Customer Reviews

Mahler: Symphony No. 5

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Historically, Leonard Bernstein's 1960s recording of the Mahler 5th Symphony with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra should be regarded as among the most important, simply since it was made by one of Mahler's foremost supporters at a relatively early time in stereo recording. Clearly one of the reasons why this recording hasn't been as well received as others from Bernstein's 1960s Mahler symphony cycle is its relative poor quality; regrettably the sound does seem more than a bit "constricted" as another reviewer has noted. Others include Bernstein's own idiosyncratic stamp on Mahler's score, such as a surprisingly weak opening by the horns in the first movement, combined with an almost unexpected, unrestrained, sonic burst by the entire orchestra (Though I might add that Bernstein's tendency for "mannered", quite exuberant interpretations would become evident in his later Deutsche Grammophon recordings, most notably with the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Wiener Philharmoniker in the 1970s and 1980s.). However, I am still sufficiently intrigued with this recording to give it a favorable recommendation. Why? Bernstein's choice of tempi is among the swiftest I have heard for the Mahler 5th Symphony, and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra's playing is actually quite good.

Mahler 5th symphony was my first exposure to Mahler's music. I listened to and loved Rattle's recording, but I had found this overemotional, even frantic, recording more to my liking.

Technically, the recording itself is far from perfect to say the least, it is not the crystal clear reproduction I got used to from some other classical reprints (Decca Legends series for example). The bass suffers the most, a shame in a recording of a grand orchestra.

The first movement, the funeral procession, starts with a great explosion of the entire orchestra, with the conductor almost losing control. You feel the orchestra is about to fall apart, but it doesn't, sometimes only barely holding.

This over-energetic start projects over the entire piece, the orchestra sounds like a tense spring ready to pop. The "flow" of the symphony is somewhat harmed by this, with a sense of "breaking" between parts, the conduction is also less accurate.

However, when Bernstein's let his all tensed orchestra loose, especially during Scherzo and less during the Rondo, you may forget all these flaws and immerse yourself in Mahler's powerful piece.

Not the best recording of Mahler's 5th yet far from the worst, Bernstein's 1964 recording sometimes allows you to see Mahler's tormented psyche and genius in their full glory. Yet I advice you to listen before you buy, this piece may not be to everyone's liking.

Bernstein's first heroic and historic Mahler cycle for CBS is quite almost the most satisfying complete 'one-conductor-mahler-cycle' available. It would have been a completely satisfying cycle were it not for this Fifth.

There really isn't any need to elaborate, even when the orchestra would have played with the distinction they gave the Third, Seventh, Sixth and about every other Mahler symphony in the cycle, they would have been beaten by a dismal sound recording which is, even by 1960's standards, completely unsatisfying. Too bad, because I feel Bernstein's view of the work (not as mannered as his fabled remake with the Vienna Philharmonic) is quite refreshing. Ah well, perhaps this is just as well, a completely flawless Mahler cycle doesn't exsist and neither should we be searching for one. Mahler himself, after all, wasn't perfect.

I am currently surveying the landscape of Bernstein's first Mahler cycle with the New York Phil - something I've been looking forward to for a long, long time. After all the conjecture about the merits of this performance that I've read about, I've had a chance to listen for the first time today, and I agree with some other reviewers about the excitement of this performance.

The start of this performance may make a bad impression or be misjudged as poor musicianship by some listeners, perhaps at a subliminal level, because the beginning trumpet solo sounds as if it is being played as a funereal trumpet, or may actually be a band or military BUGLE, and I listen to it with that understanding. Its sound is uncharacteristic of the usual trumpet and evidently Bernstein decided that he wanted it, or Mahler wanted it to sound this way. The bugle is playing in the midst of the emotional funereal turmoil going on around it. That's part of what makes this recording unique.

There is REAL music-making going on... so thrilling and enjoyable. Bernstein is playing M5's from an entirely different dimension from anyone else and one that I happen to enjoy. There are many instances where the playing bustles with a pulsating, bubbling energy. Even if this is not exactly what Mahler had in mind, I'm willing to go along with wherever Bernstein is going... and he goes!

