Two Mahler Fives - Roth & Vänskä



Who's who?
Two new recordings by favourite conductors of mine have appeared in the last 12 months and made rather a splash. Here are my thoughts.


The two recordings are conducted by Francois Xavier Roth and Osmo Vänskä conducting the orchestras which they lead.  Neither is listed as a live recording though both have a certain “live” feel - many times nowadays recordings are associated with live performances and one wonders how much the occasion is anticipated or lives on in studio.

Roth has been with the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne since 2015 and Vänskä with the Minnesota Orchestra since 2003.  Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra were recorded by BIS in June 2016 at Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis. Roth and colleagues were recorded 20-22 February 2017, in a studio on Stolberger Strasse, Cologne - used regularly in recordings by German broadcaster WDR.

The two orchestras have long traditions and pedigree both in romantic repertoire and in Mahler in particular.

The Minnesotans were established in 1903 as the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra.  They recorded Mahler’s Second Symphony on 11 sides of shellac under Ormandy in 1935.  The  Gürzenich Orchestra have a longer history - they trace their formation back to 1827.  Most significantly and although their recorded catalogue may be slightly less well recognised than the Minnesotans - their pedigree in this work is much healthier.  This orchestra premiered Mahler’s Fifth symphony in 1903 under the baton of the composer himself - as they had his Third symphony. It’s worth noting the British premiere wasn’t until 1945.

Which Mahler 5?
It is likely that the performance in 1903 will have sounded slightly different from the version we know now because Mahler continued to revise scores after first performance.  Moreover different critical editions of the score now exist and the recordings in question both differ from my copy - the 1904 Peters edition - though only slightly.  

British conductor Kenneth Woods in his marvellous blog captures the problem of scores for this work here: http://kennethwoods.net/blog1/2010/02/22/performers-perspective-mahler-5-two-changes/ 

To boil this down to a fundamental point.  We don’t even know how loud Mahler wanted the final note of the first movement. And we don't know because he didn't come down to a final judgement on it.  Conductors have more choices in this work than they had previously thought.  Enquiries to the orchestras answered the question: both use the 2002 Peters edition ed Kubik.

Form book?

I heard Vänskä conduct this work with his orchestra in August 2006 at the Proms (a performance I mentioned here http://mindpoke.blogspot.co.uk/2006/11/mtt-mahler-5.html ) - they had some problems and the performance only caught light in these second half of the piece.  Vänskä is best known and applauded for his Sibelius and Beethoven but he is a marvellous classicist and a champion of modern composers - especially Scandinavians too.  His readings are known for an intense focus and meticulous preparation - he can whip up a storm in the concert hall and on disc.

I haven’t heard a live performance of Mahler 5 by FX Roth - but I do have a recording of Mahler 1 conducted by him and his previous German Radio orchestra - it’s a barnstorming performance and reading. Roth has a very wide and extensive back catalogue now from Lully and Rameau to the most modern of emerging composers. Roth too has an ear for detail which cast new light on the many favourites he touches from Richard Strauss tone poems to Beethoven Five.  As intendant in Cologne he conducts opera and orchestral music and he is as at home presenting neglected masterpieces by Mehul, Saint-Saens and Franck as he is with Boulez or Ligeti.

APPRAISAL

So to my views on their interpretations - as conductors and orchestras are of the top rank I don’t think there is anything between them.  The conductors have realised their interpretations with the best instrumentalists of their orchestras at their peak.

The emotional journey of these two readings is very different - having followed both conductors for some years - this was the thing about this particular comparison.  They end in triumph but the battle to the point is described in very different ways and with a deep but varied approach to Mahler’s over-scored score.

The impact remains the thing for all of us listeners.  I have heard each disc about five times now.  The impact is different and since my preference means nothing, I'm not going to give it.  There are times when I will want Vänskä's straight forward approach and times when the deep colours of Roth will suit better. Neither is perfect - but both are bloody close.  And maybe it’s idle pedants like me who worry about such things.

The overall effect of Vänskä’s reading is much as it was for me in the summer of 2006 - stripping back the wave after wave of moments which have become emotional touch-stones in this work and revealing a symphony which is more flawed than we’d all like but in it’s nakedness, is fresher and more appealing.

Roth takes another path, preserving the Mahler tradition though eschewing most of the gestures, but finding beneath detail which pushes the symphony on.  In doing this he presents a more intricate version of the dark-to-light journey.

I would say that Vänskä - aside from his massively attenuated Adagietto - is more arm’s length.  Roth is more explosive, but chooses his moments carefully.  You can take your choice - you will learn much from both.  Both have cleverly taken on the task of presenting a Mahler 5 from a score where the composer’s uncertainties remain unresolved.  There is no one Mahler 5 any more. 

I was very interested in the flow which Vänskä revealed and why he didn’t do what others do.  His version is realised in brilliant sound from BIS.  I became more at home with Roth’s marvellously played but slightly less hi-fi recording, where I was swept up with his players in the detail, page after page.

In terms of the recordings - it’s worth noting that the BIS disc is available as an surround sound SACD and as downloads of various sorts - I listened to a Hi Res (24/96) download in stereo on headphones.  The instruments were somewhat closely miked and there wasn’t much space between them.  But the rich sound was telling and insightful - especially in the percussion.

The Harmonia Mundi recording from Cologne is a rather curious hybrid of hi res (24/44.1) - I felt the dynamic range at the extreme ends of the musical spectrum were a tad muted. There is plenty of the studio’s acoustics in play - including at the final chord a formidable echo.

