# What Is a Valid Mahler Performance Style?



## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I'm reading Hakaru Murakami's Conversations with Seiji Ozawa, and they talk a lot about performing Mahler. The question is asked, "Has the style used to perform Mahler has changed a great deal from the sixties to now?"

My question is, what is the change? And is the historic Mahler of Walter or the pioneering Mahler of Bernstein/Kubelik less accurate of a portrayal of Mahler's intentions than a present-day conductor? And who is the conductor to be listening to for the new Mahler style?


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

The real pioneering Mahler was not Bernstein or Kubelik, but Walter, Klemperer & Barbirolli. The former 2 both knew and worked with Mahler. Barbirolli worked with many who knew and worked with Mahler, and was partly responsible for reintroducing Mahler's works into Germany. One interesting difference between these 3 and later conductors is that there has been somewhat of a slow-down in tempi over the years. Somewhere around 2 years ago in TC I did a comparison of the performance times for the 2nd and the differences were quite striking with the 3 I mentioned being the fastest. See also the adagietto from the 5th.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

There have always been several "styles" of performing Mahler, from the intellectual/dispassionate (Boulez, Szell, Leinsdorf), to heart-on-sleeve (Bernstein), to supercharged sonic spectacular (Solti), to many things in between. In one respect, because Mahler is much more familiar today and far more widely played, more performances fall in the middle, and more people are aware of measure-to-measure subtleties than they might have been back when Mahler just needed getting used to. Almost nore than any other composer theres a particular performance style to appeal to any taste. He may be the most protean of any composer.


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

MarkW said:


> There have always been several "styles" of performing Mahler, from the intellectual/dispassionate (Boulez, Szell, Leinsdorf), to heart-on-sleeve (Bernstein), to supercharged sonic spectacular (Solti), to many things in between. In one respect, because Mahler is much more familiar today and far more widely played, more performances fall in the middle, and more people are aware of measure-to-measure subtleties than they might have been back when Mahler just needed getting used to. Almost nore than any other composer theres a particular performance style to appeal to any taste. He may be the most protean of any composer.


I agree with this, as does Norman Lebrecht in _Why Mahler?..._ My _general_ impression, from the recordings I have heard and my reading into Mahler and the conductors he worked with and the conductors _they_ mentored, is that earlier Mahler performance tended to be relatively leaner, lighter and quicker, more redolent of dance and song, whereas later Mahler performance (last 30-40 years, say) has suffered from "MAHLER MEANING" being injected, leading to a more vast, massive, ponderous, thundering and generally all-around HUGE and IMPORTANT Mahler aesthetic. Conductors, I think, tend to use Mahler, more than any other composer, to make personal statements with, rather than just playing the music and letting it talk. I'm afraid I'm not very current with 21st century Mahler conducting as a whole, but I can say that I am impressed with Dima Slobodeniouk and the Sinfonia de Galacia; his takes on the 3rd and the 6th as as good as I've heard anywhere.

Question: is the relative sonority and power of modern orchestras as compared to what Mahler had available to him relevant to this discussion?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Totenfeier said:


> My general impression, from the recordings I have heard and my reading into Mahler and the conductors he worked with and the conductors _they_ mentored, is that earlier Mahler performance tended to be relatively leaner, lighter and quicker, more redolent of dance and song, whereas *later Mahler performance (last 30-40 years, say) has suffered from "MAHLER MEANING" being injected,* leading to a more vast, massive, ponderous, thundering and generally all-around HUGE and IMPORTANT Mahler aesthetic. *Conductors, I think, tend to use Mahler, more than any other composer, to make personal statements with,* rather than just playing the music and letting it talk.


Is it accurate to blame (if that's the word) Bernstein for this tendency? He certainly did exemplify an approach that strives to inject a maximum of expressive inflection into every moment of the music. In his later years he seems to have wanted to slow everything down so that the orgasm would never end. I think of that TV ad for Cialis warning that if your erection lasts for more than four hours you should see a doctor. In this case I think Doctor Klemperer might be a good choice.