Bernstein is also totally committed here and is super-alert at the helm in order to bring out all the subtleties of this amazing symphony. I'm very impressed with what he's able to get out of the players, or what they are willing to bring to support him. While the playing may seem a little imprecise, or there seems to be momentary lapses or lulls, I'm willing to be patient, and there's the sense that they are going more for expression at all costs than for safe or dry perfection of detail. I will take a vibrant performance over technical perfection any day of the week. Nor am I bothered by the sound quality of the engineering. With a performance as unique as this, I feel lucky that it was captured at all. I like the slow movement as well, because while it is still being sensitively played, he doesn't make a big deal out of it, unlike most other conductors, and I find that a refreshing change within the context of the symphony as a whole. The strings sound warm, and the woodwinds articulate their parts beautifully. After the pulsating earlier movements and the exhausting expenditure of great emotion, I found the ending inevitable and satisfying. There is much to enjoy here!

Up until the end of the '60s, Bernstein was truly in his prime with his unique vision of whatever composer he happened to be playing, and his creative risk-taking worked for him much more often than not. As to some of his later works, I feel that he may have lost his way. Nevertheless, these earlier performances are oftentimes extraordinary, and even what some listeners might consider to be his lesser efforts can still leave an indelible impression. In short, I greatly enjoyed this recording because of the vibrancy of the thrilling emotions behind it all that can lift one's spirits to the sky!

I recently purchased the Sony box with the complete symphonies with Bernstein at the helm. I had been expecting this performance of the 5th to be a disaster, but I have been pleasently surprised by it. As an interpretation, it is marvelous, and I wonder if the recorded sound quality is the real culprit in the generally negative reviews this performance has received. Granted, neither the playing nor the sound engineering is particularly good, but one may enhance the sound quality to an acceptable level by creatively manipulating a graphic equalizer. Fortunately, the other recordings in the complete set sound much better. I probably wouldn't buy this as an individual disk, but would certainly recommend listening to it as part of the Sony box set.

Although this recording might be useful by academia in disection of Bernstein, this is NOT a good recording. The over-all sound is very thin, thanks to 1960 recording technology. The New York Philharmonic isn't known for it's brass section, which makes the Trauermarsch very disappointing.

Additionally, the tenuous saturation leaves much of the Adagietto to the imagination. I want my money back.

Want perfection in Mahler 5 (M5)? Seek out Abbado on DG. Want an even more scrutinized and prepared performance (from the original piano rolls left by Mahler himself)? Pick up a copy of Zander's M5 complete with a separate disc of Zander's musings on what M5 is about (very detailed and informed).

But, if my readers are still awake at the end of these very well played and polished renditions of M5, I'll buy them a cup of coffee.

Yes, there is that Bernstein trumpet opening. Nonetheless, there are so many treasurable morsels laced throughout the rest of the performance. Please do not let that ruin your listening experience.

We demand so much absolute technical precision today from our orchestras, perhaps, to an insane level. Unfortunately, this recording's rating suffers from the reality that its early sixties sound is judged by our 21st century expectations. Therefore, your assignment, should you choose to accept it would be for you the reader to find a more human (warts and all) recording than Bernstein's NYPO Mahler 5! I seriously doubt you will find another recording that will keep you awake until the end. If for nothing else to catch all the "mistakes" some other reviews like to point out.

It's a mystery why a great Mahler conductor like Bernstein didn't "get" the Mahler Fifth, which almost every other respectable Mahlerian conducts very well. This recording comes close to being a mess. None of the tempos are out of line, being either very fast or very slow, but there is no logic or line to any of the movements (ecept for a lovely, moderately paced Adagietto), just shapeless gestures.

The opening trumpet solo is quavery and insecure, the pace tends to drag everywhere it shouldn't, and overall Bernstien seems completely at sea. Who knows why? This is the only serious blemish in his 1960s Mahler cycle from New YOrk--even the sound is congested and uncomfortable. Ufortunately, the better played, better recorded remake with the Vienna Phil. from 1987 isn't much improved in conception--the tempos are slow4er and just as draggy.

