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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Talking with Mahler on his deathbed,
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This review is from: 4 Ways to Say Farewell [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Leonard Bernstein, perhaps the single person who best understood Gustav Mahler, explains the four movements of Mahler's Ninth Symphony as four distinct attempts by Mahler to figure out and leave for us, his thoughts about the meaning of life.
As Bernstein conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in rehearsals, you can easily see his love for Mahler. He passionately tries to get the orchestra (and succeeds) to play each moment just as Mahler intended it (as I think Bernstein correctly interprets this). Even for those of us who love all of Mahler's symphonies, this one is particularly scary. In each movement, Mahler tries to build to those triumphant climaxes that we associate with his music, but in each try, he fails. Death simply cannot be defeated. If you have ever been with a loved one who is dying, this is just like being at Mahler's deathbed, as he tries to make sense of life. He searches, he tries valiantly, but finally there is just the emptiness left by the death of the one you loved so much. If you can get up the courage to listen to Mahler's Ninth, this will serve as Leonard Bernstein's very effective yet heart-wrenching guide to understanding it.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
saying farewell to The Master Signifier,
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Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: 4 Ways to Say Farewell [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Mahler's Ninth Symphony is arguably the final resolution,a codicil to the finality of the Symphonie(Master Signifier) of Mozart of Beethoven,and Mahler,so Bernstein tells us, knew of this responsibility. The structure of the Ninth has a fascination,not so grandiose(ending in an Adagio,nothing triumphant here),simply a document on the state of life, in Vienna it seems, Was their any other reality worth contemplating in 1908=1909??, I think not. It is a Symphonie of the surface, the sensual pleasures,of contemplation, reflection for good and bad of Vienna, the metropolis obsessed with sex,naivity,entertainment,science,of the mind in love with itself,affectations,expressive afflatus of enormity, as Gustav Klimt's Beethoven Freize, introducing the hidden dark pages of the psych,primordial, primitive. Mahler loved the simplicity of childhood, of lifeworld purely untarnished still with the hope of resolution,of fulfillment, this is the citadel of the Romantic, obsessed with the uncontrol of time, of not knowing how to manipualte time's passage,orthe the future,of refusing it, Mahler's art was one of looking backwards. As Adorno had said Mahler's music saw no great innovations,although he had intuitions on the relevance of Schoenberg,but failed to understand it fully.Here Bernstein takes us through rehearsals with the Vienna Philharmonic, one of his last projects to bear fruit. Lenny adds commentary, useful guidepoints, insights into this work simultaneously overdubbed over the rehearsal. The First Movement, Andante comodo he says is like the irregular heartbeat of Mahler, one he feared the most. Yes this is an overly rich movement with orchestral colors sputtering gently in all directions,as the opening,tremoli in the violas,then the horn,cello,Harp,even flageolet harmonics in the contrabass. The Second Movement is a rough portrait of rural life in all its dumbness, and richness, naivity ascending the the level of timbral sophistication,lots ofrough resonant downbows and then the Third Movmment, Rondo Burlesque, a fragmentation representation of the City, its impersonality, its madness, its irrational spots that one simple submits to, So to do we submit to the final Adagio, the giving up of life slowly,not letting go,with snarling pompous horns, one's musical language, one knows best,clinging to it as a child to the mother's dress through as Bernstein proclaims a transcendentalism of focus, of expression.
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