Customer Reviews

Mahler: Symphony No. 8 ~ Boulez

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After a profoundly insightful reading of Mahler 2 recorded in Vienna, Boulez again opts for structural clarity, pure subtle tone and delicate textures in this gargantuan piece, bringing out details hardly heard before and finally saves the work from its latent aura of regression (thanks to Adorno's verdict): it never sounded more like a perfect link between the 7th and 'Das Lied von der Erde' than on this disc.

In so many other recordings it seems as if increasing tempi would keep the work's immense forces from falling apart or, worse, delicate details are buried under crashing drums and full-throated choruses for dramatic effect. Boulez, who delivers one of the slowest Eighths on record, obviously had thought through the score far more perceptively. A composer-conductor like Mahler himself, Boulez demonstrates Mahler's unparalleled transparent instrumentation - every single note at its place, without frills, only serving the score's architectural clarity and overall trajectory. This approach already worked amazingly well in his reading of the 2nd : incredible, how down-to-earth and un-kitschy this work can be performed and how intense and colourful it suddenly sounds, liberated from obscure metaphysics.

Boulez, whose ears have a reputation of being able to detect one single note played out of tune in a fortissimo cluster of sound, x-rays the score, revealing an architecture of steel and manages to keep the work's inherent passion and sensuality in balance with his crystal-clear objectivity and French esprit. For example, just listen to 'Gloria Sit Patri Domino', with its multiple themes kept distinct and clear while ecstasy and exuberant joy are constantly increasing in the repetition of the words Gloria! Gloria!. This is not just a roaring apotheosis, but shows how the movement had built up. In Part II, Goethe's poetry, with its forests, cliffs, deserts and mountain gorges, is transformed into a magnificent landscape. However, while Boulez is painting colours with sound, ascending ever upwards, it is the spiritual imagery he is evoking, not the picturesque. His reading comes very close to the image of a universe beginning to ring and resound that Mahler reportedly had in mind - with planets and suns revolving instead of human voices. Every little detail of the score is vividly laid bare - as if a bright light is radiating from within rather than spotlighting from outside.

It is very interesting to learn that Goethe knew the 'Veni Creator Spiritus' hymn very well and even though it was intentionally illustrating the descent of the Holy Spirit, found it very appealing to the genius, attracting spiritual and creative people. Mahler must have felt the same way. Both parts of his 8th, although using words written a thousand years apart, are celebrating the triumphant universal power of the creative.

With this recording, completing his Mahler cycle, the French Maestro again clearly defines Mahler's music as beyond a solely romantic emotional world. Leaving this composers many biographical subtexts completely aside, Boulez reveals Mahler's work as one of the most impressive examples in music literature of how expression totally assimilates into form and how the subjective objectivizes in art.

I always had some reservations about Mahler 8, like Hans Pfitzner once has put it, responding to the opening chorus 'Veni,Creator Spiritus': But supposing He does not come. What if all the efforts go for nothing. After listening to Boulez's magnificent, ear-opening recording, the work no longer appears as such a throwback to me.

When I was in my late teens and early 20's (now 62), I attended many performances of the big Mahler symphonies at both the London Proms, and the Royal Festival Hall. Once you've heard Mahler 8 at the Royal Albert Hall, with the enormous choral forces that it's capable of accommodating, the memory stays with you forever. You then probably do what I did....set out on a search for a recording of it that will recreate the experience. I did the same with Mahler 2 ('Resurrection'). As a result I now have a collection that's best measured in metres of shelf space, and the search continues! The recent Channel Classics/Fisher recording of Mahler 2 got me as close as I'd been able to get on that one, and is now my preferred version. With Mahler 8, I guess I'm still searching, but in the meantime, this issue will do very nicely. The BBC/Horenstein mono version, despite it's limitations, really conveys the sense of scale in a large venue. It was, of course, recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, an acoustically challenging venue for a recording engineer, but the result is really excellent.
As far as this new version of Mahler 8 is concerned, I should first say that I have no qualifications to be writing a review. I'm neither a musician or a musicologist, and readers will also realise for themselves that I'm not a writer! I can therefore only comment meaningfully on the quality of the recording, and the extent to which it recreates the concert hall experience. It's not that I don't have an opinion on the performance though. There would be few who would not be aware of the reputation that Boulez has for being somewhat 'cool' and analytical with Mahler. Whilst I'm a huge fan of Bernstein's Mahler (what a shame he didn't finish his DG cycle, the eighth being the casualty), I can't say I've ever been dissappointed with Boulez performances I've heard. I especially admire his DG Mahler 6, and play it often. I find this current issue quite involving and enjoyable, and certainly not lacking anything in terms of performance. For my money, the solists and choirs are up with the best, including both Solti and Tennstedt. For me, however, the big plus is the sheer brilliance of the recording. I usually grit my teeth in anticipation of the opening bars, in expectation that 'listening fatigue' will set in within the first few seconds, and the CD is added to the pile, never to be played again. Not so here. The opening organ part and the entry of the choir immediately struck me a warm, fullsome, and very listenable-to. For once the choral sound has body, scale, and presence, without any of the accompanying harshness and thinness of sound that besets so many recordings. For once, the balance between orchestra and chorus seems just right. In contrast to the Solti version, where solists are very 'up-front', here they are placed in a realistic concert hall perspective without ever being lost in the crowd. I suspect that the success of this recording is in large part due to DG's decision to return to the Jesus-Christus Kirch in Berlin, the venue in which (in my opinion) they made much finer recordings than they's ever made in the Philharmonie. So for now, this will be my version of choice, not because the performance is any better than some in my collection, but because it comes closer to the live experience than any of them. Only the Horenstein version, despite being in mono, rivals it for sheer frisson in the closing pages.