Just listen to the very beginning, the opening trumpet solo, and how "tight" his triplets are. Here Mahler instructs: "the upbeat triplets of this theme must always be played somewhat fleetingly (quasi accel.) in the manner of a military fanfare". With Bernstein they sound not so much like triplets (even fleeting and quasi accel.) as like a repeated-note appoggiatura. There's no telling if this is what Mahler had in mind, but it certainly lends much bite to the enunciation. It may be a small detail, but it shows the care and attention to details that went into this interpretation. Right after, on the first orchestral triplets, at 0:41, because that particular phrasing lenghtens the duration of the two beats of silence between the triplets, the music develops a great sense of "fatum": music for marching to the guillotine. None of this had ever been done before, at least on record. We tend to forget, but these were the days of the early pioneers. Incredible to think - today when Peter Fülöp's stupendous and indispensable Mahler Discography lists, as of April 2010, 176 different recordings, DVDs included - that Bernstein's recording, made on January 7, 1963 and the third installment in his complete Mahler cycle after the 4th and the 3rd, was only the fourth studio recording of the composition, after those of Bruno Walter (1947, Mahler: Symphony No. 5), Hermann Scherchen on Westminster (1953, Mahler: Symphony No. 5 in C Sharp Minor) and Rudolf Schwarz for Everest, the first one in stereo (1958, Mahler: Symphony No. 5 ~ Schwarz). That same year Erich Leinsdorf, recently appointed music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, would record another version, one very different in conception (except in the scherzo) and much closer to Walter's - but in RCA's great stereo sonics (Symphony 5).

The Columbia sonics afforded to Bernstein were also excellent, especially in the new "Carnegie Hall" remastering and remixing from the original masters, Mahler: Complete Symphonies (Carnegie Hall Presents), although, here, I don't find that it has improved as much upon this previous remastering for the Bernstein Century reissue, as it did with the 9th Symphony (see my review of Mahler: Symphony No. 9 (Bernstein Century)). It is louder, which gives the impression of more presence and affords more clarity of hearing but also exposes a strange static noise in some of the soft passages of the first movement (at 2:55 for instance - but it was already there in the Bernstein Century reissue, though not as perceptible), and a perceptible swish at the beginning of the Adagietto. But it is also clearer, and the new Carnegie Hall box of the complete symphonies is what the amateur of Bernstein's Mahler must now go for.

So Bernstein installs a fine sense of burden in that funeral procession first movement ("wie ein Kondukt" inscribes Mahler at the top), without, as he would later, in his 1987 remake for DG with the Vienna Philharmonic, resorting to dragged out tempi (Mahler: Symphony No. 5). Later though, others, including himself, would find more depths of expression in the "gehaltener" moments, where Bernstein 1 hardly holds back (at 1:08 and 2:57), and likewise in the movement's final section, at 9:36. But his sense of architecture in the first movement is perfect, with a fast section that is not too fast and doesn't play up the contrast of tempo but keeps a sense of organic relation. The trumpet plays there with great vehemence (I had it in my memory, and even in notes that I wrote a few years ago, that it was too raw in tone - I don't think so any more: I now find it appropriately vehement), but the strings lack a touch of frenzy - small detail. At 6:07 Bernstein resorts to the old Bruno Walter gimmick - a big slowdown where Mahler indicates only "molto espressivo" (measure 203) - which I find artificial and not necessary, but again this is a small detail in the overall picture. The Newyorkers play with the required vehemence in the second movement, although Bernstein takes it at a slightly pedestrian opening tempo that prevents it from being really furious and truly incandescent, as it was that same year under Leinsdorf. And just compare the very beginning of both versions: muddy, ill-defined celli and double-basses with Bernstein (they don't even seem to be playing the attack entirely together), clarity and bite of Leinsdorf's (playing staccato). Sometimes the details do make a difference. Fortunately the New York brass amply make up for it and soon the movement develops to great sweep and passion. The tempo shifts are perfectly well judged and the slower sections, with their reminiscences of the first movement, develop great atmosphere.

