Mahler versus Mahler Musix and Vision April 8

Mahler versus Mahler
Two symphony orchestras are playing Mahler in Rome,
by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

Gustav Mahler was born in 1860 in Bohemia and died in 1911 in Vienna. Thus, during these months, there are two almost parallel anniversaries: 150 years from his birth and 100 from his death. In Rome, two major orchestras have programmed all Mahler's symphonies (and also other music of his) over two 'seasons': namely, from late Spring 2010 until Autumn 2011. I think the Italian capital is the only city where a Mahler fan, like this reporter, can enjoy and compare the composer's nearly full production as played by two quite different orchestras in a span of relatively few months. These two parallel cycles are the evidence that Mahler himself was very right when he reacted to the lack of attention by musicians and reviewers by saying 'Miene Zeit wird kommen' ('My time will come'). I do not know whether any other European town has the privilege of running two Mahler cycles in parallel; certainly, no other Italian town has taken up the task. The Summer Salzburg Festival has a special Mahler section but politically and geographically that is in a different country and musically in a different universe.

Gustav Mahler conducting the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in 1907. Click on the image for higher resolution
The two orchestras are the 103-year-old Orchestra Sinfonica dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and the ten-year-old Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma of the Fondazione Roma. The former happened to be conducted by Mahler himself at the beginning of the twentieth century and has already performed all Mahler's music in 1997-2005, ie over an eight year period (but during those years, quite a few symphonies and lieder were played several times by a variety of conductors). The latter has been described in Music & Vision on 4 March 2010 in a long report which illustrated its origins and a tour in Austria.
They are different not only in 'age'. The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia has a budget of nearly fifty million euros per annum -- half provided by the State, the Regional Government and the City Council of Rome. The Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma has a budget of some five million euros per annum, almost entirely provided by a charity, the Fondazione Roma, and receives not even a penny of public subsidies. The ticket prices of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma are about half those of the Sinfonica of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. A curiosity: the latter performs in the 1900 seat Auditorium di Via della Conciliazione which was, for nearly forty years, the 'home' of the former.
Mahler's double marathon in Rome is very different than the cycle implemented, also in the Italian capital, in 1997-2005 . Not only there is a clear competition of young David versus experienced Goliath , but the overall reading is more cohesive and compact than the previous one. In 1997-2005, there was a real crowd of conductors, with major variations in approach and style. Now, at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, five symphonies are entrusted to Antonio Pappano, two to Valery Gergiev and the others to Mikko Franck and Andris Nelson. At the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma, all Mahler's works are conducted by Francesco La Vecchia who, in parallel, has full Mahler programs in Budapest and Seoul.

Francesco La Vecchia conducting the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma . Click on the image for higher resolution
We are half way through the path. A few general comments can be made before focusing on the last two concerts. Pappano has an operatic origin; thus he tends to emphasize the role of soloist and of the chorus and the dramatic tints of the scores. Gergiev loves strong colors and rhythm. La Vecchia follows as strictly as possible Mahler's own instructions.
Let us look at the four most recent concerts: the Symphony No 9, heard on 7 March 2011 conducted by Francesco La Vecchia at the Auditorium in Via della Conciliazione and on 4 April conducted by Antonio Pannano, the Symphony No 1 conducted by Antonio Pappano at the Sala Santa Cecilia on 14 March and the Symphony No 5 under the baton of Francesco La Vecchia on 3 April.
Although the Symphony No 9 has the traditional number of movements (four), it is unusual in that the first and last are slow rather than fast. As is often the case with Mahler, one of the middle movements is a ländler, a traditional Austrian dance. Some scholars hold strong opinions about the similarity of the emotional scope between this Symphony and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 6: in both the first movement can be seen as an epic, autobiographical storm through the tragedies of life, the second movement is a dance, there is a third movement of fast, manic spin (along with flashbacks), and the finale seems like a farewell to life itself. Francesco La Vecchia places emphasis on the Symphony as a farewell; in fact, it was performed after Mahler's death under Bruno Walter's baton and has many points in common with Das Leid von der Erde, Mahler's last will. The first movement embraces a loose sonata form. The key areas provide a continuation of the tonal juxtaposition displayed in earlier works. The work opens with a hesitant, syncopated motif (which La Vecchia, like Leonard Bernstein, interprets as a depiction of Mahler's irregular heartbeat); this motif returns at the height of the movement's development as a sudden intrusion of 'death in the midst of life', announced by trombones and marked within the score 'with the greatest force'. The second movement, the ländler, echoes a dance of death. In the third movement, in the form of a rondo, La Vecchia showed the final maturation of Mahler's contrapuntal skills. The final movement, marked zurückhaltend ('very slowly and held back'; literally, 'reservedly'), opens for strings only. La Vecchia and the orchestra showed how it incorporates a direct quote from the rondo's middle section and becomes an elegy.

