Luminous Mahler 10 Berliner Philharmoniker Harding

New in the Berliner Philharmoniker archive is Saturday's concert, Mahler's Symphony no 10. (Cooke III performing version). Six years ago, Harding made a ground-breaking recording of this symphony with the Wiener Philharmoniker. This performance with the Berliner Philharmoniker is even more stimulating. The Berliners, some of whom have worked with Harding for nearly 20 years, have a different, more muscular sound, supporting an even more intense interpretation.. Read my review of Harding's Mahler 2 at the Proms here)

Mahler's sketches for the Tenth may have been written towards the end of his life, but they represent a new beginning, not an end. As Professor Henri-Louis de la Grange showed in the fourth volume of his monumental biography, Mahler had undergone traumatic changes personally and professionally. Harding's clear, intelligent approach suggests  Mahler on the verge of a visionary creative breakthrough.

The Adagio begins with exquisite refinement : gossamer textures float, enhanced by the entry of a deeper, more resonant theme. The horns break away, as if they're leading us further into the mountains, into the realms of Mahler's creative imagination. This performance is tinged with more sadness than the Vienna recording. Finer pianissimo, so when the expansive theme returns, it surges like a heartfelt cry of regret. But, as in the Third Symphony, a panoramic vista opens. There are further, and higher peaks to climb.  Flutes and woodwinds whip forwards, like the winds on mountains. The dialogues in this movement are well defined. Perhaps they are a reference to Mahler and Alma, his "ewiger weiblicher" Muse.  But what do those chilling “scream” chords”suggest?  Harding observes the moments of near silence, hovering on the brink, so to speak, before those cataclysmic chords explode. The line seems to last forever, an almost electronic blast of near dissonance. Gone now are the allusions to summer and open horizons..Now very high flutes and harp suggest the "alpine" mood transformed into other-worldly stillness.

The Berliners are especially good at creating the swaggering Weltlauf  in the wild first Scherzo, brutally mocking the refinement of the Adagio. Harding deftly juggled the rapid changes of meter, tempo. Harding brings out the manic energy so it contrasts with the softer, more melodic theme. This time the dichotomy between themes feels dangerous, the throwing down of a creative gauntlet?  Small trumpets herald forward progress: the movement ends with glorious, exuberant vigour, tautly defined and energetic.

The Purgatorio is a small movement bridging the first and second scherzos but it's significant in that the duality that runs through the beginning of the symphony changes into a series of individual voices, much as will happen later.

On the title page of the second Scherzo, Mahler writes “The Devil is dancing it with me! Madness, seize me … destroy me! Let me forget that I exist, so that I cease to be.” But a careful observer will note that Mahler then adds “dass ich ver ….” (so that I ….) and trails off without completing the idea. It’s a preposition, but this whole work is a kind of preposition, open ended because it isn't complete.   A delicate yet quirky waltz circulates through this movement, in counterpoise to the demonic tensions. Listen to Daishin Hashimoto, the Leader, play a bittersweet melody: a lone voice distinct from the forces around him.  Then other voices join him : Jonathan Kelly the Principal Oboe, Andreas Blau, the Principal Flute and Daniele Damiano, Principal Bassoon.

Absolute silence, acutely observed to emphasize the transition to the Finale. This is supposed to depict the funeral march of a fireman, which Mahler and Alma watched from their hotel room in New York. The tempi are slow, even for a funeral. It's more symbolic than literal. Very muffled percussion, as if heard in a dream. Bassoons moan, trumpets and horn cry out. Harding's tempi suggest that sound and time hover suspended in some strange limbo. Uncommonly moving.

Then the orchestra springs to life again, revitalized and reanimated. The "soaring" expansive theme of the Adagio returns, this time firmer and more confident. When it builds to a climax, we can hear an echo of the "scream" chord, again held for what seems like eternity. This time the "scream" is not so much raw anguish as paralyzing numbness. Then the oboe reintroduces the "warm" theme. Perhaps it's meant to suggest balm or transcendence. We don't know, but for me that is part of the fascination.  It's much more difficult to play legato finely balanced and as sustained like this, but Harding and the Berliners can do it so well that the music seems to stretch into infinity, dissolving into something so pure and stratospheric that our ears can't hear it. Absolutely true to context.

This is astounding. It might not appeal to those who prefer "easy listening" Mahler or flashy showman conductors, but for me, it's incredibly profound. Harding shows that the sketchy nature of this piece can be an asset, reminding us that we'll never know what Mahler might have done if he'd revised it. The spare, gossamer orchestration reminds us that there are mysteries in life we're never meant to solve.

