Unique and Moving in Music and Vision 18 November

Unique and Moving
Mahler's Fifth Symphony -
a self-metamorphosis from grief to ecstatic energy,
by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

As already reported in M&V, this year Rome has a symphonic blessing: two different symphony orchestras -- the centennial Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (heavily supported by the Government as well as by local authorities) and the young and fully private (and not subsidized) Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma -- compete in offering all Mahler's symphonic music (and several other instrumental and vocal works by the Bohemian composer) to celebrate the composer's hundred and fiftieth birthday and the hundredth anniversary of his death. I will try to review most of these offerings but not all -- it will be a Gargantuan tasks and distract me from other musically interesting events -- especially the opera seasons just about to start in several Italian towns.
On 14 November 2010, with nearly 2,800 people (the full capacity of the hall), I was in the huge Santa Cecilia auditorium to listen to Mahler's Fifth Symphony conducted by Valery Gergiev in a matinée performance.
Most of Mahler's symphonies are structured in five parts (usually with the scherzo at the center). The Fifth was programmed as a regular 'classical' four movement symphony, without the human voice because, to quote the author, 'there is nothing romantic or mystical about it ... it is simply an expression of incredible energy ... of a human being in the full light of the day and in the prime of his life'. When it was premiered, in 1904, it was presented as a five movement symphony but the published score indicates that it is a three part work. Mahler reworked and refined the orchestration until 1910, a few months before his death. As a matter of fact, the first part is made up of two movements (a funeral march and a sonata), the Scherzo is oversized (as compared to the rest of Mahler's symphonic works), the fourth movement is the well-known Adagietto (often utilized as the score for films -- namely Luchino Visconti's A Death in Venice, after Thomas Mann's novel) and the fifth is a complex Rondo-Sonata. In short, this structure provides for a rather unique and moving experience: an introspective self-metamorphosis from hopeless grief to ecstatic energy.

Valery Gergiev conducts Mahler's Fifth Symphony in Rome. Photo © 2010 Riccardo Musacchio
During the fine-tuning of the symphony, Mahler worked with Willem Mengelberg, whose annotated score contains markings that stem from conversations during the composition. This is the source for the information about the familiar Adagietto being a love letter to the composer's wife Alma, and other details about the piece.

Valery Gergiev and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia play Mahler's Fifth Symphony in Rome. Photo © 2010 Riccardo Musacchio
Under Gergiev's baton the Santa Cecilia orchestra gave a fine sense of the textured sound with its uniformly strong sections and cohesive sonority. Gergiev offered a very personal and quite temperamental reading of the 'funeral march', where he emphasized the slow-fast-slow of the combined sonata and ternary form; also he lengthened the sizable coda concluding the movement, so that the audience heard clearly the restatement of the slow 'A' section as well as the quotation from the desolate ending of Wagner's Parsifal and, after the military trappings, the engrossing C sharp minor moving to A minor. In the sonata -- the second movement of the first part -- Gergiev stressed the juxtaposition between the initial sense of strife (which may be terror) to the hopeful episode in A flat major and the finale in D major (almost a brass chorale). This is perfectly in line with Mahler's sub-heading 'Mit grössier Vehemenz' ('With utmost vehemence').

Valery Gergiev conducts Mahler's Fifth Symphony in Rome. Photo © 2010 Riccardo Musacchio
Gergiev is a muscular conductor. This was readily apparent in the Scherzo in D which brings a complete change in mood, announced by the corno obbligato which dominates the second trio -- after the waltz of the first. Gergiev and the orchestra navigated well between the shifting timbres of the score, which intersect the various sections of this multi-layered movement. The driving rhythms of the concluding sections underscore the dynamic changes which, in turn, reveal other changes in scoring. Here, the tempos are somewhat slower than some conductors choose, and this allows the details become easily audible, particularly in the latter part of the movement. One of the pleasures of the performance was the clarity of the woodwind textures, not only in the Scherzo, but elsewhere. The figuration of the woodwind in the second movement is effective, especially in the passages that Gergiev takes at a somewhat slow tempo.

Valery Gergiev and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia play Mahler's Fifth Symphony in Rome. Photo © 2010 Riccardo Musacchio
Likewise, the harp in the Adagietto helped to reinforce the chord changes in the strings and conveyed a sense of tender expression of Mahler's love for his young wife. Here the rich textures of the lower strings effectively balanced the treble sounds, which tend to dominate this movement. Gergiev knows that the movement is quite well known, often in slightly adapted versions (to better fit a film's sound track); thus, he was not self-indulgent and added rigor. As a result, the Adagietto flew nicely to allow the vocal qualities of the structural model of the movement to guide the interpretation -- more specifically Mahler's Rückert Lied setting 'Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekomment' ('I am lost to the world').

Valery Gergiev and members of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Photo © 2010 Riccardo Musacchio
This approach made it possible to fully appreciate the interpretation of the Rondo-Finale in D major, where one of the recurrent themes is a charmingly yet movingly speeded up version of a part of the Adagietto and another is a quote from the Wunderhorn song 'Lob des hohen Verstandes' ('Praise from a Lofty Intellectual'). There Gergiev showed Mahler's satirical vein which erupted in the themes of the contrapuntal finale which merged into a great triumphant chorale peroration with final jubilant bars. In short, quite a personal reading as compared with several recent recordings (such as Marris Jansons' with the Royal Concertgebouw). The Santa Cecilia audience saluted it with ten minutes of applause after seventy-five minutes of breathless silence during the performance. This is a sophisticated audience, well familiar with the symphony: over the last ten years, Santa Cecilia's steady subscribers have heard it conducted by Myung-Whung Chung (in 2002), Gary Bertini (in 2003), Michael Tilson Thomas (in 2004), Gustavo Dudamel (in 2006) and Christian Arming (in 2008). All excellent conductors.
Next year, in November 2011, Gergiev will conduct Mahler's Seventh Symphony in Rome.
Copyright © 18 November 2010 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy

GUSTAV MAHLER
ROME
ITALY
ACCADEMIA NAZIONALE DI SANTA CECILIA
VALERY GERGIEV
ORCHESTRAL MUSIC
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