Mahler 6 Halle/Elder

[richardfinegold]

I learned the Sixth, and listened to my Karajan recording dozens of times, years before getting to know the Fifth. I never did understand the fascination with the Adagietto and the relative lack of appreciation for the Andante from 6 until I learned of the Death In Venice connection

[LMcD]

I'm so pleased that Sarah Walker - or her producer - saw fit to include the wonderful Andante from the 6th symphony, played just now on Radio 3 in the recording by the BRSO under Daniel Harding. IMVHO it's actually more interesting than the eternally recurring Adagietto from the 5th, and might even encourage a few people to listen to the whole thing! Given that 'bleeding chunks' seem to be more in favour than ever with broadcasters, I suppose we should be grateful to have the chance to hear something other than 'that piece from Death In Venice'.

[bluestateprommer]

Recycling and hijacking this thread, as is bsp's usual practice, but again hopefully with justifiable cause, in that the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra is continuing their series of gratis streamed videos with the last 4 Mahler symphonies released over the next 4 days (https://www.gewandhausorchester.de/stream/). Even though I haven't seen them, I do know from advance reading one spoiler alert on Chailly's Mahler 6 from Leipzig: Andante - Scherzo for the inner movement order.

The other aspect of this newest set of Gewandhaus Orchestra videos is that 2 Thursdays back, the orchestra must have streamed Mahler 1-3 over 3 successive nights, but I totally missed it at the time. Oh well, lost opportunity.

[Daniel]

My own feeling is that when Andante follows the first movement, it immediately creates a distinct temperamental shift, allowing one to feel more clearly what has just happened in the previous movement, in a way that the Scherzo does not - 'the climber sees the mountain more clearly from the plain etc'.

I find it a magical symphony in either form though. It feels to me ever so slightly different to the other symphonies, in a maybe-Alma-sneaked-in-and-changed-a-few-orchestrations-before-sending-it-to-the-publishers sort of a way. This seemed a very fine performance.

Wonderful and enlightening arguments put forward by ferney, ahinton and others, many thanks, a fascinating read.

[AjAjAjH]

Back to where this thread began. I was present at the performance and have been unable to comment because I went away the following day.

I can only reiterate that this was a spectacular performance.

It was the first time that I have heard the middle movements with the andante played before the scherzo and all three hammer blows. I couldn't have cared less because I was listening to a superb performance by an orchestra which on its day - and this was one of them - is 2nd to none in this country conducted by a conductor who on these boards so often does not get the credit he deserves.

I can't find on a thread anywhere comments on the equally wonderful performance of the Verdi Requiem the previous Saturday. All credit to Mark Elder for stopping the performance -2 minutes in - because of noise at the back of the auditorium. Noise which sounded to me and others in the Circle Alcove, like young children.

I also wonder when the Bridgewater Hall audience are going to give great performances like these a standing ovation.

[ahinton]

Ditto

I personally feel that if GM had lived to be 100, hew would have flip flopped at least half a dozen times. If Mendelssohn had lived longer, he probably never would have been satisfied with the Italian Symphony, which he was endlessly revising.

It is an interesting question to ask of creative Artists. "When do you know you are finished?"

Whilst the answer to that would obviously vary from artist to artist, I suspect that many would answer either "I don't really know" or perhaps "it varies from work to work". Certainly Copland didn;t believe that he'd finished a work unless and until it had been performed and he'd at least given some thought to what might need revising, if anything; also, his friend Carter, as I mentioned earlier, revised some pieces long after he'd completed their original scores, so could be of like or similar mind (although, incidentally, he seemed not to care much about posterity and his legacy because he was too interested in his next piece/s - he once said that the most important history to him was that which may soon take place)...

All that said, Mahler's Sixth Symphony remains for me one of the greatest symphonies of the 20th century and undoubtedly one of his own finest achievements, along with his Ninth; yes, perhaps "the only Sixth, despite Myaskovsky, Matthews (oh and, yes, the Pastoral!)...

Anyway, thanks for kind words various!

[richardfinegold]

#43. Top message, Alistair.

Ditto

I personally feel that if GM had lived to be 100, hew would have flip flopped at least half a dozen times. If Mendelssohn had lived longer, he probably never would have been satisfied with the Italian Symphony, which he was endlessly revising.

It is an interesting question to ask of creative Artists. "When do you know you are finished?"

[Alison]

I fancy listening to the Elder this evening now.

[Beef Oven!]

#43. Top message, Alistair.

Seconded

Especially "... [I] might concede that the Andante could be performed before the Scherzo per se, but to do so in the context of the entire symphony is what seems to me to weaken the work as a whole; in other words, it's what happens in the outer movements that determines which order of the middle ones is the most convincing..."

[Alison]

#43. Top message, Alistair.

[ahinton]

I have to admit to not being overly bothered by the order of the movements - but I have rather come to enjoy the A-S order in that the Andante to an extent becomes less consoling - when the march with a limp in the Scherzo follows it

Interesting thought, albeit not one that's made its presence felt whenever I've made myself listen to an Andante before Scherzo performance; I do think tht the element of consolation in the Andante does not in any case deserve to be undermined and, if it is, it does the symphony as a whole no favours.[/quote]

Sometimes the March followed by Scherzo can seem very unremitting in a bad performance.

But to some extent that's arguably part of the point - and even Scherzo followed by Finale might have a similar effect, especially given that the prevailing A minor underpinning of the Finale manifests itself in the symphony's longest movement.

I wonder what Mahler would have thought, not so much about his decision to reorder the central movements of his Sixth but about the sheer enthusiasm with which it continues to be debated some 110 years later!...

[Barbirollians]

I have to admit to not being overly bothered by the order of the movements - but I have rather come to enjoy the A-S order in that the Andante to an extent becomes less consoling - when the march with a limp in the Scherzo follows it . Sometimes the March followed by Scherzo can seem very unremitting in a bad performance .