Facade - Rattle sings, Hannigan conducts

Simon Rattle sings William Walton. Luckily, it's Facade, which wasn't written for coloratura but recited by the author Edith Sitwell. whom we can assume didn't sing much better than Rattle can. Catch this performance on the Berliner Philharmoniker website, because Facade is rarely performed. The Berliners catch the racy 1920's loucheness rather well and we hear a wicked new side to Rattle. He makes no attempt to fake an upper crust English accent. Facade works fine when it's delivered with Rattle's droll understatement. Rattle does the funny voices too!

Rattle has chosen extracts from the 1922 original for small ensemble and two voices, so when he sings, Barbara Hannigan conducts and vice versa. Neither are swapping jobs anytime soon, but this is pleasant enough.  We get En famille, A Man from a Far Country and my favourite When Sir Beelzebub where Hannigan shows what a real singer can do with recited speech, while Rattle makes his interjections with the right impact.  Walton/Sitwell's Facade is part of a short late night programme that includes Paul Hindemith's Kammermusik no 1 and Hans Werner Henze's Being Beauteous. Hannigan is divine. If she records this, she could be better than Edda Moser. Interestingly, while listening I thought of Benjamin Britten and Les Illuminations. Britten would have been young to have moved in Sitwell/Walton circles at that time, but he would have known about Facade and its impact. "J'ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage".

Berliner Philharmoniker goes American Charles Ives 4

Gershwin, Antheil, Charles Ives and Bernstein - an all-American programme, but with a twist. Often programmes like this make me cringe because they're done with self-conscious folksiness. But Ingo Metzmacher conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker with wry, distinctive style. Each piece stands on its own merits; no special pleading needed. Even Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story sounds fresh, the tunes integrated into the overall musical logic. That's saying something!

If Bernstein is the over-exposed "face" of American music, George Gershwin and George Antheil don't get the respect they deserve. Gershwin's 1932 Cuban Overture isn't his greatest work but it's an attempt to use Cuban rhythms in "mainstream" music. What fun it is to see the august players of the Berliner Philharmoniker play bongos, maracas and rhythm sticks! Cuban music aficionados will probably cringe, but the point is made. Even with Gershwin, Cuban doesn't go gringo.

George Antheil's Jazz Symphony (1955 version) is musically a better proposition, and the Berliners give a vigorous account. I prefer the spikier 1925 version, (excellent recording by Ensemble Modern) but Antheil's later, larger orchestration reflects the period in which it was revived. It's apposite, however, in the context of the Bernstein suite. Even at the end of his life, after a long career in Hollywood, Antheil still understood what jazz is. The Berliners did it with style - wildly bluesy trumpet, louche piano, the orchestra deliciously decadent and witty.

Charles Ives's Symphony no 4 was by far the best part of the programme. Metzmacher appeared to be the only conductor, though a second conductor was present.  But much of the leadership came from Pierre-Laurent Aimard who has played the symphony many times. His Ives is idomatic in the sense that he's played all of Ives's music for piano, but his structural clarity doesn't go down well with those who want their Ives "traditional". Too bad, I think. Ives was writing serious music, not retro. A supremely professional exponent like Aimard would have been beyond Ives's wildest dreams.

The beauty of Ives's work, for me, is the way he blends popular culture into sophisticated music. The hymns, songs and marches  shouldn't over-dominate for they are snatches of memory in a much more complex musical conception. Aimard took control from the first bars of the Maestoso, dominant dark chords making a firm statement A single cello responds, and then the choir, singing brief snatches of the hymns whose origins Ives knew so well. Metzmacher conducted so a sense of contemplative silence prevailed, much more in keeping with the mood of the songs than the uncharacteristically muted diction of the Ernst Senff Choir.

The Allegretto is a strange beast, with multiple cross-currents. It's notoriously difficult to conduct, but Metzmacher understands 20th century music so well that he can show how Ives was way ahead of his time. Ives breaks the orchestra into components, playing at different tempi: individual cells operating within a larger mechanism. Aimard leads. playing faster and faster almost to the point that the strings can't keep up. This tension underlines the strange, mechanical repeats in the music. The filming is musically sensitive: two violinists are shown bowing in a strange mechanistic ritual.  Yet the overall impact is of extreme energy, even a sense of madcap zany rebellion in the wayward rhythms. One thinks of New York, where Ives worked, its skyscrapers (even in 1918) and busy infrastructure. Years before Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Ives is creating futurist concepts in music. 

Th offstage ensembles intensify this idea of multiple spheres of activity. A solo violin is heard from above the stage, adding ethereal unworldliness. The second piano plays a relatively easy melody. Their music feels symbolic, like a commentary on the main piano and orchestra below. Then all hell breaks loose. What sounds like a conventional miltary match  develops at a wacky, wayward pace. Most definitely not a march to march to, which may also be part of the underlying meaning.

