Mahler: Symphony No.9
Philharmonia Orchestra
Conducted by Benjamin Zander

Telarc  3CD-80527

You do well for your money here.  For the cost of one full-priced CD,
in addition to the two containing the "live" performance of the symphony
there's a third containing a seventy-six minute illustrated talk by Zander
entitled "Conducting and Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony".  Along with
a liner essay by him there's also a single sheet containing a reproduction
of the first two pages of the score (complete with the conductor's
notations so you can follow the major part of his talk on how to conduct
the piece), a plan of the orchestra layout, two "beat charts", some
engravings of Mahler conducting and a note from a little girl thanking
Zander for his performances.  Everything but a stethoscope so you can
listen to see if you have an arrhythmia to match the composer's (rendered
in music in the first bars of the work) and an appointment with a Freudian
analyst to see if your mental state matches Mahler's.  Here I jest.  But
it does raise the question as to how much the listener needs by way of
"support" before listening to Mahler's Ninth and why this recording might
be so special that it needs them.  Is it not the case that listeners have
managed without such things and could in the future?

Benjamin Zander is a teacher and, judging by all that comes with
this set, a good one.  His work with the pro, semi-pro and amateur Boston
Philharmonic gives shining evidence of his virtues in this role too.  He is
also in demand the world over as one of that current "flavour-of-the-month"
gurus: the Inspirational Speaker, called in by organisations to put lead
into the emotional pencils of employees and, in his case, never failing to
use music and his experiences performing it with "pros" and "ams" as part
of his creed.  So it's clearly the teacher in Zander that has led to the
unusual presentation of this recording.  But I wonder if he's in danger
of making a rod for his own back.  From his notes and talk he understands
the work superbly well and can communicate his understanding clearly.
The problem is, when we finally get to listen to the performance the
notes and talk have been us leading to, will we hear one matching such a
depth of understanding? Is Zander as good a conductor as he is a teacher?
Can he also get a leading professional orchestra (as opposed to a
semi-professional and student one) to live up to what his intellect and
emotions tell him is there? I will say straight away that on the evidence
of this recording the answer is no, not when compared with others who have
recorded this work and done it without the luxury of talks, notes, diagrams
and tributes from children.

Because Zander has done himself no favours choosing this, of all works, to
record and present in this way.  In order for a recording of Mahler's Ninth
to succeed it has to face competition that could not be stiffer.  Harsh,
but that's the way it is when you're out buying CDs.  Of course you could
say this issue is ideal for the newcomer because of the "extras" and the
price, and there would be something in that.  However, even taking that
into account, I would still say a greater performance, one that lives up
to all Zander knows is there and more, will, even in the short term, serve
better.

In his essay he sees the first movement representing a crucial dichotomy
at the heart of the symphony.  He writes: "There seems to be two kinds
of music....music that is gentle, harmonious, sublimely beautiful, and
resolved; and music that is complex, dissonant, full of tension, and
unresolved.  And the structure of the movement seems to set these two kinds
of music against each other." This dichotomy represents the duality in
Mahler, Zander reminds us, and the time in which he lived, looking back to
the romantic, unified past and forward to the dissonant, fragmented future.
There is much to be gained from seeing the work in these terms and Zander
manages to illustrate the two poles of the dichotomy quite well in his
performance of the first movement.  But there are other performances which
do it better, more profoundly, and also recognise that a dichotomy is also
the sum of its poles and the area between.  Further, if fixated on one idea
and one aspect of it, a performance is in danger of emerging as rather
shallow and frankly that's how Zander's performance sounds in the first
movement.  This also appears to have a knock-on effect.  The quieter
passages between the more animated ones are interpreted by Zander as very
slow and very withdrawn, to the extent they're in danger of becoming
detached from the whole with little definition or focus, holding up the
forward momentum and any feeling of line.  The impression is of just
marking time between crises.  So there are "sharp oppositions" conveyed in
the first movement but it's as if they are seen from a great height over
large areas.

But Zander is very insistent in his recorded talk on the minutest attention
to detail, using the first two pages of the score and his notes over them
for us to see this.  Yet, to take just one example, in the crucial
climactic passage between bars 314 and 322 he appears not to have noticed,
or chosen to ignore, that the two statements by the massed trombones of the
opening rhythmic motif of the work have different dynamic markings: fff
the first time and ff the second.  Hear how Boulez gets his Chicago players
to deliver this.  (Deutsche Gramophon 289 457 581-2).

I mentioned earlier Zander making a rod for his own back in being so
detailed in telling us what his aims are.  A good example can be found
when he writes: "....in the first movement of Mahler's Ninth....there are
virtually no subservient voices.  What appear to be accompaniments turn
out to be independent voices with a life of their own....The orchestra
is no longer used as a tutti instrument, but rather as a vast chamber
group....The ideal orchestra for the work would be one composed entirely
of great individualists, each with the courage to play exactly what he is
given, regardless of what the others are doing." This is all valid, but
though the Philharmonia play very well, they don't give the impression of
achieving this effect.  In fact they turn in a very corporate account
indeed.

