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FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE RATT-MAN: DON’T EXPECT AN OSCAR

David Hurwitz

Carnegie Hall, New York, March 19, 2002

Simon Rattle must be one of the most frustrating conductors ever to wield a stick. Having risen to the top of his profession on a wave of seemingly limitless praise from the English press, and having amassed a huge catalog of recordings for EMI (the majority of which are now out of print, it should be noted), he has yet to demonstrate any particular mastery in music of a specific period, style, or repertoire. In general, you might call him reliably uninspired. His Mahler Fifth with the Philadelphia Orchestra this March 19 was no exception, except that it turned out to be less reliable than usual. Although acclaimed in some quarters as a Mahler “specialist” (Who isn’t these days?), his interpretive work in this composer can be summarized very simply: a selective emphasis on non-essential detail.

In the broadest sense, any conductor will observe a composer’s general directives to play loud or soft, fast or slow, and so forth. The “interpretation” generally consists of the degree to which the players execute the range of contrasts between the score’s indicated extremes of speed and dynamics, with due allowance also made for such matters as rhythmic precision, ensemble balance, beauty of tone, and phrasing. Rattle’s Mahler, to the extent it conveys his personal stamp, is different. It consists of attention lavished on passages about which the composer says practically nothing that warrants giving them special treatment, while truly important issues of musical architecture, climax, and dramatic catharsis pass unnoticed. Take the opening funeral march. Rattle’s first idea consisted of a huge, gratuitous slowing down at the march’s cadence theme (the first two bars of it or so), just before the appearance of the opening trumpet motive on solo timpani. Before that the music proceeded with little inflexion or interest, the hysterical first trio underplayed, its dark colors and “broken” character neglected. And that, essentially, was Rattle’s entire contribution to our understanding of this movement.

The second movement offered similar moments of selective emphasis followed by large swaths of routine playing. Rattle made a meal, for example, of the howling trombone passage that precedes the first appearance of the triumphant brass chorale that later closes the symphony. This chorale, so carefully calibrated that Mahler marks at its highpoint the actual word “climax” with arrows pointing to the precise beat in question, passed by with scant sense of cumulative power. From the purely dynamic point of view its audible highpoint came and went about a page earlier than it should have. The great disintegration that brings the movement to its quiet close also lacked punch and any sense of dramatic significance, thanks to underplayed percussion and relatively tame brass (the cymbal player in particular was totally inadequate throughout the entire work).

Rattle’s Scherzo bounced along with amiable nonchalance. Here, his great insights were exaggerated use of string portamento at the first appearance of the slow section, and a whopping pause before the central episode for pizzicato string quartet. Why? Only Sir Simon knows for sure. The orchestra’s playing here also left much to be desired: the horns made a terrifying mess of their big climax, and in the coda the trumpets blasted in four bars early, then naturally missed their proper entrance when it arrived. It was a shocking lapse. The famous Adagietto began very quickly, and continued very slowly, with no particular reason why it should have been either from point to point. Rattle’s rhythmic distortions, sudden drops to an exaggerated pianissimo, and other improvisatory irrelevancies made it impossible for the strings to play with anything like their fabled richness of tone. The final climax sounded particularly anemic.

As for the finale, after a fussy introduction it began well and continued for most of its length at a lively tempo, bustling with good-humored energy. There was only one spurious super-pianissimo passage that drew unnecessary attention to itself before Rattle pulled out the last weapon in his meager interpretive arsenal: the old “slow down to bring out odd details in the bass line” trick. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, except that the lead-up to the final peroration, when the music simply must move inexorably forward, isn’t the time to do it. Then Rattle rushed right through the climax as if he couldn’t wait to get the whole thing over with, and judging from the tepid response of the brass section, neither could they. In short, this was a performance in which Rattle’s points of emphasis and Mahler’s seldom agreed, and its oddly distributed tensions made themselves felt in playing that, while certainly professional, lacked intensity, conviction, and the range of color and dynamics that the score asks for.

On the other hand, the music of the first half, H.K. Gruber’s Frankenstein!, showed Rattle as the persuasive advocate of contemporary composers that he so often is. The work comes off as a sort of “Pee Wee Herman Meets Pierrot Lunaire”: a partially sung, partially spoken series of decadent, mildly gross parodies of children’s poetry. It works best when it’s funny, as it often is, and the musical setting (which includes children’s toy instruments) has just the right false simplicity and excessively bright, cheery color. Unfortunately, the composer himself rendered the text doing his imitation of Stephen King’s IT, the child-devouring clown with fangs, with the result that many of the words got mangled in the process. The intention, doubtless, was to emphasize the work’s grotesquerie (something that hardly needed exaggerating), as well as what the notes hopefully suggested was its political subtext. Yeah, right. It was a diverting entertainment, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

David Hurwitz

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