This is one of Boulez's most committed, heartfelt Mahler recordings, a major surprise after his coolly analytical Second. Part 1 is supercharged with excitement, and DG's engineering makes the orchestral and choral sonorities stupendous -- the visceral impact of Mahler's gigantic forces comes through as never before in my experience. The expected lapse of intensity when Part 2 begins isn't present at all.

Before hearing it, I wondered if an 80-year-old could marshal the number of perforrmers involved in the Eighth, but as ever, Boulez is a master of orchestral texture and detail. The Berlin Staatskapelle isn't in the same world-class league as the Vienna or Berlin Phil., but they play with conviction, and the chorus is among the best I've ever heard in this work. (The choral forces called for are so immense that a full professional complement can't be hired; we rely on amateurs, and these are top notch.)

Assessing the soloists is more difficult. The light-voiced sopranos have probably been aided by the microphone, which suits me -- rather that than not hearing them at all. The men, as another reviewer points out, are stronger. But all are very good. Far more important to me than the pluses and minuses of the cast was the care that Boulez took to interpret every phrase. The Eighth isn't first-rate Mahler all the way through, and Boulez serves the score carefully and well, thinking about the expressive meaning of every episode.

We've gotten past the point where performances of the Eighth sound like a struggle for all concerned. Ensembles around the world have conquered its difficulties (the way Gurre-Lieder, another hypertrophic masterpiece, has been tamed). As a result, actual interpreation is possible, and Boulez moves through the thinner passages of Part II with exceptional feeling. In all, I have no reservations -- this is a great Mahler Eighth and the crowning glory of Boulez's long traversal of the symphonies.

Here we have another fine account of the Mahler 8. How strange it is to think back to the days when just a single stereo recording of this Olympian work in the catalog was thought to be a miracle. Also, this brings to a conclusion Pierre Boulez' traversal of Mahler's Symphonies. It has been, in all, a worthy undertaking and obviously yet another jewel in Boulez' crown.

I like this Mahler 8 very much. I like several Mahler 8's very much. I like the clarity, the control, offered here. I like what I consider to be this maestro's ability to allow the music to speak for itself, perhaps the hallmark of a great conductor, which Boulez certainly is. He is to be congratulated for a career of artistic excellence, for a fine Mahler cycle, and for an excellent Mahler 8.

However, after basking in the newness of this version, I find myself, yet again, going back to my old standby, the Solti/Decca 8. I've long since given up trying to figure out which is the best recording of a work so complex as this. All I know is that after every new version comes out, many of which I like very, very much, I always find myself returning to the Solti. And even though Solti is far from being my favorite conductor, it seems that, at least to my taste, he gets everything just about right here.

Add to that the fact that he has a set of vocal soloists almost beyond belief, a dazzling orchestra, and, especially considering when it was recorded, those marvelous children of the dials - the Decca engineers, all working, it seems, as one, and you have what is, at least to me, a just about perfect recorded performance.

I'm grateful for this new Boulez recording and I'm sure I will listen to it often and come to appreciate it all the more as time goes on.

However, I will never part with the Solti. It, and I like to think I, have aged well together.

