By Evan Sercombe
AppreciateOpera.org Contributing Author
Osma Vänskä has proven himself again!... as one of the most uneven, if occasionally brilliant, conductors alive today. This Mahler cycle offers a glimpse into the mind of a man who is almost entirely unsuited to Mahler’s idiom: that of emotional extremes, wild climaxes, plunging depths, and folk-based light, with a few very notable exceptions. The performances are well executed by the Minnesota Orchestra and well recorded by BIS’ outstanding engineers, and each symphony is certainly very beautiful, but in many cases, that is all they are. This cycle also represents a rather odd trend of orchestras, ensembles, and artists releasing large volumes of recordings, often without much consideration for the quality of their product. While I think everyone should have the opportunity to have their work heard and considered, as a performer and composer myself, I would not dare release something I felt was unready or not up to snuff. Unfortunately, as happens with so many of us (myself included), we are not always the best judges of our own work, and critical feedback is often necessary to improve and grow as artists. So, without further ado, let’s discuss!
Mahler 1: Colorless, disappointingly tensionless, and (as I alluded to in the introduction to this article) extremely beautiful with no depth. How anyone can get away with playing Mahler’s music in this day and age with this level of disinterest is truly remarkable. It is not the abject worst performance on recording (*cough, cough* Rattle/LSO, Horenstein/LSO cough, cough), but it is far from being one of the best or even interesting.
Rating: 3/10
Mahler 2: Unfortunately, this performance suffers from many of the same problems as the first symphony. If anything, it is played with even less character than the first. This is really a shame. The Minnesota Orchestra has been built into one of the world’s truly great ensembles, and they have a magnificent choir to perform alongside, often with much better results (as we will see later).
Rating: 2/10
Mahler 3: Very good! Especially when compared with the other performances in this set thus far, this is really a very good performance of a very difficult piece to pull off. Vänskä shows some affinity for the more nature-inspired and “spiritual” aspects of this piece (though this was oddly lacking in the second…); nevertheless, the first movement could have used a little more punch, though that’s a minor quibble in the context of a strong, solid performance of one of Mahler’s more elusive pieces.
Rating: 8/10
Mahler 4: Absolutely excellent. The somewhat emotionally cooler atmosphere of the piece seems to be much more conducive to Vänskä’s natural temperament as an interpreter, and the result is wonderful. The fourth is a neoclassical piece by nature, with its sonata-rondo first movement and faux-Haydn thematic material and textures, which is much more befitting someone who was, at one point, a very fine Sibelius conductor. This performance has quickly become a favorite of mine and is one that I cannot recommend strongly enough, particularly for its very beautiful account of the finale, sung by Carolyn Sampson, which, while lacking in the child-like innocence so often sought in this piece, is simply outstanding due to its abundance of lushness, intelligence, and expressivity.
Rating: 10/10
Mahler 5: Well, if those last two performances lulled you into a false sense of security about the quality of this cycle, it’s time to wake up. This recording of the fifth is simply awful. If Mahler’s music is all about extremity of emotion, then this is not Mahler’s music. This performance is as soggy and tensionless as the first two symphonies were and then some. I really hate to say it, but this marks a serious low point in this series, along with the work I am to discuss next…
Rating: 2/10
Mahler 6: Very simply, even worse than the fifth. First off, the inner movement order is wrong. I am very well aware that Mahler himself waffled back and forth on whether the Andante or Scherzo movement should be played first, but the direction that makes the most musical sense is Scherzo first, Andante second. This is, firstly, because the first movement and Scherzo share thematic material, and breaking them up with an unrelated movement in between, especially when performed in as under-inflected a manner as this, is simply disappointing. The second reason is that the finale is an extremely dark movement, and, like with the third symphony, it is easier to conceive of this piece in a few “parts”: part 1 is the first movement and Scherzo, part 2 is the Andante, and part 3 is the finale. In this recording, all of that momentum goes to nothing because the Andante is placed in the wrong spot, and the whole performance is just limp and uninteresting.
Rating: 1/10
Mahler 7: Decent. A little cooler than I’d like, but then again, the piece itself is a little cool and abstract. It’s not my favorite performance, but it’s a hell of a lot better than fifth and sixth, and if you learned the work from this recording, you would get a good idea of what it’s all about.
Rating: 7/10
Mahler 8: Drop. Dead. Fabulous. This performance very well may be in contention for the best ever put out, along with Tennstedt/LSO, Bernstein/Vienna, and Solti/Chicago. It is absolutely gorgeous, and I personally have nothing to complain about here. The only potential drawback is the tenor, Barry Banks, who has a very bright voice and a somewhat wobbling vibrato, which may not be to everyone’s taste. I don’t mind it at all, and he displays a great deal of intelligence in his interpretation of his role, but every individual listener will have to draw their own conclusion on that front. The orchestra plays marvelously, and in my opinion, all of the soloists perform their roles with great conviction and beauty. For me, however, the true high point is the choir. The choral singing in this performance is second only to the performances given by choirs trained by the late great Robert Shaw. This, along with the fourth symphony, is the peak of this cycle.
Rating: 10/10
Das Lied von der Erde: It’s missing! Why?! Why on earth leave it out?! Clearly, Vänskä has no problem working with vocal soloists, as the second, third, and wonderful eighth can attest. Perhaps he didn’t feel up to the challenge or that this piece isn’t truly symphonic. While it is dangerous to make such assumptions, of course, I think that that notion, which has an unfortunately strong grip on certain sects of the classical music community, is blatantly ignorant and representative of a terribly narrow view of what truly constitutes a symphony. That is for another article, however, and I will save those remarks for that future project. My last statement on the omission of Das Lied from this set is this: if you are going to do a complete Mahler, let alone include a full performance of an incomplete work (Symphony no. 10 in Deryck Cooke’s third performance edition), then why leave out what many consider to be his greatest symphonic creation?
Rating: 0/10
Mahler 9: Like the seventh, this performance is merely decent. It features light, clear textures and an emotionally reserved reading of the score. This performance isn’t exactly withdrawn, as the second and sixth symphonies are, or dull, as the first and fifth symphonies are, but it’s certainly no Karajan/Vienna (live), let alone Ančerl/Czech Phil, but it isn’t bad. It’s a bit similar to Paavo Berglund’s final Sibelius symphony cycle in that it’s emotionally quite cool but has uniquely transparent and luminous textures, allowing you to hear everything that happens in the music.
Rating: 7/10
Mahler 10: Dull. It’s nice to see Deryck Cooke’s version of the piece getting some more recordings, I’ve always found it to be the most compelling completion of this symphony. I enjoyed this performance while I listened, but it had no staying power and was ultimately forgettable. If you want to give Mahler’s tenth symphony a spin, it would be better to spend your time listening to Ricardo Chailly or Kurt Sanderling’s recordings, both revelatory.
Rating: 5/10
In all, this Mahler cycle lives up to the title of this article: unimportant, and uneven. Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra would have been wise to simply record the eighth and the fourth, leave the rest well enough alone, and focus their time and energy on other endeavors.
Overall rating: 5/10
Evan Sercombe (b. 2005) is a composer and vocalist currently enrolled at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY. Their music spans from art songs to large-scale chamber and orchestral works. Primarily a neoclassicist, their current music is marked by an expressive intensity and lyric grace. They serve as the director of educational operations for the Deleuze New Music Collective.
What is your favorite recording of the Mahler symphonies?