Sibelius and Mahler and has also conducted.

Pickett's topic was "Mahler and Beethoven", meaning Beethoven as
interpreted by Mahler, and seemed to be more about Mahler as conductor in
general.  Indeed, and I'm here stating my recollection of my understanding
of the lecture, Mahler's duties as a conductor were so extensive that his
composing was what he had to fit in, usually during the months when the
concert/opera season was over.

He showed us an impressive slide of the Vienna Concert Hall, a truly
gigantic building, the size of which was made clear from the buildings
among which it was shown to be located.

He described the NY Philharmonic and Symphony (I think that's what it
was called then), when Mahler came to conduct it, as a casual cooperative,
performing essentially when it suited them, about 13 concerts a year, which
Mahler increased to 46.  The repertoire was about 47% by Romantic composers
and 25% of music written after 1885.  Picket described him as the Pierre
Boulez of his time and, according to Klemperer, he was one hundred times
better than Toscanini (because of whose presence at the Met Mahler probably
didn't choose to conduct there).

Without confining himself to Beethoven, in fact, hardly mentioning
him, Pickett noted how unconstrained Mahler felt in making changes:
he telescoped two of Bach's orchestral suites into one, and made cuts
in Schubert's "great" C major symphony in NY (but not in Vienna!).  He
also mentioned some changes in instrumentation to bring out voices that,
especially with the larger string sections called for by the larger concert
halls, were in danger of being drowned out, noting that Wagner had done
similar things when he added clarinets to Gluck's *Iphigenie*.  But most of
Mahler's "rearrangements" of Beethoven were pointed out later by Leonard
Slatkin at the concert itself.

The lecture was over at 6, at which time violinists Jane Bowyer Stewart and
Pamela Hentges, violist Nancy Thomas Weller, and cellist Rachel Young, gave
a recital in the center's Grand Foyer (free to the public) of Schubert's
Quartettsatz in c minor, Haydn's Quartet in C, Op.  76, No.  2 ("Emperor")
and Beethoven's Quartet No.  11 in f minor, Serioso, Op.  95.  I stayed for
the Schubert and the Haydn but as I was going to hear the enhanced version
of the Beethoven later in the evening, I used the time to get me a cup of
coffee in the cafeteria to wash down the brown bag supper I had brought and
walk over to Tower Records, not too far away.  I discovered that they had
a Hyperion sale and bought some CDs of Schubert Lieder and of Leslie Howard
playing the Liszt transcriptions of the Beethoven Symphonies.

Back in the concert hall, I discovered that Slatkin was also going to
treat us to explanatory talks before playing the evening's works.  Skipping
over the Serioso arrangement for the moment, let me talk about the Eroica
first.  Slatkin afforded us some instructive orchestral examples of the
work w/ and w/out Mahler's changes.  The one that sticks to my mind best
was the ascending flute passage in the last movement, where Beethoven
suddenly seems to abandon the variations theme and presents us w/ a "gypsy"
melody.  W/ today's orchestras the flute passage is scarcely audible.
Enhanced by Mahler with an Eb clarinet, it can be heard loud and clear,
complementing rather than competing w/ the other instruments.  (I wondered
at the time, whether another conductor could not have accomplished the same
effect w/out adding that clarinet.  I remembered the feeling I used to get
hearing Toscanini's orchestras that he was able to make every voice heard
while yet maintaining the integrity of the aggregate.  I listened to the
1939 and 1950 performances of Toscanini's Eroica and, yes, the flute could
be heard, but it could also have been missed.) Similar effects were
demonstrated as a consequence of reassigning parts among the violin
sections.  But it wasn't all balance of dynamics that was illustrated.
The revised phrasing of the last movement's opening pizzicato passages gave
it a greater impression of tentativeness.  And a change in emphasis of the
notes in one of the familiar tempestuous passages of the second movement
effected a complete change in that passage's mood.  A hesitation in one
of the movements, I no longer remember which, was suggested to have been
inspired by a similar hesitation in a passage in Mahler's own First
Symphony.

I left my comments on the orchestration of the quartet for last, because
it disappointed me.  Maybe I should remind readers that I came to Mahler
late and am still not among those who worship at his shrine.  Knowing how
I cringe when I hear people deny Mozart anything but the highest praise, I
hesitate to be critical of a composer who now seems to be so much admired
by people whose judgment I respect.  Nevertheless, I don't consider him
the greatest symphonic composer since (pick your own symphonic giant of
somewhat earlier vintage).  There are symphonies by Shostakovich and
Prokoffiev and, yes, Sibelius, that I prefer to any by Mahler.

And so I came to listen to Mahler's orchestration of Beethoven's quartet
and I asked myself, "why did he do this?" If I'd never heard the quartet
before, I'd probably have considered it to be a clever string symphony,
maybe a little more sophisticated than what Mendelssohn was dashing off
when he was twelve.  But I knew Beethoven's quartet, and this pitiful
reorchestration just pointed out to me that Beethoven was a composer that
Mahler, IMO, could never hope to be.  What Beethoven could convey w/ four
string instruments, Mahler seemed to have dissipated in his expanded
orchestra.  Maybe he should have tried his hand at writing chamber music,
quartets, sonatas.  It might, if I'm not guilty of some lese majeste in
saying this, have been good discipline.

Walter Meyer