In an interview Zander says of rehearsing the work with the Boston
Philharmonic: "We were in there week after week and the only recorded
performance I listened to was Walter's magical live Vienna Philharmonic
recording from 1938." (Dutton CDEA5005).  So this invites one comparison
to use because there WAS an orchestra of "great individualists", including
some who had played under Mahler himself.  You can also make a comparison
with another orchestra of "great individualists", the London Symphony of
1966 under Jascha Horenstein, (Music and Arts CD-235), and the same
conclusion is unavoidable.  Two of the great Mahler conductors working with
two personality orchestras recorded live and conveying the very sense of
the orchestra as chamber group that seems to elude Zander, as he puts it:
"....encouraged not to compromise the sharp oppositions, not to minimise
the strangeness, even the ugliness that Mahler has written into his score".
If you want a passage to illustrate this, the closing pages of the
movement, from the duet of solo horn and flute onwards, would be as good
as any.  Zander's insistence on veiled, withdrawn playing robs it of the
chance for the players concerned to show chamber-like qualities.

When it comes to the Scherzo Zander again appears in his accompanying
material to partly understand what Mahler is aiming for but either
misunderstands what he means the conductor should do with this or finds
such a step beyond him.  Referring to Mahler's use of his favourite
landler, Zander writes: "This dance is a grim parody of the dance.
Mahler's indication at the beginning of the movement, "Etwas tappisch
und sehr derb" (somewhat clumsy and very rough), shows that the true Landler is
here stiffened and chained, deprived of its characteristic lilt - a
counterpart of the first movement's dissonance and rhythmic complexity."
That the landler is profoundly changed by Mahler here, there's no doubt.
Compare it with that in the second movement of the Fourth Symphony, as
Zander tells us to.  But I don't believe the change effected is either
what Zander says it is or what he delivers.  Indeed I don't think the
performance bears that close a relation to what Zander says it should
either.  I think what Mahler is doing here was well described by Neville
Cardus for whom the landler is "ravished and made with child" and Leonard
Bernstein who said it was "a bitter re-imaging of simplicity, naivete,
the earth-pleasures we recall from adolescence." With Zander what we get
is a little too precise and contained with none of the "clumsiness" and
"roughness" Mahler asks for and none of the parody Zander himself seems to
want - never mind Bernstein's "re-imaging" or Cardus's "ravishing".  (Did
the Englishman perhaps have a coarser word in mind?)

So, on a number of levels, there is much that is unsatisfactory in the
second movement.  Listen again to Walter, Horenstein and Klemperer to hear
how it ought to go and to be in keeping with what Zander appears to want.
Note the coarse rhythmic sense and the heavier tread, reinforced by all
three in foot stamps on the podium at precisely the same moment as the
dance gets underway.  To conductors from their backgrounds music like
this, even under metamorphosis, was "bred in the bone".  I would also
have expected Zander to make more of the tempo changes in the movement
so crucial that Mahler refers to them as I, II and III.  The changes,
brilliantly realised in the Boulez recording, are somewhat half-hearted,
almost designed not to sound awkward.  In his talk Zander refers to how he
has solved one tempo change that under other conductors sounds awkward.
Give me awkwardness any time in this movement because that is what I
believe Mahler wanted.  The close of the movement where, as Bruno Walter
has it, we know "the dance is over" is one of the most grotesque and
disturbing passages in all Mahler and can be made to sound truly poisonous.
Under Walter in 1938 it does: his "great individualists" see to that.
Under Horenstein likewise, and note the prominence he gives to the
contrabassoon.  Under Zander the close of the Scherzo is merely a mild
irritation.

For Zander the most remarkable aspect of the Rondo Burleske is its
contrapuntal mastery and he is right to draw attention to this.  But when
he writes "at first it may sound utterly chaotic, but gradually we realise
that it is a tour de force of controlled contrapuntal writing" I start to
disagree and believe he may be elevating this aspect above others with the
result that too much control is exercised where more abandon is what is
demanded if the world of feeling this movement represents is to be made
clear.  If anything any sense of chaos at the beginning should be added to
until the whole movement is in danger of breaking up.  But at least Zander
achieves what he sets out in his essay.  His need for control also seems to
be behind the fact that he is marginally too slow, but that isn't the whole
story.  Klemperer is slower and yet conveys a world of impending chaos.