Bernstein does the same thing to Wagner in his _Tristan_ recording. The prelude alone lasts something like 15 minutes. I find it intolerable.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

After growing up with Bernstein/New York and being used to the schmalzy approach, I acquired Bruno Walter conducting the Mahler 9th and I hated it. Too fast and unsentimental after Bernstein, but since Walter knew Mahler, I would have to believe the lean, unsentimental approach was what Mahler wanted.

I don't care. I like Bernstein's early New York Philharmonic recordings, even if they are not officially "Mahler authorized".


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

I mentioned Lebrecht; he points out in his book that Mahler told Klemperer: "If after my death something doesn't sound right, then change it. You have not only the right but the duty to do so." He goes on to suggest that the available evidence leads us to conclude that Mahler, the great conductor himself, felt that his work _could_ be performed in different ways, even in the face of his seemingly micromanaging notations; it was up to the _conductor_ and "what sounds right" on any given occasion. In fact, Lebrecht suggests that, at least in this respect, Bernstein could be viewed as just Mahler's type of conductor. He gives two more Mahler quotes: "The best music is not to be found in the notes," and "The essence of any interpretation is exactness." Lebrecht's wry comment? "Go figure."

Now, I am not a Norman Lebrecht fanboy - far from it - and if I want a shot added to my Mahler, it would be a Tennstedt shot (in which the emotional conception of the symphony is amplified _as a coherent whole_), rather than a Bernstein shot (in which the grandeur and the rubato and the oozing schmaltz are incoherently unpredictable). And of course, one is quite free to like what one likes. But I still think the two most important things to keep in mind are that varying interpretations are possible, and, simultaneously, the general trend has been away from Mahler's probable intentions toward a more...what shall I say..._monumental _Mahler. (Check out, for example, Tony Duggan's commentary on Kubelik's Mahler 4th with the BRSO [www.musicweb-international.com]. He notes "as a sidelight" that Mahler told Natalie Bauer-Lechner that the Fourth would last 45 minutes; he goes on to point out that, in Mahler's autograph score, at the beginning of the fourth movement, are the penciled numbers *15*, *10*, *11*, and *8*, and their total, *44*. He says that if these are indeed Mahler's estimates of the length of each movement, then they are rather astonishingly quick, by modern standards).


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Mahler 4th:

Bernsten/NYPO - 55
Tennstedt/LPO - 55
Reiner/CSO - 53
Klemperer/PO - 55
Klemperer/RIAS - 50
Mengelberg/RCO - 56
Walter/WPO - 53
Walter/NYPO - 50 (1949)

So not just by modern standards!!


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

> Bernstein does the same thing to Wagner in his Tristan recording. The prelude alone lasts something like 15 minutes. I find it intolerable.


And I would save it if there was a fire in my house, the love duet alone is the most "erotic" I've ever heard.
I know, you've heard more then me but perhaps in time .....


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

Becca said:


> Mahler 4th:
> 
> Bernsten/NYPO - 55
> Tennstedt/LPO - 55
> ...


As always, your "timing" is impeccable!

I do get the feeling that Mahler actually wasn't quite clear sometimes about _what_ he wanted, or wasn't sure if it would work until he actually conducted or heard it - hence all the revisions. Somebody ought to try a 45-minute Mahler 4 just for fun - naah, it would be a jumbled mess.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Every composer has ideas about the tempi he wants - at the specific time he wants those tempi. Composers' performances of their own works vary considerably. It's also been remarked, reasonably I think, that tempi imagined in the mind tend to be quicker than what actually works in performance. Hardly anyone adheres precisely to Beethoven's metronome markings. They're a useful guide to the character of the music, nothing more. Moreover, conductor Mahler's tempi were said to be flexible, like Furtwangler's and Wagner's (as detailed in his essay "On Conducting"). Also interesting to hear are Elgar's recordings of his own works, in which tempi are quite urgent, and Rachmaninoff's recordings of his piano concertos, which achieve great flexibility of phrasing and rich expressive detail at a rather fast clip. Music making does appear to have slowed down since their day.