In the scherzo, where Walter was uniquely urgent and Mitropoulos urgent and grim (in a famous January 1960 concert with the New York Philharmonic, Mahler: Symphonies Nos. 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, & 10 - Unfinished) - options that I find entirely valid -, Bernstein adopts a more laid-back basic tempo, with more bonhomie than urgency, but he finds a perfect mix of the charming and the scorching, the latter thanks to vehement strings ("wild" in Mahler's indication on their frequent eighth-note runs) and pungent brass and woodwinds. I can't start describing the careful attention to all the instrumental details, the phrasing of the many sf, fp, staccato marks, that contribute so much to the movement's instrumental character. Do the waltzes (at 2:30 and 6:45) lack a touch of simplicity? Bernstein certainly fusses over them more than Walter, Schwarz or Leinsdorf, but he also fills them with much character. A deeply-felt Adagietto, running at 11 minutes, and one that is truly historical for being the first, at least among studio versions (it is in fact very close to Mitropoulos' live 1960 concert) to inaugurate the "slow" approach to that movement. Until then Scherchen had been the most spacious, and he clocked at 9:10, Leinsdorf was at 8:30, Schwarz at 7:30 and Walter at 7:42. Bernstein's approach may not be true to the composer's (Mahler is said to have conducted it at around 8 minutes) and the notion (set forth by Mengelberg, supposedly from direct conversations with Mahler) that the Adagietto is in fact a tender and passionate declaration of love to Alma; but when straying from the composer's intentions, great interpreters are in fact revelatory.

And Bernstein tops it off with a brilliant finale, filled with urgency and enthusiasm, and with the conductor evidently ready to sacrifice graciousness (as at 1:56, measure 100, "grazioso") to drive.

I've listened to this recording a few years ago in this reissue, and taken notes, and I've listened again in the Carnegie Hall remastering, and I find that my reactions and analyses have remained exactly the same (except for the trumpet's tone). I read the negative or lukewarm reviews under this entry and I don't know what they are talking about. I am confident that my listening was at least as careful and precise as theirs. In fact, none are specific, none give exact reference to score or timing to let one check exactly what it is they are hearing - except for the opening solo trumpet. OK, there are two miniscule wobbles during the solo, and by zeroing on that (if that is indeed what the negative reviewers are zeroing upon), they miss entirely what is so unique about that solo - this is not missing the forest for the tree, but the Amazonia for the splinter! And it is NOT the sonics. Certainly, the Carnegie remastering is revelatory, but everything that I hear there, I heard already a few years ago with the Bernstein Century reissue.

I've also gone back to some of the early reviews, to try and understand what that negative reputation is about and where it came from. In that respect, the Gramophone July 1964 review, by no other than Deryck Cooke, is particularly interesting. Cooke starts with apparent praise for Bernstein ("Right from the start it is obvious that Bernstein is striving for an absolutely faithful presentation of Mahier's musical thought, by adhering exactly, not just to what Mahler has written, but also to all the unwritten implications of his style") and he points to the phrasing of the opening trumpet triplets that also struck my ear. He then goes on to compare Bernstein and Walter, noting that "Bernstein is technically right, and Walter technically wrong", e.g. inobservant of those many details. But then comes the stab in the back: "Why is it, then, that one so warms to Bruno Walter's record of the Fifth Symphony, while Bernstein's ultimately leaves one cold? I think the answer is this. Given that Walter's approach to Mahler underplays the nervous element, it is nevertheless a spontaneous and deeply-felt approach of a great conductor, which reflects Mahler's music through a more stable and balanced temperament; whereas Bernstein's approach, even if it concerns itself with the nervous element in the music, seems to do so with the conscious and careful calculation of a less than great conductor who is no nearer to the nerve-ridden Mahler in his inmost self than Bruno Walter is. Everything seems conscientiously applied from the outside-- though it may be, of course, that Bernstein does have some strong affinity with Mahier's neurotic self, but is not yet able to convey it spontaneously owing to an insufficiently expert technique. Whatever the reason, the effect is to bring into Mahier's music a completely alien element--frigidity".

To call Bernstein "a less than great conductor" and one "not yet able to convey [his conception] spontaneously owing to an insufficiently expert technique", was, even in 1963, hardly perceptive on the part of Cooke. More exceptionable still is to be so vague in his denunciation of Bernstein's alledged "conscious and careful calculation"; so, observing minutely the score is "conscious and careful calculation" and even "frigidity", whereas gliding over those details (which is what you can understand of Cooke's description of Walter) is "spontaneous and deeply-felt". Conductors, why the heck to you spend so much time looking at those details and trying to realize them?

What is obvious to me is that Cooke was so used to Bruno Walter's recording (after all, it had been the only one available since 1947, other than Scherchen's from 1953, but Scherchen was a maverick, with an all-too personal approach to be a true contender, and Schwarz' hadn't yet come out in Great Britain) that he was put off by Bernstein's - not because it was bad, not because it was "self-conscious and over-calculated", but simply because it was different from what he had grown accustomed to.

