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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
From the review in Gramophone,
By Record Collector (Mons, Belgium) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Mahler: Symphony No. 5 / New Philharmonia / Sir John Barbirolli (EMI) (Audio CD)
Sir John's Fifth would seem to occupy a special place in everybody's affections. One must weigh a unity and strength of purpose, an entirely idiomatic response to instrumental colour and texture (the dark, craggy hues of the first two movements especially striking); and most important of all that very special, very characteristically Barbirollian radiance, humanity--call it what you will. One point of interest for those of us updating our LPs (and EMI have made a splendid job of the digital remastering): among minor orchestral mishaps in the Scherzo, were four bars of missing horn obbligato (at nine bars before fig 20). Not any more! The original solo horn player, Nicholas Busch, has returned to the scene of this momentary aberration (Watford Town Hall), and the absent bars have been ingeniously (you would never know) reinstated. There's even a timely grunt from Sir John, as if in approval. Something of a classic, then.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Barbirolli's Mahler 5th: a historical perspective on an interpretation that stands out,
By
This review is from: Mahler: Symphony No. 5 / New Philharmonia / Sir John Barbirolli (EMI) (Audio CD)
His dates (1899-1970) would make Barbirolli part of the 2nd generation of Mahler conductors - not those, like Mengelberg, Walter, Fried or Klemperer who were direct disciples of the composer, or like Stokowski who saw him conduct, but those who championed his works from the early 1920s onwards, like Scherchen, Rosbaud, Mitropoulos, Horenstein, Steinberg, Ormandy or Kletzki. But in fact the British conductor came fairly late to Mahler. According to the very informative Barbirolli-Mahler biography posted on the website of EMI classics, "Barbirolli was a late convert to the music of Gustav Mahler. He had first come across it in 1930 when the Fourth Symphony, as heard for the first time at somebody else's rehearsal, struck him as being thin, certainly by comparison with Berlioz and Wagner. After some early excursions at the beginning of his career - such as in 1931, when he conducted the Kindertotenlieder for Elena Gerhardt at a Royal Philharmonic Society concert in London - Mahler scarcely even figured in his programmes until 1946, when he included Das Lied von der Erde in his third season with the Halle Orchestra. Then in 1952 his friend, the critic Neville Cardus, recalling that Sir Hamilton Harty had given England its first hearing of the Ninth Symphony during his reign as Hallé conductor (1920-33), urged Barbirolli to consider conducting it himself. It was, said Cardus, "the ideal work" for him. Two years later the thing happened: moreover, that first-ever performance by Barbirolli of a Mahler symphony opened the floodgates to a 16-year period in which he embraced them all save No.8". His first Mahler recording was in 1957, the 1st Symphony with the Hallé Orchestra on Pye, which didn't make much of a splash back then (Symphony 1). So Barbirolli's real outburst on the music scene as a major Mahler conductor really came with the 9th Symphony he recorded for EMI with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in 1964 (Mahler: Symphony No.9). Other than the orchestral song cycles with Janet Baker (Kindertotlenlieder and Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen in 1967, Rückert Lieder in 1969, now conveniently collated on Great Recordings Of The Century - Janet Baker Sings Mahler: kindertotenlieder / 5 Ruckertlieder / Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen), he recorded two more symphonies for EMI, the 6th in 1967 (Mahler: Symphony No. 6; Richard Strauss; Metamorphosen), and this 5th in July 1969. The Barbirolli admirer may regret that EMI's famous producer, Walter Legge, was so infatuated with Klemperer, because one can suppose that this is what prevented EMI from producing more Mahler recordings from Barbirolli. The 2nd, 4th, 7th and and Das Lied von der Erde were entrusted to Klemperer (who had to arm-wrestle his own 9th from them). As for the ever popular 1st, EMI seemed happy with the 1961 recording of Paul Kletzi it had in its catalog, despite its 24-bar cut in the finale, and replaced it only in 1971, with Giulini's; and it is not until Tennstedt's 1979 recording that they put a 3rd Symphony in their catalog. In fact, though Mahler's star was rapidly rising in the 1960s and `70s and CBS, Decca and Philips had completed their Mahler cycles with Bernstein, Solti and Haitink, EMI simply didn't seem interested in jumping into the bandwagon, and its only at the beginning of the 1980s, with Tennstedt's, that they finally had their own (since then, they've added Bertini and Rattle). Comparing Barbirolli and Klemperer seems quite appropriate, because there are many similarities in their conducting style, at least in their EMI years, the 1960s. Both conductors favored very deliberate tempos, compensating in orchestral mass and power the potential sluggishness and lack of tension of their pacing. What Barbirolli retained though which Klemperer in his later years had lost, was the ability to whip up the music to brisker speeds and intense passion. With Barbirolli, deliberation, when he adopted