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

I still like Bernstein's. I can't stand 'intellectual, dispassionate' Mahler. You can't perform him in a detached, cold way and I don't know who would want to.


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## Resurrexit (Apr 1, 2014)

There's nothing intellectual and dispassionate about Bruno Walter's Mahler.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Tallisman said:


> I still like Bernstein's. I can't stand 'intellectual, dispassionate' Mahler. You can't perform him in a detached, cold way and I don't know who would want to.


That's a great video.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

The book I mentioned spoke of the ability to hear details from modern recording techniques. Do you see modern recordings as emphasizing more details which earlier recordings haven't before? And also more of a willingness to play ugly when the music calls for it?


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

Manxfeeder said:


> That's a great video.


It's a _fun_ video - but try listening to it with your eyes closed. True, it appears that the conductors who open their mouths the widest tend to get a louder response from the chorus. And the recording quality varies wildly, of course, the best sound coming from Abbado and Vasquez. But I really don't hear a clear line of inferiority-to-superiority of sound that matches the enthusiasm of the conductor. For one example, the chorus under Boulez doesn't sound any less enthusiastic than Rattle's to me - in fact, it may be the other way around. I strongly suspect that most of the sound could be switched around surreptitiously to a different conductor, and unless one knew that climax well under that conductor, one would still say, Oh, yes, the conductor's "enthusiasm" makes all the difference.

The term "orgasm" has been mentioned on this thread. It's wonderful if the conductor is having a great time - the greater the better, I say. The clear relationship between his personal "climax" and that of the music remains, for me anyway, not established.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Resurrexit said:


> There's nothing intellectual and dispassionate about Bruno Walter's Mahler.


 After being brought up on Bernstein/NY Philharmonic, Walter seems like ice water.


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## Resurrexit (Apr 1, 2014)

hpowders said:


> I say there is.


:lol: Good thing I don't give a damn what you think.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Resurrexit said:


> :lol: Good thing I don't give a damn what you think.


Yet you cared enough to respond to my post. :tiphat:

By the way, a little civility and self-control go a long way.


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## Resurrexit (Apr 1, 2014)

hpowders said:


> So then why did you answer? :lol:


Because you're being a provocative ****? :lol:


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Every composer has ideas about the tempi he wants - at the specific time he wants those tempi. Composers' performances of their own works vary considerably. It's also been remarked, reasonably I think, that tempi imagined in the mind tend to be quicker than what actually works in performance. Hardly anyone adheres precisely to Beethoven's metronome markings. They're a useful guide to the character of the music, nothing more. Moreover, conductor Mahler's tempi were said to be flexible, like Furtwangler's and Wagner's (as detailed in his essay "On Conducting"). Also interesting to hear are Elgar's recordings of his own works, in which tempi are quite urgent, and Rachmaninoff's recordings of his piano concertos, which achieve great flexibility of phrasing and rich expressive detail at a rather fast clip. Music making does appear to have slowed down since their day.


Some Bach has no tempo indications.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Is it accurate to blame (if that's the word) Bernstein for this tendency? He certainly did exemplify an approach that strives to inject a maximum of expressive inflection into every moment of the music. In his later years he seems to have wanted to slow everything down so that the orgasm would never end. I think of that TV ad for Cialis warning that if your erection lasts for more than four hours you should see a doctor. In this case I think Doctor Klemperer might be a good choice.
> 
> Bernstein does the same thing to Wagner in his _Tristan_ recording. The prelude alone lasts something like 15 minutes. I find it intolerable.


