Mahler
Symphony no.6 KLAUS TENNSTEDT conductor LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
A BBC recording
MAHLER SYMPHONY NO.6
Mahler’s work as conductor and operatic musical director occupied most of his time in the winter months, but he was able to retreat to the country during the summer to compose. Thus the Sixth Symphony was composed in the summers of 1903 and 1904 at Maiernigg on the Wörthersee in Carinthia. For the composer and his wife, Alma, whose second daughter was born in June 1904, it was outwardly a happy time. Inwardly Mahler’s mind was preoccupied with human suffering and the fact of death. In 1904 he also completed his settings of Rückert’s Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children), which prompted Alma to warn him against tempting Providence. Containing musical depictions of Alma and their children, the symphony proved to be especially personal, and Mahler prophetically brought it to a tragic conclusion. The finale, he said, represents ‘the hero, on whom fall three blows of fate, the last of which fells him as a tree is felled’. Mahler and his wife both wept when he played her the newly completed score, and Alma tells us that after the final rehearsal for the first performance – in Essen, Germany, on 27 May 1906 – ‘Mahler
walked up and down in the artists’ room sobbing, wringing his hands, unable to control himself’. The following year three blows of fate did indeed fall upon him; he lost his post as Director of the Imperial Opera in Vienna, his elder daughter died of scarlet fever and diphtheria, and he himself was discovered to be suffering from fatal heart disease. The Sixth is the second of Mahler’s three ‘middle period’ symphonies, which have among other things in common the fact that they are scored for orchestra alone. (Mahler used voices in his Second, Third and Fourth Symphonies and again in the Eighth.) The Sixth is written on a large time-scale and employs a very big orchestra. Yet it is ‘classical’ in two respects: it is firmly based on one key and has only the traditional four movements. One should point out that there have been differences of opinion about the playing order of the two middle movements. Mahler apparently switched the second and third movements after the first printing, thus placing the scherzo third. Erwin Ratz, editor of the Critical Edition published by the International Mahler Society in 1963, claimed that Mahler later reverted to the original order, which makes
better sense of the symphony’s sequence of keys. Klaus Tennstedt uses this edition. A heavy tramping rhythm launches the symphony. Sound images of the parade ground had been ingrained in the composer’s subconsciousness since childhood, when he lived near some barracks, and they seem to have had a sinister association for him, probably because so many of his brothers and sisters died. Out of the rhythm a grim march tune emerges, at first in a decisive A minor but soon rising to a dissonant climax. The march dies away and we hear for the first time the tragic fate motive – a loud A major chord dissolving into an A minor one over a timpani rhythm – which is to recur several times during the symphony. A chorale-like subsidiary theme for woodwind with plucked strings leads to the F major second subject, a passionate melody that Mahler said was an attempt to portray Alma. Another climax marks the end of the exposition, which is now repeated in full. The development commences with the reappearance of the opening march, now made more sinister by xylophone and trilling woodwind, but peace comes in a visionary
pastoral episode for shimmering violins, woodwind, muted brass and cowbells, these last making a sound that Mahler associated with solitude in the mountains. This encourages a more optimistic mood when the vision gives way to actuality, but the recapitulation necessarily involves the resumption of that grim march. Alma’s theme follows, and in the coda it is at last jubilantly proclaimed in a blaze of A major. Where the first movement was predominantly grim, the scherzo (marked ‘weighty’) is horrific, transforming some of the same thematic elements into a danse macabre. After that brief triumph of A major we are back in the minor mode, the marching tread now pounded out, the woodwind trills and xylophone from the previous movement’s development more menacing than ever, the trombones sounding dangerous. The F major trio section (marked ‘old-fashioned’) is a hesitant sort of minuet that stumbles along in changing time-signatures. The idea came to Mahler when he watched his small daughter at play. Scherzo and trio alternate twice. On the trio’s last appearance, to quote Alma, ‘the childish voices become more and more
A degree of relaxation is provided by the Andante moderato, which moves away from the strife of A minor into remote E flat. There are three themes: the sweet string melody that opens the movement, a rocking figure first heard on flutes, and a cor anglais tune. The music woven from these ideas passes through varying moods, being mostly gentle and ruminative but twice rising to a passionate climax. The huge finale plunges back into the life-and-death struggle. Shades of themes past and shadows of those to come move through the slow introduction. In the second category are an aspiring violin theme heard at the beginning, a sombre repeated tuba phrase, a hopeful theme for solo horn and a dirge-like brass chorale in C minor, the minor key related to the third movement’s E flat major. The aspiring elements are cut off by the symphony’s major-minor fate motive, and the main Allegro in A minor begins with a determined march based on the tuba phrase. The violin and horn themes strive to succeed – the ‘hero’ does not mean to be felled without a great fight – and there is a brief glimpse of the first movement’s mountain-top vision. Three times the march wins through to an exultant climax only to be beaten down by fate. At the first two climaxes there fall the
‘blows of fate’ that Mahler mentioned. (In performance these are literally hammer-blows of a kind; Mahler asked for a short, powerful, heavy-sounding blow like the stroke of an axe.) After the first performance he superstitiously removed the fatal blow at the third climax. Here, the violin theme soars aloft for the last time and is extinguished by fate. A numb coda follows, ending with a crash of drums and the second, minor-key half of the fate motive. This symphony, Mahler said, ‘is the sum of all the suffering I have been compelled to endure at the hands of life’. © Eric Mason
KLAUS TENNSTEDT conductor
Born in East Germany, Klaus Tennstedt studied at the Leipzig Conservatory and conducted throughout his native land but it was not until he moved to the West in 1971 that he started to achieve world recognition. He made his American debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1974 and his debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1977. He had an instant rapport with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, which resulted in return invitations and his appointment as the Orchestra’s Principal Conductor and Music Director in 1983. This developed into a unique and remarkable relationship until illness finally brought it to a premature end some ten years later. Tennstedt was particularly renowned for his performances of the German repertoire, particularly Mahler and Bruckner whose symphonies he conducted regularly with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall and on disc to huge public acclaim. His energy, musicianship and emotional involvement combined with a rare humility endeared him to audiences and musicians alike. Klaus Tennstedt died in 1998.
© Richard Holt
tragic, and at the end die out in a whimper’.
‘I consider the interpretation of Mahler the most complicated activity a conductor can indulge in. You have to know exactly Mahler’s life, because he composed his life. It was a terrible life, especially his troubles in Vienna. He knew he was a great conductor, but he knew he only did it in order to get the money to allow him to compose in his spare time. “Why should he compose? Let him conduct!” the Viennese said. It was a very tragic life. But this tragic life gave us these great works.’ Tennstedt discussing Mahler in Classical Music, 1983.
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© Richard Cannon
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GUSTAV MAHLER (1860 – 1911)
83:53
Symphony No.6
CD1
52:56
01 02 03
23:02 12:56 16:58
Allegro energico, ma non troppo Scherzo Andante moderato
CD 2 30:57 01
30:57
Finale
KLAUS TENNSTEDT conductor LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA David Nolan leader
Recorded live at the ROYAL ALBERT HALL London
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