deliberate tempos, was clearly a choice; with Klemperer it wasn't so clear... In that respect, Klemperer's 7th Symphony (recorded in 1968) was Klemperian to the point of caricature and distortion, and Barbirolli's 1964 9th was not AT ALL Klempererian - but Barbirolli's extraordinary 6th was, to the hilt: Klemperer at his best, deliberation and implacable power: a steam-roller doesn't move fast, but just try opposing a steam-roller. I'm bringing up all these considerations because, despite being much lauded ever since it was published, Barbirolli's 5th is a very problematical interpretation. In fact, some years ago (and before my Amazon reviewing time), I already did a comparative survey of Mahler's 5th, and thought Barbirolli so wrong-headed that I sold it away - something I very rarely do. And now I know why: I've bought it back just for the sake of this new, and even more extensive survey, and only to be able to substantiate what I though was going to be a dismissive review. But now I'm not so sure any more... Today when Peter Fülöp's stupendous and indispensable Mahler discography (see link in the comments section) lists, as of April 2010, 176 different versions (including Dvds), we tend to forget, but these were times of Mahlerian scarcity. When Barbirolli recorded his 5th, it was only the 7th recording ever published of the symphony, after those of Bruno Walter (1947, Mahler: Symphony No. 5), Hermann Scherchen (Westminster 1953, Mahler: Symphony No. 5 in C Sharp Minor), Rudolf Schwarz (1958, Everest, Mahler: Symphony No. 5 ~ Schwarz), Bernstein and Leinsdorf (both 1963, Mahler: Symphony No. 5 and Symphony 5) and Vaclav Neumann (on the East-German label Eterna, made available in the US by Vanguard Classics - interestingly, on a 2-LP set with exactly the same coupling as Leinsdorf's RCA set: Berg's Three Excerpts from Wozzeck; I'm now out of authorized product links, see the comments section). The recordings of Solti, Haitink and Kubelik were still one or two years away. Among the available versions, those of Walter, Leinsdorf and Neumann more or less followed the same interpretive model - brisk, playing more the military than the funeral, the exuberant joy than the burdened plight -, Schwarz was overall laid-back and easy-going, and Bernstein occupied a kind of middle ground - at least until his uniquely slow Adagietto and his exuberant finale. And Scherchen? Scherchen was, as always, the maverick. But ultimately, the interpretive options explored by these different versions were of a fairly limited compass, and there was scope for more, more extreme, more scraping against the edges rather than driving in the middle of the road. And Barbirolli provided exactly that. The first movement offers Barbirolli at his most Klempererian, and Klemperer at his best. Very typical is the opening trumpet solo, and especially the upward quarter-note triplet at 0:19 leading to the orchestral outburst. Mahler instructs those triplets to be played "flüchtig", fleetingly. Barbirolli does the opposite: he slows `em down, like playing those four notes on a giant foot keyboard like Tom Hanks in "Big". Follows deliberation and mass. The brass eighth-notes triplets are very detached rather than tight, and powerful, conveying a sense of implacability and fate. The 1969 sonics afford details of great presence and vividness (try the big horn and trumpet surge at 6:29, measures 189-191, or the two huge horn brayings in the second movement at 9:31, measures 354-5), and they even pick up of few grunts from the conductor, but they also lack a touch of brilliance at times, and the timpani are disappointingly ill-defined to inaudible (especially regrettable in the second and third movements). Barbirolli's march advances slowly, with an immense burden on its shoulders: Mahler's indication to play "schwer" (which in fact appears only measure 262, at 8:20) has not escaped the conductor's attention, and he extends it to all the movement's marching. He reaches the fast section in 5:50. For reference, Walter was there in 4:41, Leinsdorf 4:54, Bernstein 5:09 and Schwarz 5:19. Not until Bernstein's 1987 remake in Vienna was the opening funeral march taken slower - although, interestingly, Boulez conducted it in a concert with the BBC, a year before Barbirolli's recording but published only in 1990, in a very similar fashion. Barbirolli also shows a great sense of architecture, eschewing the extreme of contrasts favored by Scherchen (and, later, by Karajan), and his fast section remains very controlled in tempo (the section is taken in 1:46, same as Bernstein in both his recordings, as opposed to Leinsdorf's 1:32 or Scherchen's hectic 1:17. Walter here was uniquely slow, at 1:56, followed by Schwarz and Boulez with the BBC, 1:53). In Barbirolli's favor is also the fact that his trumpet is less glaring, more embedded in the orchestral texture than his counterparts from New York or Boston. Returns the slower pacing and comes the last section at 10:50, and Barbirolli's expansive tempo develops a unique sense of despaired wistfulness, but thanks to the conductor's beautiful control of rubato it never sounds dragged (for the anecdote, the New Philharmonia violins do not play the first upward surge as written, E-A-C, but E-C-luftpause-C; I have no idea on what authority Barbirolli instructed them to do that). Deliberation and massive power still in the second movement... Read more ›
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