Bernstein single-handedly brought on the Mahler revolution. His was a sentimental approach and it worked. It's my own personal preference when I wish to listen to this music, whether it be with the early NY Philharmonic set or later performances with that orchestra of the Mahler 7th and the white hot Vienna Philharmonic Mahler 6th.

Some like Boulez' more clinical, cooler approach or Karajan's cooler approach, the latter, surprisingly effective. Karajan's Mahler Ninth/Berlin Philharmonic along with Bernstein/Concertgebouw are the finest performances of this devastating score that I know. I didn't realize Karajan would have such a connection to this score.

I've never "clicked" with Bruno Walter/Mahler. Bruno Walter/Beethoven is a more successful team, IMO.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hpowders said:


> Some Bach has no tempo indications.


That's true of a lot of "early" music, and most music before the Baroque. It was assumed that performers understood the character of the music and wouldn't do anything absurd. Even later, with the metronome available, most composers weren't awfully specific about tempo (what does "allegro moderato" really mean, and how slow is "langsam und schmachtend"?) I'm glad they weren't, and even when they are I don't mind performers doing it their own way, so long as they are really responding to the music and not imposing some theory on it (as when Roger Norrington murders the souls of late Romantics like Tchaikovsky and Wagner).


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## Resurrexit (Apr 1, 2014)

hpowders said:


> Yet you cared enough to respond to my post. :tiphat:
> 
> By the way, a little civility and self-control go a long way.


I would have been much more willing to engage in a conversation with you if you had perhaps asked me what it is I hear in Walter's Mahler, rather than simply quoting and contradicting me.

If you don't Walter and Mahler don't "click" with you, there's nothing wrong with that. But knowing how music was such an intensely visceral and spiritual experience for Walter, how he was never a technical perfectionist, and listening to the way he talked about his relationship with Mahler and his music, I simply can't conceive of labeling his interpretations of Mahler as cool, analytical and disconnected. As Tony Duggan said of his Mahler 9th, "All in all, this is one the greatest recordings of the Ninth - lyrical, nostalgic, valedictory, autumnal, expressing the mood of the conductor, playing up one aspect of the composer's conception in this late work."


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hpowders said:


> Bernstein single-handedly brought on the Mahler revolution. His was a sentimental approach and it worked. It's my own personal preference when I wish to listen to this music, whether it be with the early NY Philharmonic set or later performances with that orchestra of the Mahler 7th and the white hot Vienna Philharmonic Mahler 6th.
> 
> Some like Boulez' more clinical, cooler approach or Karajan's cooler approach, the latter, surprisingly effective. Karajan's Mahler Ninth/Berlin Philharmonic along with Bernstein/Concertgebouw are the finest performances of this devastating score that I know. I didn't realize Karajan would have such a connection to this score.
> 
> I've never "clicked" with Bruno Walter/Mahler. Bruno Walter/Beethoven is a more successful team, IMO.


I agree that Bernstein's Mahler "works." Whether one likes it, or prefers another approach, may come down to one's tolerance for an art of extreme subjectivism. I've always heard in Mahler's music an implicit subtitle "All About Me." Bernstein, who said "I _am_ Gustav Mahler," naturally found the music "All About Him." The problem for me is that I don't identify with either Mahler's or Bernstein's personalities, finding them both rather high-strung, self-regarding, overwrought, and even exhibitionistic (though, at least in Lenny's case, quite charming). The "Expressionist" phenomenon in German art and music - including painters like Schiele and Kokoschka and the Second Viennese School of composers - I tend to find overbearing, oppressive and gratuitously morbid (though I do enjoy individual works or movements), and I think of Mahler as godfather to Expressionism in music. Hence when I do want his music I want it sounding strong, tight-knit, unindulgent, grounded. Klemperer's "Resurrection" Symphony and _Das Lied von der Erde_ have those qualities and remain my favorite versions after all these years.