I'm fudging a tad by giving this five stars - it's really more a 4.5 for me. But hey, I'm thankful that any major label is still recording the Mahler 8th at this point! For DG, this is a huge improvement over their Abbado M8 recording, but not fully superior to their Sinopoli one. Sinopoli has the stronger female cast, but Boulez has the stronger men; especially the tenor (Johan Botha for Boulez; Keith Lewis for Sinopoli). For anyone who is familiar with Boulez's middle '70s Mahler 8th from the Royal Albert Hall with the BBC Symphony Orch. (it's been floating around on various Italian pirates for years), not much will come as a big surprise here. On the whole, Boulez opts for slower tempi throughout most of Part II. In Part I, Boulez is pretty much up to normal speed, but he takes the ending to Part I at a tempo that's so stately that it's almost beyond belief. I like it very much, but it has the odd effect of making the end of Part 1 seem more grand and important that the ending to Part II (which should be the grand summary of the entire symphony, if not all of western music up to that point!). This is especially true in light of the fact that the series of simultaneous cymbal and tam-tam smashes near the end of the symphony, barely register through the dense sounding Eb Major chord (offstage brass are perfectly audible, however). Still, there's much attention to small detail, as well balances throughout Part II - so much so that the entire symphony comes off as being thoroughly musical, and not just a sequence of pretty filler material that's mostly there to bide one's time between important climaxes.

While Part II was a bit slow to take flight under Boulez (he's like Kent Nagano in that regard), I found the entire passage from the tenor's first big solo - "Hochste Herrscherin der Welt" -up to Una Poentitetium's (Gretchen - same gal) magical appearance some eight minutes later, to be practically spellbinding. That said, the almost Wagnerian sounding orchestal passages near the start of Part II have far more intensity here than they do under Nagano. That in itself is a testament to the fine and idiomatic playing of the Staatskapelle Berlin. After that excellent middle section, I found the passage work for the three penitant women to be a tad droopy under Boulez, if also well detailed. And speaking of details, one that I really appreciate is that Boulez used a true harmonium (chamber organ) wherever Mahler called for one, thus making a strong contrast to the big concert organ. Anyway, following those penitant women, things hit their stride again with an outstanding "blicket auf" passage, with Botha sounding even better here than he did previously. The slower than normal tempo for the symphony's ending might not be to everyone's taste either, but I prefer it to being too fast (Solti, Bernstein, and Tennstedt - I hate to say!)

I also very much like the very start of the symphony here. The tempo is just right - not too fast; not too slow. The amount of organ is also just right - not too little, but not too much either. A previous reviewer complained of excessive bass eminating from the organ. On my system, it didn't overbalance everything else. Since this is the first Mahler recording to have been made in the excellent acoustics of Berlin's Jesus Christus Kirche since the much celebrated Karajan Mahler 5th came out in the early 1970s, I suspect that an electronic organ was being employed - at least for the lower end of the organ's spectrum. Perhaps it's just a matter of taste, but I didn't find it excessive. In fact, I'm very pleasantly surprised by just how good DG's sound is here - for once.

So, with this fine finale to Boulez's decade long Mahler cycle (over a decade, really), can we finally bury the much celebrated Solti Mahler 8th once and for all? Well, not really, as they're nearly polar opposites. Even if I find it more technically polished than moving, the Solti still has an excellent cast throughout (Kubelik has an even stronger cast). But Boulez certainly has the more interesting details, and he takes his time to smell those roses along the way as well.

This is the final installation and in my opinion the crowning achievement of Boulez's Mahler cycle which started with the Chicago Symphony and ends with the Staatskapelle Berlin. The playing is superb, proving that there is more than one great orchestra in this city. All parts are evenly balanced with the organ underlining and cementing the score. The acoustics of the venue, the sonority of the ensemble and the all-encompassing, ever-present musicality of this valedictorian conductor adds up to both a hair-raising and tear-jerking experience that only Mahler in his utmost pathos can bestow upon a listener. In short, this is one glorious recording!

I tend to agree with earlier reviewers this time. Boulez's attention to inner detail and texture often highlights, at the cost of overall drama, what would not be otherwise accentuated. As an example, listen to the gorgeous mandarin rift in the second section. This studio recording has a wonderful bass underpinning not always felt in other interpretations. But, I miss the electricity of a live audience experience. I find this performance to be a little on the droopy side, with the absence of the 'grand gesture' that Bernstein and Solti brought. The often praised Horenstein 1959 live London based set on BBC is my historical choice.
So I am glad to have this recording, but it is not my first recommendation. That goes to the above mentioned conductors. I must add that Amazon is offering this two disc set at a single disc price. Well worth the price of admission.