Bernstein knew what this music meant: "....a farewell to the world
of action, the urban, the cosmopolitan life - the cocktail party, the
marketplace, the raucous careers and careenings of success, of loud, hollow
laughter." I would only add it's also the music of a world about to go
smash.  Listen to the Walter recording with the Vienna Philharmonic of
1938 (playing when the world was on the verge of going smash for a second
time) and the manic, almost unhinged frenzy with which they tear into this
movement, not letting up until the end and so making the blissful interlude
in the centre even more moving in its nostalgic power, is unforgettable.
Or, only slightly less manic, Horenstein and the LSO where Gervase de
Peyer's solo clarinet keeps squealing like Till Eulenspiegel strangling on
the gallows.  Such concepts seem miles away from Zander's stated aim of
control which, to give him his due, he does achieve.

The last movement under Zander is well-proportioned.  By that I mean
the overall tempo and pacing across the movement is fine and it balances
the long first movement.  Something that isn't always the case when the
symphony's "top-heaviness" can be accentuated.  (It is worth saying that,
though I am rather underwhelmed by this whole performance, it's at least
a consistent approach and delivers a performance that has much structural
integrity.) But when Zander writes of the last movement: "....the textures
are rich and full, the counterpoint astonishingly opulent" it's a pity to
find the strings are rather spare in volume and I'm worried by Zander
encouraging the same emphatic lunges in the strings that disfigure the
first movement too and which here have the effect of dissipating any
opulence rather than aiding it.  Even though it does have the effect
of linking the first and last movements in our minds.  The Philharmonia
strings cannot match the "saturation-quality" or nostalgic yearning of
their counterparts in the old Vienna Philharmonic even in a 1938 recording,
and seem to scramble the opening.  Whether it's the gut strings, the
old-world style of playing, or a trick of the balance, the sound of the old
VPO riding every climax shows again what is missing in Zander's account of
the same passages.

Zander also writes: "....there are moments of extreme withdrawal - those
bleak, passionless passages that Mahler marks to be played 'ohne Ausdruck'
(without expression) and that are often scored for just a handful of
instruments." Zander takes Mahler at his word and the effect, as in the
first movement, is to accentuate the divide between louder, more animated
passages and the passages of "extreme withdrawal" which are here again so
withdrawn they're in danger of detaching themselves, becoming longueurs.
This becomes a major problem in the remarkable closing pages which under
Zander reminds me more of the closing movement of Vaughan Williams's Sixth
Symphony where a completely different effect is aimed at.  I wonder if
Zander is being too literal in interpreting what Mahler is asking for.
That when Mahler writes "without expression" he's writing in terms of
what "expression" meant for him rather than what it means for us and an
adjustment is needed, one that most conductors have managed to make as part
of the continuing performing traditions of this piece.  I cannot believe
Mahler meant the closing pages to come over quite as cold and dead as they
do here, to the extent that the thread becomes indistinct at times.  There
should be some degree of feeling otherwise we are not going to care about
the music and its place in the whole.  Zander writes of the ending: "It
has none of the nihilism and cold sense of futility which is found in so
much contemporary art.  On the contrary, there is a deep attachment to joy.
Despair and knowledge of suffering are turned into a discovering of the
meaning of life." Indeed.  So why play it as though the opposite were the
case?

This is the part of the 1938 Walter recording that also disappoints
somewhat.  For some reason he keeps a sharpness of focus to the end,
refusing to slow down even to the extent that he does in his later stereo
recording.  Maybe he felt his audience were getting restless, maybe
understanding of the work wasn't so complete then.  Horenstein stretches
the music on the rack, so does Bernstein, so do most other conductors to a
greater and lesser degree and they keep their sense of the humanity that
this most human of composers invests it with.  In my experience only Zander
(and possibly Karajan) give us such coldness and lack of feeling.

In all a disappointment, more pronounced in comparison with other
recordings.  The sound recording is good, though not great: close-in but,
conversely, recorded at a lower level so needs to be played back higher.
Zander makes great play of dividing his first and second violins to left
and right as Mahler did and is to be congratulated for that, as are the
engineers for letting us hear it.  But Klemperer does that too.  The
orchestral playing is good, but there seems a too much of the routine
about it, as if the players have listened to their conductor's copious
instructions, nodded, and then just played the music as they normally
would.  Did he perhaps blind them with science in rehearsal so that they
just lost patience? Should he have talked less and just let them play? Can
you rehearse a great professional orchestra in the same way you rehearse a
semi-pro or student one? A rehearsal CD would have been interesting.

I don't think there is anything new for seasoned Mahlerites here.  It's a
performance you would be perfectly happy to hear in the concert hall but in
a recording you need something that will benefit you over time and repeated
hearings.  For newcomers to the symphony there is the extra CD, the notes
and the price.  But even newcomers would benefit from something more
profound: Walter (1938), Klemperer, Barbirolli and Horenstein (1966) are
"hors concours", with Walter (1960), Haitink, Boulez and Rattle to name
just a handful of more recent, or better recorded, versions following
closely.  There are others.  We are spoiled for choice and new recordings
have a lot to live up to.

Tony Duggan
Staffordshire,
United Kingdom.