Two other composers I find often to be performed with excessive self-indulgence are Rachmaninoff and Puccini. Rach's own performances of his music, which I love, never maunder or wallow, and have a subtle expressivity and an aristocratic poise that belie his reputation for sentimentality. But I suppose not everyone likes him that way. I mean, when one just needs a good cry -  - why put a time limit on it?


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Contrary to popular story Bernstein was not the first, or ultimate champion of Maker's music...Walter, Mengelberg and Mitropoulos all were staunch proponents of Mahler's music before Bernstein. I do admire Bernstein he is one of my favorite conductors...but I don't esp like his Mahler...there's too much "Lenny" in there, it's like he's trying desperately to hit us over the head with the greatness of the music...for me, the music can speak for itself...conductors like Walter, Solti, Abbado let it speak, without putting their own layer over the top....it is interesting to hear Mahler performing his Sym #5 on piano...the aforementioned conductors are pretty close to Mahler's concept.


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

Anther thing that I think Klemperer and Walter had going for them is their _refusal _to perform some of Mahler's symphonies, because they didn't like/didn't understand them. That element of discriminatory taste makes the ones they _did_ appreciate and work through more precious. I may not agree with them, but I admire their integrity.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Totenfeier said:


> Anther thing that I think Klemperer and Walter had going for them is their _refusal _to perform some of Mahler's symphonies, because they didn't like/didn't understand them. That element of discriminatory taste makes the ones they _did_ appreciate and work through more precious. I may not agree with them, but I admire their integrity.


And that is one of the reasons why I am generally against symphony cycles, especially Mahler & Bruckner. Most conductors are good at some of them but rarely all.


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

Heck148 said:


> Contrary to popular story Bernstein was not the first, or ultimate champion of Maker's music...*Walter, Mengelberg and Mitropoulos* all were staunch proponents of Mahler's music before Bernstein. I do admire Bernstein he is one of my favorite conductors...but I don't esp like his Mahler...there's too much "Lenny" in there, it's like he's trying desperately to hit us over the head with the greatness of the music...for me, the music can speak for itself...conductors like Walter, Solti, Abbado let it speak, without putting their own layer over the top....it is interesting to hear Mahler performing his Sym #5 on piano...the aforementioned conductors are pretty close to Mahler's concept.


And Jascha Horenstein.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

hpowders said:


> After being brought up on Bernstein/NY Philharmonic, Walter seems like ice water.


I disagree. Walter is just as scmaltzy as Lenny, but with a different set of spices added in


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

Manxfeeder said:


> The book I mentioned spoke of the ability to hear details from modern recording techniques. Do you see modern recordings as emphasizing more details which earlier recordings haven't before? And also more of a willingness to play ugly when the music calls for it?


That is an interesting question, and since no one has addressed it thus far...

I recall reading a little while back that law enforcement officials involved in organized crime investigations have reported that, whereas mobsters used to talk like, well, mobsters - more and more, they are talking like "movie mobsters" because they've seen the movies and, probably subconsciously, there's a sort of linguistic feedback going on.

I can see how the same sort of thing could possibly be happening with regard to modern recording techniques - because they can encompass more dynamic range and reveal inner details of the music more clearly, conductors _could_ be trying for greater dynamic range in Mahler, along with more sonic experimentation with his orchestrations.

I dunno for sure, though.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Totenfeier said:


> I can see how the same sort of thing could possibly be happening with regard to modern recording techniques - because they can encompass more dynamic range and reveal inner details of the music more clearly, conductors _could_ be trying for greater dynamic range in Mahler, along with more sonic experimentation with his orchestrations.
> 
> I dunno for sure, though.


I think that the contraindication to that are the various live performances which have been released on disc. Clearly the conductors then were far more concerned with the acoustics of the hall. See for example the various Tennstedt live performances.


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

Becca said:


> I think that the contraindication to that are the various live performances which have been released on disc. Clearly the conductors then were far more concerned with the acoustics of the hall. See for example the various Tennstedt live performances.


That works for me.


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