Does Boulez's DG Mahler cycle represent the real Boulez? The answer to this question is a resounding No.

For the record, I'm anything but a Boulez basher. My interest in Boulez verges on the obsessive. I love Boulez's music, and I'm wildly enthusiastic about much of his conducting. I've heard him conduct several different orchestras in person many times, and I've heard virtually every studio recording he's ever made, most of which, his late DG recordings aside, I have on CD. I also have countless live recordings of Boulez the conductor including the world premières of half a dozen Boulez pieces, and I have plenty of live Mahler performances with Boulez conducting, including four of the 3rd, three of the 2nd, and three of the 8th. More important, I think Boulez's strengths as a conductor are perfectly suited to fundamental aspects of Mahler's style: for example, Boulez is a consummate master of the subtle ongoing adjustments of tempo, monomaniacal focus, and pursuit of the long line necessary for the projection of such gradually unfolding works written in a sostenuto style as the last movement of Mahler's 3rd. That being said, I can't imagine duller or more imperturbable performances of the Mahler symphonies than Boulez's DG recordings. Unfortunately, they're ghastly misrepresentations of what his Mahler is really like. The DG performances themselves are not only excessively smooth and serene: they're also artificially lit and glassily recorded. The sounds produced by the orchestra sound as if they were produced by a really good synthesizer instead of real instruments, and the results are downright creepy.

Boulez isn't the only conductor whose studio recordings are far tamer than his live performances: Abbado and Dohnányi are just two of the countless conductors who should never be allowed into a recording studio, conductors who are far more interesting live than in their tamest and most excessively polished studio recordings. Performers are much more apt to be swept up in the heat of the moment in a live performance than in a recording studio where -- well aware that a recording will preserve every imperfection -- they inevitably focus more on sheer polish and accuracy. But the comparative deficiencies of Boulez's DG recordings go well beyond what can be attributed to these inevitable problems of the studio recording.

A majority of the Boulez performances DG has released are quite unlike his other performances, live or studio. Boulez has certainly changed over the years: the serene Boulez of today is a less explosive and volcanic figure than he was in the 1960's, but Boulez's DG recordings not only sound markedly unlike his live performances from the 1960's and 70's, they sound markedly unlike his CBS recordings. Most damningly of all, they sound markedly unlike the live performances that immediately preceded the DG recordings. Inert, excessively homogenized, and polished to death, the DG recordings are the monstrous and misleading exceptions in his recorded legacy.

Immediately before Boulez recorded the 2nd, 3rd, and 8th symphonies for DG, performances with the same forces used in the recordings were broadcast live, and -- far livelier and more distinctively shaped -- the live performances are vastly superior to the DG recordings. Most surprisingly of all, the broadcasts were captured in far superior, more natural seeming sound by the broadcast engineers.

All you have to do to be struck by the difference is to compare the opening of the live broadcast of Mahler's 2nd to the opening of the DG recording. In some respects, of course, the two performances are not all that different. The kind of articulation that Boulez draws from his double basses in the opening of the first movement is more or less identical in both performances, but the two performances come across very differently, and the difference cannot be attributed solely to the inevitable relaxation of tension characteristic of studio recordings. While the live performance is recorded fairly closely and lacks the exaggerated resonance of the DG effort, the DG recording is rather distant and excessively reverberant, and these differing perspectives have a real impact on Boulez's performances. Beautifully shaped, the playing that Boulez elicits from the double basses in the opening of the first movement is anything but the notes and nothing but the notes, but, on DG, the menace and pent-up aggression palpable in the live performance are replaced by something that sounds far tamer.

I can do no better than quote what an acquaintance of mine wrote to me after he'd heard the live broadcast of Mahler's 3rd that directly preceded the DG recording: "I wouldn't bother getting the DG release, whose sole advantages are a wider dynamic range (if that's an advantage) and more accurate playing by the orchestra. Perhaps surprisingly, aside from dynamic range, the live performance sounds far superior to these ears qua sheer sound -- more immediate and detailed, tonally more vibrant and colorful. By comparison, the studio recording (which has to be played back at a much higher volume setting than normal to make any sort of impact) sounds cool and almost monochrome -- e.g., where the bassoon during the murmurings at the start of [the first movement] conveys a range of rich, woody sounds in the live performance, on DG it sounds smoother and monochromatic, rather like a low clarinet. I doubt that any of these differences are attributable to Boulez but are rather attributable to microphone placement etc. -- could he or even would he change the tonal qualities of the entire orchestra in such a way? -- but either way they have the effect of making the live performance sound more, well, alive even though interpretively they're probably really quite similar. I won't be playing the studio recording again..."