Metzmacher breaks it off sharply, strengthening the contrast with the Fugue and its mixture of hymn melodies and memories. Is Ives looking back on an idealized past? Ives's father fought in the Civil War and played the games required of patriotic veterans, but from what we know of his life, he wasn't happy or fulfilled. Ives strongly identified wth his father, the black sheep of the family.  Can these references to nostalgia be as simple as they seem? The trombone plays a reference to "Taps", played at the close of day, but also to mark the death of soldiers.

Percussion mark the start of the Finale, suggesting a procession or march. Metzmacher and the Berliners take this so quietly that the mood seems ominous, even though the strings soar in more conventional unison. Aimard reinforces the darkness, firm, assertive playing and absolute precision. Again, Ives contrasts mass with individual. A single violin plays  a slow, gracious figure which contradicts the gloom. Mysterious swaying sounds in the main orchestra, gradually building to a strange climax and retreats. Out of this almost nothingness Aimard plays passages so beautiful that they seem magical. The hazy diction of the choir worked musically, for me, because it put greater emphasis on piano and orchestra than on the literal meaning of the words. That, perhaps, is Metzmacher's achievement. Ives's Fourth Symphony is much greater than the sum of its parts. Listen to this concert on the Berliner-Philharmoniker website.

The photo shows Charles Ives in 1945 (Eugene Smith, courtesy charlesives.org) It's famous because it shows the quirkier side of Ives. Look at that crouch - is he about to spring at the photographer and catch us all unaware? 

Atmosphèric Lohengrin Berliner Phil Prom Ligeti Wagner Sibelius

At BBC Prom 63, Simon Rattle brought the Berliner Philharmoniker and did more than just play. They illuminated their music. Ligeti's Atmosphères, Wagner's Act 1 Prelude to Lohengrin, Sibelius Symphony no 4, combined in a flowing seam where each highlighted the other.

The long, reverberating opening chord of Ligeti's Atmosphères gives way to layer after layer of extended sounds. This really is "music from another planet", emanations so pure, high and unnaturally sustained that it must be hell to play. No "melody" as such, but changes of direction and density. Long hollow chords which seem to move from some extraterrestial plane, heralding a rumble from which other chords arise. Low brass pulsate, and the strings shimmer, like rays of light stretching outwards, accelerating in intensity. When I was a kid I used to look up at the sky and think think that shafts of sunlight bursting from clouds were "God", for that's how an abstract idea like God is depicted in religious imagery.

Above all, Ligeti's Atmosphères suggests a soaring sense of infinite expansiveness. Hearing the first strains of Wagner emerge from Ligeti  rings absolutely true in a deeper spiritual sense. Lohengrin isn't historical. Christianity had long since been established by the time Heinrich der Vogler came to Brabant. or he wouldn't be fighting the Huns. In any case, what's authentic about  Lohengrin or the whole Grail community for that matter? From a theological perspecvtive it's hogwash, if not outright blasphemy.  What the Grail represents, however, is something much more primeval than Christianity. It's an ideal that transcends time and context. Hearing this Prelude after Ligeti suggests that Grail values transcend human history, and derive from the cosmos. It goes without saying that the Berliner Philharmonikers are good. Here, they were exceptional. It wasn't just the beauty of their playing, it was the emotional committment .

Theodor Adorno hated Sibelius, in part because performance practice in those days emphasized the  picturesque aspects of his music rather than the innate structural qualities. Sibelius Fourth Symphony was a breakthrough, so shocking in its time that many thought it incomprehensible. In this performance, Rattle and the Berliners show how visionary Sibelius really was. Dark, primordial undercurrents, rent through by blasts of sharply defined chords. The imagery of light in Wagner, the  idea of abstract eternity in Ligeti.  The winds of change so familiar in Sibelius seem to blow from a higher level of consciousness. Sibelius's interest in the Kalevala and nature wasn't regressive but forward thinking. This performance emphasized the "wide open spaces" in the symphony, and the thrill of discovery that makes Sibelius so exciting from a modern perspective. How radical that ending sounds, considering when it was written.

Rattle and the Berliners changed focus in the second part of Prom 63. Ostensibly the connection between Debussy's Jeux and Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe is ballet, but that's simplistic. Ballet music is constrained by the limits of the human body, but abstract music isn't. By choosing the Suite on Daphnis et Chloe rather than the full piece, Rattle could focus on the brisk liveliness in both works. In Debussy, the pace was tempered by a good sense of structure. Games, after all, depend on strategy not impulse. In the Suite from Daphnis et Chloe, Rattle and the Berliners could let loose with greater exuberance, capturing its innate spirit of freedom. Not, after all, so very different from the light-filled, open horizons of Ligeti, Wagner and Sibelius.