These are readings which I think will bear careful attention over years, not least because the consequences that a series of small decisions take one time to put together.  But don't let this put you off, they both also offer the grand sweep of teh work, just in different ways.

Compare and Contrast

There’s a nervous tension about Vänskä’s reading across the movements: it excites in a completely new way.  To crudely characterise it I’d say he is restrained in the first four movements compared to most and uses the third movement as a transformational buffer zone.  Only in the final movement does the fantastic energy of the work become apparent and effective.  A previous boss used to say “if everything is a priority then nothing is a priority” and I hear a reaction to that kind of musical extremism in Vänskä’s reading.  If every climax is an emotional highpoint Mahler’s vision becomes blurred into a mess of superfluous energy and indistinct peaks.  The journey becomes a fairground ride.

For Roth I think this is more about the mining of every detail and putting it in it's place.  This requires time and space and expert playing.  The conductor's job is hard given Mahler's sprawling scores, his over use on the emotional marking and the sheer difference in sound between a modern orchestra and one of Mahler's time.  One might guess that this means more clarity but if trombones sound like horns (which they do in many orchestral recordings) it's tougher to make the lines tell.  Roth has a special ear for these points - the sum of the parts is a more detailed proposition.  Though i can see some would want their Mahler simpler - I've heard quite enough Mahler that comes screaming or sobbing from the page.  Roth and Vänskä both are more dispassionate in their decisions, but ultimately it benefits the whole emotional journey.

In the first movement in Vänskä’s hands the tone is more muted than I expected, offering surety and a certainty without the highlighting and hysteria of many readings.  The effect is not especially funereal.  the acoustic is quite dry and the playing quiet.  The mood and weight is lighter than most but the players get their point across with a surgical precision.

By contrast Roth is darker and bolder - his precision is controlled but there is more animation in his reading and it stems from the bass instruments.  He too is not as extravagant as some in the pace and vigour in the movement but he certainly gets the players to go a deal more wild when the score calls for it.  Unlike Vänskä, when the score is more sparse, Roth makes every detail painted but this keeps the line busy and involving.

It’s much the same story in the second movement where Vänskä holds back from the excesses of early times, but the Minnesotans play with acute observation of the markings.  But Vänskä doesn’t make much of the movements climax.  Roth’s players are exemplary but Roth allows for a much darker mood in the music, but it’s in the background, he too is eschewing the in your face excesses of earlier times. I think his recording engineers do the players more justice in his pursuit of inner detail and dark currents.

The third movement horn obbligato is well done in both - Roth has his hornist quite recessed.  Vänskä’s recording is much closer to the instruments (too close at times) and so the horn sounds in a more integrates sound picture. Either way its a more nuanced approach. Both conductors make some good decisions given Mahler’s directions and the music vicarious grip on the passage of time. Again Roth creates more atmosphere, Vänskä’s drive is greater - neither make the movement splashy (a common problem).  The false start to the coda of this movement doesn’t quite work for me and neither conductor drives through they feel the same, but only in these last bars - after the drum - does Vänskä let the orchestra off the leash which is odd given what happens next…

I’m rarely bothered about speeds adopted in music as long as the performance is involving - people who say X is too slow need to get a deal more critical in their listening.  The famous Adagietto has been done countless times at glacial pace and we allow these though partly in the belief that the music is exquisitely emotional and exceptionally beautiful. Vänskä plays it slow, presenting thick and rich sound picture - sometimes there’s variation and sometimes it’s Mahler’s doing and other times it’s the conductors.  I don’t know how this will hold up over time.  This movement is important - like the slow movement in the fourth symphony - as it introduces a key theme for the next one.  Vänskä does that well.  By comparison Roth is much more straightforward on matters of phrasing and weight of tone.  The middle voices are beautifully captured in both recordings but Roth’s are a tad better revealed.

Vänskä’s restraint and indulgence policy so far means that his attack into the finale, as the last chord of the adagietto fades, is stinging.  And for the first time one feels the emotional engagement of the work (my notes say "jaunty not joyful") so not quite that Beethoven 5 contrast. Roth again is much more involved in the detail and in a very different acoustic sounds more lively and alert.  I could detail the ebb and flow of orchestra fortunes in one of the hardest movements to get right in the repertoire. My feeling is that both these conductors do a superb job and their orchestras shine through.  The detailed recordings we have nowadays allow this symphonies journey to be given it’s full sonic splendour and when done well - it is marvellous.  

Moreover both conductors pitch the finale in the light of their reading of symphony.  Their conceptions - though widely different - make sense at a time when I hear too many Mahler symphonies that have - it seems - scarcely been critically dissected by their conductors at all.

Conclusion

Vänskä and Roth strip away the accretions of more than half century of over-indulgence - revealing Mahler at his best.  I won't name names in roll call but Leonard Bernstein has a lot to answer for.  Roth plunges us into the sophisticated interplay within the music so his reading piques the ear of the seasoned Mahler listener. Vänskä is a reading centred on the dramatic journey of this piece, it is more emotionally centred.  I’m glad we have both.  Roth’s next release will tell us more about his interest in getting into the bones of Mahler. Already Vänskä’s latest addition to the cycle, the Sixth, is on the shelves now.

What both conductors have done though is to pull us out of the cult worship mode.  Working from a critical edition score where they to can mull over the choices which Mahler left open to us, they have moved things on.  A masterpiece is, I think, something that is capable of many different readings.  Amongst others - these two conductors and their very fine orchestras - have determinedly lifted Mahler 5 from a C minor to C major dash.


















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