And there was the 11-minute Adagietto, of course. For listeners grown on Walter's 7:42 or even Scherchen's 9:10, it was obvious that Bernstein's was going to sound "badly laboured, owing to the excessive attention paid to the great number of hairpins and crescendo-pianos scattered about the score" and that they would feel that "each note is handled so carefully and awkwardly that all flow ceases", concluding that "the movement, as rendered like this, gives an impression, not of nervous tension, but of pedantry". Now that Bernstein has become "middle-of-the-road" here, it's hard even to imagine what Cooke was talking about.

Bernstein's 1963 Mahler 5th is a remarkably balanced version. Not (except in the finale) urgent as Walter's or urgent and high-strung as Leinsdorf's, not favoring strong, even brutal contrasts of tempi as Scherchen's, not laid-back as Schwarz', but striking a perfect balance between all these approaches. It has the true feel of a classic. I can imagine versions more crisply and precisely played in some details, better recorded and with more vivid instrumental presence, and I can imagine some plumbing for even deeper expression. But alreay in 1963 the spririt is there.

I came to Bernstein's Mahler symphony cycle -- the first complete one -- as a college student in the late 60s. These recordings were as much a part of that decade as the Beatles, Stones, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison. Bernstein was already established, but Mahler was not, if you can believe it. And the Mahler 5th was incomprehensible; his one-time assistant, Bruno Walter, said honestly that he didn't know what it was about. Two funeral marches to open, a big mal-de-mer Scherzo in the middle, the apotheosis of Central European sensibility in the Adagietto leading into an opera bouffe finale? No, it does not just "make sense." I haven't compared this over the years except with Walter and then Karajan, who came to it very late, but made sense of the finale. I've found Lenny persistently satisfying.

So after 40 years, what is it about? Mahler is not just "obsessed with death"; death, as a great many serious artists (eg Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson) have known, is a great mysterious doorway. Mahler's key symphony is his second, which begins with a "hero's life" seen by a friend staring into the grave. And its peculiar Scherzo included an explosion which was in fact a moment of spiritual perception. Such moments are typically suppressed, and even Mahler writing the 2nd didn't know why he put that page in. But from it unfolds the staggering vision beyond death which makes #2 the "Resurrection" symphony. Mahler continued in the 3rd and 4th with a Swedenborgian overview of the "great chain of being" (worthy of his contemporary Rudolf Steiner) and a reaching on up into the realms of bliss at the end of the 4th: "no music on Earth like ours in heaven," they sing. Where do you go from there?

With the 5th, Mahler crosses into the 20th century, leaves behind the folk poetry and the country naieveté. He's now perhaps the most important musician in Europe, a Lucas or Spielberg of the time. And yet he sees the world through the eyes of a half-awakened initiate, and so when he comes back to earth it is with these twin funeral marches.

Now can you imagine hearing them as I did for the first time in 1968, with Vietnam on the tv every night, King and Malcolm X and Bobby Kennedy lying in their own blood? Bernstein doesn't fully penetrate the meaning of this symphony, but he "makes it real" as had not been done before. More beautifully played since, no doubt; but this is a performance synchronized with a moment in history which brings out its meaning.

Just as one must return to earth, with its death and tragedy, after singing with the angels, after the funeral you must come back to life. The Scherzo is the return to the bustling routine of important people and eventful lives. It if full of touches of psychological phenomenalism (Mahler took Brentano's class in Vienna in his student years at about the same time as Husserl and Steiner); it is a cultural-emotional-social portrait of his time. And then, as in the 2nd, the counter-working of the previous movements opens something new, into the Adagietto, a review of one's life, perhaps, without sentimentality but very deep feeling. And then, after the moment's meditation, it's back to being the toast of Vienna, the great opera conductor. "Yes, I am a very successful man, on top of the world, but I have also shown you what lives in my soul."

If you have trouble telling Mahler apart from Offenbach, or Richard Strauss, you may not have much use for Bernstein's theatrical, emotional, and yes, spiritual approach to the music of Mahler. If, however, you would care sometimes to walk off to the edge of town where something more mysterious may be going on, give this a try. Turn off all the distractions, and the lights, and go where only Mahler can take you.