Customer Reviews

Mahler: Symphony No. 4; 5 Lieder

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4 star:		(1)
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This is the best recording of Mahler 4 I have ever heard, though I hated it at first. I can't believe how focused Klemperer's vision can be frowned upon for after repeated listenings, I was stunned at how great this performance was. Listen to the first movement and how Klemperer enjoys the music so much. He also holds the music in suspense until the spine-tingling moment when the trumpets utter a reference to his fifth symphony. The second movement is ghostly and well molded, especially the trio section. Rubato and string portamento is very tasteful and can be done without the gross exaggerations of people like Bernstein, the "mahler expert." Klemperer actually knew Mahler and could be trusted to please Mahler with any interpretation he took. The third movement is more flowing than most, which means that he can take time when he needs to to make the music more effective. The last movement is very well sung by Schwarzkopf, always interesting with the text. Klemperer accompanies her well. The bonus songs sung by Christa Ludwig only further emphasize the greatness of this CD and Klemperer's Mahler recordings.

Klemperer's conducting and the orchestra's execution are the prime reasons for acquiring this recording of the Mahler Fourth. About Schwarzkopf's singing in the finale, I have reservations. To place those reservations in context, let me say that I regard her as one of the great singers of the 20th century and possess virtually all of her studio discography and many concert performances. Unfortunately, I don't think Mahler's child vision of heaven played to her strengths. Mahler instructs the soloist to sing without a hint of parody. Simplicity in this music isn't Dame Elisabeth's strong suit with her constantly shifting colors and coy emphases. Her sophisticated style just doesn't work well in this context. She's the sort of kid who should be seen and not heard. It doesn't help that she seems somewhat out of sorts vocally and comes dangerously close to the vocal wobble that was so anathema to her and Walter Legge. So, with apologies to the shade of a beloved singer, this one is compromised by the vocal performance.

About the Ludwig/Klemperer lieder, I have no reservations whatever.

This Mahler 4th has been in the catalogue for a long time and still remains competitive, due to the warm and deeply felt slow movement, the polished playing, and Schwarzkopf's contribution in the finale. The Philharmonia strings' timbre is very truthfully recorded, due in no small part to the balancing of Walter Legge. The Lieder make a very apt and substantial bonus and Christa Ludwig's performances are no less recommendable. Fine documentation, recommended at medium price.

Otto Klemperer was the third and youngest of Mahler's three "protegees" who promoted his music after his death (the other two were Willem Mengelberg and Bruno Walter). He was also the strcturally cleanest and, like Toscanini, emotionally powerful without resorting to sentiment. (A filmed interview with Klemperer shows him saying that his approach is completely the opposite of Walter's sentimentality.)

That being said, the first movement of this Fourth goes extremely slowly. For the first few minutes, I began to think I had wasted my money on it. But just wait 'til you hear the music change, and morph: Klenmperer is right there with Mahler, reveling in the grotesque orchestration and harmonies, plunging the listener into deeper waters than any other Mahler Fourth! And he continues this through the Scherzo, the Adagio and the finale, the "children's view of heaven," beautifully sung by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.

Though this Mahler Fourth IS slow, it is not extraordinarily so except for the first movement, which is 1:15 longer than James Levine's already slow-paced performance with the Chicago Symphony, but like that performance, Klemperer turns on the intensity when called for, reveling even more fully than Levine in the music's grotesque aspects. (It is precisely these grotesque aspects of the score that so revulsed Erich Kleiber, Wilhelm Furtwangler and Arturo Toscanini, none of whom would ever perform the score.) Klemperer's second movement is about the same tempo as Levine, but even more intense; and the third and fourth movements are actually FASTER than Levine. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, not exactly youthful-sounding but in good voice, sings the last movement simply and beautifully.

The fillers on this CD are some excellent performances of two songs from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" and three of the four Ruckert-Lieder. Why they didn't record the fourth Ruckert song, "Blicke mir nicht," remains a mystery, but since this is NOT a cycle the songsd may be performed independently. Ludwig is in excellent voice and, again, Klemperer's conducting is intense and on the mark.

The 24-bit remastering is terrific. The Philharmonia Orchestra sounds rich and full, so good that this could have been recorded yesterday. Highly recommended.

Contrasting this work with the stormier proceedings of his other symphonies, Mahler compared it to "the undifferentiated blue of the sky." It's true that the Fourth lacks the massive contours--the throw-weight, we might say--of its symphonic siblings. But it's a work of surpassing delicacy and beauty, from the opening salvo of sleighbells and reeds through the final, folklorical vision of heaven (courtesy of "Das Knaben Wunderhorn.") Klemperer handles it all with high polish and surprising warmth, which makes this a classic recording indeed: the closest we'll ever come to Mahler channelling Haydn with (as the man said) blue skies overhead.

Before getting around to the praise, I wonder if Otto Klemperer means much to the generations who have come up since his death in 1973 at the age of 88. (Do they know about his spectacular misfortunes, from almsot burning to death after smoking in bed to the manhunt for him when he walked out of a mental sanatorium?) Arkivmusic lists 207 Klemperer recordings, a drop in the bucket compared to Karajan's 1,040 and less than half of Bernstein's 560. Those two eminences are far more present through videos and an enduring publicity campaign twenty years after their deaths. Klemperer stands for a tradition now lost and rarely publicized, the same one that gave rise to Mahler. It's true that Klemperer was a Mahler protege of sorts, although not on the order of intimacy as Mengelberg and Walter. But it's not the personal connection that counts so much as the shared musical instincts and training, the same ethos and values.

This Mahler Fourth, which has been acclaimed since its first appearance in 1962, belongs among a handful of others about which it could be said that nobody needs another. On its own, it evokes Mahler's world completely. Klemperer was famous for slowing down with age -- early in his career he was among the fastest conductors -- but here there's only a touch of deliberation. That touch gives him space for countless small gestures of emphasis; he was always fond of bringing out the woodwinds in a charming, chuckling way. Schwarzkopf beautifully enacts the child's part in the finale without overdoing it. EMI's sound is splendid, and the filler, five songs picked from the Ruckert and Wunderhorn lieder, are classics in their own right, incomparably sung by Christa Ludwig at the height of her powers.

What sets Klempeer's Fourth aside from his rivals is its strength, not a quality one associates with the genial Fourth. Mahler is brought close to Brahms in some of the work's big climaxes -- this is music written in stone rather than water. But there's plenty of charm, too. As in his great Das Lied recording, Klemperer pays close attention to Mahler's genius at tone color. For once, a supreme orchestrator meets a conductor who can bring everything out vividly. Bernstein had the same talent, and for aliveness, his Fourth on Sony with the NY Phil. is a match for Klemperer's. If you assembled those two readings and Mengelberg's historical one, there would truly be no need to buy another.