[ahinton]

What concerns me though is that, however strong those arguments about the greater power of the tonal progression in the original S-A order, no-one would have known that better than Mahler himself, and few would have been more familiar than he with the Austro-German symphonic tradition. Yet, knowing this, he still made the decision to change the order of the movements and, as far as we know, did not resile from it despite the ridicule he endured in the Viennese press. If a supremely great composer makes a decision of that kind, one has to be wary of simply dismissing it as a complete aberration. An alternative approach might be to ask what might have been the reasons behind the decision, what might have been the compensations. After all, there are not a few examples in history of where composers have been taken to task for their 'wrong' decisions on harmony: for instance, Sarti's pamphlet criticising Mozart for the introduction to the Dissonance Quartet, a pamphlet which when published in the 1830s prompted attempts to rewrite the introduction to correct Mozart's 'errors'; or the audience at the Skandalkonzert in 1913. These critics, too, might have argued that the composers were departing from traditional harmonic progressions.

I cannot and therefore will not speak for any other members here, but I do not "dismiss" Mahler's decision as "a complete aberration" as though I reckon to know best and that Mahler didn't know what he was doing; that would be absurd. That said, whilst we agree his status as a "supremely great composer", even this does not protect Mahler or anyone else from the possible risk of making misjudgements and, for evidence of that, one has only to consider the original order of those movements which Mahler came - albeit only when putting the symphony into rehearsal - to regard as a misjudgement that he felt impelled to correct. As I've stated previously, no composer, however "supremely great", is infallible at all times; to err is, after all, human - just as is "to compose"...

I have endeavoured to put forward, as clearly and honestly as I can, those reasons that occur to me as to why Scherzo second works more successfully than Andante second and I have clarified that these are the fruits of personal opinion, albeit one evidently shared by others. That said, you then quite understandably observe that "an alternative approach might be to ask what might have been the reasons behind the decision, what might have been the compensations" although the problem there is that Mahler himself would really be the only reliable source of answers to this and, for rather obvious reasons, he cannot be asked. I am unaware that there is contemporary documentation that might lead to any clues as to the perceived rationale behind the decision and, in the absence of such, all that one could do is ask the question rather than be able to expect to have it answered definitively or indeed even at all.

The further problem is that all four movements of that symphony are so very strong in and of themselves that one can really only ask oneself which order of them sounds the more convincing. Even I, whose view on this you know, might concede that the Andante could be performed before the Scherzo per se, but to do so in the context of the entire symphony is what seems to me to weaken the work as a whole; in other words, it's what happens in the outer movements that determines which order of the middle ones is the most convincing, for the reasons that I've tried to outline (perhaps not as successfully as I ought to have done).

[aeolium]

What concerns me though is that, however strong those arguments about the greater power of the tonal progression in the original S-A order, no-one would have known that better than Mahler himself, and few would have been more familiar than he with the Austro-German symphonic tradition. Yet, knowing this, he still made the decision to change the order of the movements and, as far as we know, did not resile from it despite the ridicule he endured in the Viennese press. If a supremely great composer makes a decision of that kind, one has to be wary of simply dismissing it as a complete aberration. An alternative approach might be to ask what might have been the reasons behind the decision, what might have been the compensations. After all, there are not a few examples in history of where composers have been taken to task for their 'wrong' decisions on harmony: for instance, Sarti's pamphlet criticising Mozart for the introduction to the Dissonance Quartet, a pamphlet which when published in the 1830s prompted attempts to rewrite the introduction to correct Mozart's 'errors'; or the audience at the Skandalkonzert in 1913. These critics, too, might have argued that the composers were departing from traditional harmonic progressions.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Floss, #39.

Okay - well the important feature is the juxtaposed chords of A major followed by A minor first heard (at 1min 49" in the Mackerras recording) in bars 54-55 and again the repeat - although not in the Mackerras recording because he ignores the repeat instruction* - and in the Recapitulation. It's an unmissable motif, so pronounced in its identity that Mahler can make unmistakable reference to it not only at the very end of the work (without the major triad) but also (in parody) at the end of the Seventh Symphony.

The First Movement ends in A major and the Scherzo begins in A minor - this is Musical observation, not "Theory". In other words, the salient harmonic motif of the whole work is used as a structural impetus within the Tonal progression between the Movements - if the 1904 published score is followed. This is genuine Symphonic thinking as manifest in the work of Mahler's greatest forebears from Haydn to Bruckner - there is no "supposed" (to use aeolium's vocabulary) greater symphonic strength here; it simply is a more powerful Tonal/Structural device. Placing the Andante in second place weakens the Tonal and Motivic progress - again, this is not Theory - it is observation; where is/are the corresponding strengths of following A major with Eb major? What, in the First Movement (or in what happens later) creates symphonic associations to compensate or surpass this? On the contrary, the Symphonic strength is weakened, and there is more of a feeling of a rhapsodic sequence of moods between the Movements, the success of which can vary between listener and listener and can be described as a matter of individual opinion - in ways that the Tonal structuring of the 1904 publication does not encourage (because the relationship of A major/minor as a motif in the First Movement and as a relationship between First and Second Movements is a fact, regardless of individual opinion).

It's not a question of going against the composer's wishes - the idea comes from the composer in the first place; there's no suggestion importing a different movement in A minor from another work in order to demonstrate how much better the work would have been if only Mahler had thought of following the A major of the First Movement with another in A minor. It's a matter of ensuring the Symphonic Tonal mastery of the 1904 edition is preserved.

* = for God knows what reason: for all Mahler's ditherings about the order of the middle two Movements, he never reconsidered repeating the Exposition - the only Symphony after the First that requires the feature.