Rafael Payare and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra will present this week in Washington, New York and Montreal the 5e Symphony by Mahler, whose discographic recording, made last August at the Maison symphonique, was released on Friday by Pentatone. How did this symphony become a sort of benchmark for “orchestral performance” and where do Payare and the OSM fit into an overloaded discography?
The film we’ve been talking about for a few months is Tar by Todd Field with Cate Blanchett. On the road to the Oscars, the magnetism of the actress overshadows the heated debates that the film arouses in a musical community exposed by a vitriolic scenario.
Lydia Tár, fictional character, has her best orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, and a major challenge ahead of her: the recording of the 5e Symphony by Mahler. In this symphony, Lydia Tár has her guru, Leonard Bernstein, and the Berlin model whose record cover she wants to imitate and exceed the musical result, Claudio Abbado.
Why there 5e Symphony of Mahler such an obvious choice of “musical scenario”?
Demonstration
Even if the trend has calmed down somewhat in the last ten years, the 5e Symphony by Mahler was, from the mid-1970s, a work of touring and demonstration through which orchestras and conductors liked to prove their brilliance and their musical expertise to the world.
First, because it exposes the orchestra in its full radiance in a balanced way. Then, because it is imposing and impressive in its dimensions (70 minutes).
There is also what musicians know and what listeners feel: the 5e of Mahler is a challenge. Listeners notice the brass, but it’s the strings that primarily have countless of lively, virtuoso strokes. And the percussions are not left out, especially in the 2e movement. This imposing score therefore combines virtuosity, endurance, individual and collective qualities.
On this is grafted the musical vision of a conductor. And things are not simple, because the 5e Symphony unites three worlds. To grasp its uniqueness, you have to think about two things. The first concerns Mahler. After its 1D Symphony, the composer used the voice in all his symphonies. With the Fifthin 1901, he returned to the instrumental symphony, but with a reflection that came to him from the 2e and some 3e : a symphony does not need to have four movements as tradition dictates. Here there will be five.
There is what musicians know and listeners feel: Mahler’s 5th is a challenge. Listeners notice the brass, but it’s the strings that primarily have countless of lively, virtuoso strokes. And the percussions are not left out.
The second particularity concerns the symphonic genre. In the tradition, a symphony is a journey towards a Final. Let’s take three absolute masterpieces: the explosion of light from the Symphony noh 41 “Jupiter” of Mozart; the triumph of man in the Symphony noh 5 by Beethoven; Brahms’ symphonic curse conjured in his 1D Symphony.
There 5e Symphony by Mahler, on the contrary, is a centric symphony, “Core Symphony”, in three parts and five movements where the axis, the longest movement, a Scherzo (III), is surrounded by two blocks of two movements. The first part (I and II) is dark and belligerent; the third (IV and V), tender then joyful. The Scherzo, musical and emotional center, is that of the separation of the two worlds, but also of the possible junction between them.
The Scherzo isolates an instrument, the horn, which will dialogue with its colleagues and the whole orchestra. Three elements — the strings, the winds, the horn(s) — nourish the movement, embodying intertwined themes. Mahler’s leader and friend, Willem Mengelberg, used to move the first horn alongside the first violin to materialize in space this very unusual dialogue. This is what Riccardo Chailly at the head of the same orchestra, the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, reproduced in his Decca recording.
Philosophically, by reflecting on the structure and meaning of the work, this is also why Mahler touches us. He is the symphonist of our world, who speaks of our pains and, here, sees the light at the end of even the darkest tunnel. Things will be very different in the 6e Symphonywhich rushes into nothingness.
The fifth on disc
Show up in the 5e Symphony by Mahler can be a source of glorious triumphs, such as this phenomenal concert by Mariss Jansons with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, fortunately captured in March 2016 and edited by BR Klassik. It can also be a big risk. Carnegie Hall regulars still make fun of the Berliners’ performance with Claudio Abbado, where the trumpeter, planting himself at the start, dragged the orchestra into a musical depression.
On the disc, it is appropriate to start from the pioneers who engraved the four Mahler integrals, pillars of the discography: Haitink, Bernstein, Solti and Kubelik. We have assimilated this symphony so much to Leonard Bernstein that we ignore the extraordinary success of Solti (1970). It would be an immense reference, were it not for an impossibly syrupy and static Adagietto. Typical defect of Solti, of which he himself was aware: he was so afraid of being seen as a cold technician that he added more in slow movements, at the risk of overdoing it.
This example of Solti’s “success minus one” is very symbolic of a fairly mixed discography for such a popular work. There are sumptuous versions that are not tumultuous enough (Barenboim, Chicago), biting ones that collapse in the Scherzo (Neeme Järvi), those that get stuck in the Adagietto and those that do not take off in the Final.
The 1960s and 1970s were marked by at least three major successes: Vaclav Neumann in Leipzig (VEB Schallplatten, 1966), John Barbirolli (EMI, 1969) and Kirill Kondrashin with the USSR State Orchestra (1974).
The ardent and abrasive visions of Neumann and Kondrashin, engraved behind the Iron Curtain, have not experienced a distribution to match in the West, while Barbirolli, very heavy and serious, represents an opposite interpretative pole (eight minutes separate him Neumann blood).
When the CD arrived, the market was in a frantic search for “new references”, which greatly served Eliahu Inbal (Denon) and the meticulous post-Barbirolli severity of Klaus Tennstedt (EMI). These conductors induced an era of interpretation where, in slower tempos, more scrutiny was made of the details of orchestration. Of these two heads, the 5e by Tennstedt, somewhat forgotten because it was recorded just before digital (1978), floats from afar.
But the digital era is marked by the exalted vision of Bernstein in Vienna (DG, 1987), that of Chailly in Amsterdam (Decca, 1997), tense and with a perfect orchestral outfit, and by this concert of Jansons (BR Klassik , 2016) of a sound saturation (also called harmonic tension) without equal.
Payare’s success
So where are Rafael Payare and the OSM? First point: it’s a great OSM record. Second aspect: it gives a very fair vision of what is happening here now, that is to say music taken head-on. Third fact, aesthetic: the Adagietto is, in line with the interpretative trend of the last ten years, more of a tender poetic interlude than a deep amorous introspection (in chronometric terms, that means 9 minutes rather than 11).
Payare’s gaze “makes sense” and does justice to the journey of the symphony. The 2e movement “Stürmisch bewegt” (stormy agitated), in particular, really has (feature of the violins) this tension that we do not have, for example, in the other recent version Pentatone (Bychkov, Czech Philharmonic) and in interpretations upscale Americans such as Barenboim-Chicago (Warner).
Finally, this Payare-OSM version is distinguished by the scales: an almost frenzied readability of the string lines (Final !), a superb presence of the percussions making it possible to surpass Levine-Philadelphia (RCA) and a spectral balance of the brass instruments more just than at Mehta-New York (Warner), which puts too much emphasis on the low brass instruments.
These comparisons with renowned North American versions serve to show the great success of this very happy and more than encouraging first disc from the Payare-OSM duo which, without rubbing shoulders with the abysses of Neumann and Kondrachine, can be compared to the superb work carried out in 1976 by Mehta in Los Angeles (Decca), in our opinion the best North American release to date and one of the most underrated interpretations in the catalog.