In short, in addition to the inevitable loss of intensity all too often characteristic of studio recordings, Boulez has been ill served by his engineers. The real Boulez is to be found, not on DG, but in some of the live recordings, in the great soaring and sweeping live performances of the 8th symphony that are floating around out there, for example, including particularly the 1974 performances with The New York Philharmonic. Even more spectacular than the live broadcast of Mahler's 2nd that preceded the DG recording is a performance with the BBC SO from the 1974 Proms that is one of the most spectacular performances of the 2nd Symphony you're ever apt to hear: no other conductor has been as effective in conveying the manic urgency of the run through varying terrain up to the choral finale of the last movement than Boulez, and no other conductor has ever projected the gradual crescendo of that finale's overall shape any more effectively.

Here's a list of the performances of the 2nd and the 8th I have in mind. All of them were broadcast, and the performances with the BBC SO have been released on various fly-by-night labels specializing in live material. If you really want to hear Boulez's way with Mahler, throw away your DG recordings and look for these:

Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C minor, "Auferstehung"
Felicity Palmer, soprano; Tatania Troyanos, mezzo-soprano
BBC Chorus, London Philharmonic Choir, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Boulez
Royal Albert Hall, London, August 27, 1974

Mahler: Symphony no. 2 in C minor, "Auferstehung"
Christine Schäfer, soprano
Michelle de Young, mezzo-soprano
Singverein der Gesselschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra; Pierre Boulez
Vienna Festival, 2005; Grossen Konzerthaussaal, Vienna, May 31, 2005
Broadcast on Ö1, June 12, 2005

Mahler: Symphony no. 8
Edda Moser, soprano; Felicity Palmer, soprano; Betty Allen, mezzo-soprano; Jan de Gaetani, mezzo-soprano; Werner Hollweg, tenor; Siegmund Nimsgern, baritone; Raymond Michalski, baritone; Westminster Choir; Boys Choir of the Little Church Around the Corner; Boys Choir of St. Paul's Episcopal Church; Newark Boys Choir
New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Pierre Boulez
Avery Fisher Hall, New York, February, 1974

Mahler: Symphony no. 8
Edda Moser, Linda Esther Gray, Wendi Eathorne; sopranos
Elizabeth Connell, mezzo
Bernadette Greevy, alto
Alberto Remedios, tenor
Siegmund Nimsgern, baritone
Marius Rintzler, bass
BBC Singers, BBC Choral Society, Scottish National Orchestra Chorus,
Wandsworth School Choir
BBC Symphony Orchestra; Pierre Boulez
London, 25 July 1975

Mahler: Symphony no. 8
Twyla Robinson, Soile Isokoski, Adrienne Queiroz, sopranos;
Michelle DeYoung, Simone Schröder; contraltos;
Johan Botha, tenor; Hanno Müller-Brachmann, baritone; Robert Holl, bass
Staatsopernchor Berlin
Prague Philharmonic Chorus
Aurelius Sängerknaben, Calw
Staatskapelle Berlin, Pierre Boulez
Berlin, 9 April 2007

-david gable

This a fine performance, but, as with many of Boulez's Mahler recordings, many listeners will likely resist the conductor's departures from the more traditional approaches exemplified by Bernstein, Solti, Kubelik, or Gielen. What this performance occasionally lacks in the white-hot intensity one finds in other readings is made up for by the consistency with which Boulez pursues in his characteristically high-modernist approach. The impersonal flow of time--what Stravinsky called "ontological time" (or "clock time")--is key to this performance. Likewise, Boulez's desires to honor the written-ness of the score, an aspect that critics tend to miss when they uncritically privilege the oral aspect of performance traditions.

We had the privilege of hearing Boulez conduct the Mahler 8 on April 30, 2009 in the Musikverein in Vienna with nearly the same soloists. I am glad to have this recording as a souvenir. Boulez' interpretation is luminous and transcendent, beautifully phrased, beautifully sung (even the sopranos aren't audibly straining as on so many recordings - one can hardly blame them if they do!). To hear Mahler in that room, with those forces was a life changing experience and I am so glad that there is a recording.