Antonio Pappano conducting the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Mahler's Symphony No 1. Photo © 2011 Musacchio & Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution
In Pappano's hands, Symphony No 9 has stronger colors and tints. It is a grand post-romantic melodrama in four acts. In the first movement, the main subject is man's love for nature; Mahler had a special 'composer's hut' built near his home in Alt-Schluderbach where he would read, think and compose surrounded by the woods. Under Pappano's passionate and professional baton, from the serene sense of nature, the symphony moves to a dramatic recall of life-time memories (the second movement) and to the despair of knowing that the end is now near. In the fourth movement, the slow Adagio is the finding of a Zen-like peace. A simply magnificent, albeit very personal, performance.
Also, Symphony No 1 has four movements:
1. Langsam, Schleppend ('Slowly, dragging') Immer sehr gemächlich ('very restrained throughout')
2. Kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell ('Moving strongly, but not too quickly'), Recht gemächlich ('restrained'), a Trio and a ländler-
3. Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen ('Solemnly and measured, without dragging'), Sehr einfach und schlicht wie eine Volksweise ('very simple, like a folk-tune'), and Wieder etwas bewegter, wie im Anfang ('something stronger, as at the start'), a funeral march based on the children's song 'Bruder Martin'
4. Stürmisch bewegt -- Energisch ('Stormily agitated -- Energetic')
The Symphony has also a title, 'The Titan', but it is not 'programme music' or a 'symphonic poem' as was usual at the end of the nineteenth century. The title is just after a novel that Mahler had read and appreciated when he was working on the score. In the interpretation by Pappano and the orchestra, the accent was on the love for nature as an anticipation of the pantheistic vision clearly Mahler embraced in the last few years of his life after a long path: he had been born as a Jew but he was a non-believer, he had converted to Roman Catholicism in a grand manner but just to become General Director of the Vienna Opera (ten years of sufferings due to the many intrigues), and finally -- as fully shown in Symphony No 9 and in Das Lied von der Erde, he had taken up a pantheistic form of Zen. Rightly Pappano and the orchestra emphasized the colors and the tints.

Gustav Mahler. Click on the image for higher resolution
On 3 April, in the Auditorium di Via della Conciliazione, Francesco La Vecchia received accolades at the end of the Symphony No 5. As remarked in Music & Vision of 18 November 2010, when I reviewed the same Symphony as conducted by Valery Gergiev as a part of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Mahler cycle, this is one of Mahler's best known concert pieces in Italy, also because its fourth movement (Adagietto) was the music chosen by Luchino Visconti to accompany one of his latest movies (Death in Venice). In November, Gergiev provided a muscular reading of the symphony and placed a special emphasis on the third movement (Scherzo). La Vecchia has a philological approach with fire in the funeral march and in the Rondo closing the symphony but with the baton softly caressing the orchestra in the Adagietto, performed as a love letter by Gustav Mahler to his wife Alma. Really moving.
All four concerts were warmly applauded.
Copyright © 8 April 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy

GUSTAV MAHLER
CZECH REPUBLIC
VIENNA
ANTONIO PAPPANO
ROME
ITALY
ORCHESTRAL MUSIC
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