Conductors like Roger Norrington have careers today for two reasons. First, as decades of demented post-War opera productions demonstrate, the German artistic world places a premium on directors (whether in the theater or on the podium) with a “concept”. It doesn’t matter how stupid or destructive to the work this concept is, as long as it’s consistently applied and (theoretically) provocative. I don’t mean this necessarily as adverse criticism: sometimes the results can be brilliant, and given the premise you have to be prepared to take the wheat with the chaff. Think, for example, of Celibidache in Munich. The cultivation and encouragement of mad genius can be thrilling, when the madman truly is a genius. But when he is not, as here, something dire often results.
Which brings us to the second reason for the Norrington phenomenon: the current glut of performances, and performers, has debased the notion of “concept” to the point where it now often comes down to a desperate attempt to justify one’s own existence in a crowded field by doing anything to sound different. The concept no longer has its foundation in a radical rethinking of the work, but rather serves as a guarantor of job security and a justification for playing the same old thing for the zillionth time. This perfectly describes Norrington’s willy-nilly application of his theory that “permanent vibrato was unknown in orchestras of Mahler’s Vienna, as can be heard quite clearly from recordings of the 1920s and ’30s.” Oh, really? You can only wonder just how many of those recordings Norrington has heard, and (more importantly) if impartial listening birthed the concept or, as is far more likely, the conductor merely went digging for a historical peg on which to hang his interpretive hat.
His theory, in any case, is as fallacious as it is intellectually dishonest. As proof, Norrington cites the 1938 Walter Mahler Ninth. How curious that the string playing in that recording sounds so different from what Norrington achieves here. Or that Walter re-recorded the Ninth and, presto!, all that nasty vibrato is there. Indeed, if Norrington can stand up and lecture us on the correct Mahler style, why wouldn’t a Mahler crusader like Bruno Walter take pains to get it right? Norrington’s contention also assumes that one day after World War II the entire Vienna Philharmonic, many of whose players had been in the orchestra for decades, woke up and decided to apply vibrato with a trowel. And pace Vienna, we have two recordings of this very symphony by Mahler disciples with orchestras closely associated with the music (more so, in fact, than was Vienna), dating from the same period: Mengelberg’s Concertgebouw recording (1939) and Walter’s New York version (1946). And what do you know? Vibrato!
Then there is the score itself. By the sixth note of the violin’s entrance Mahler instructs “espressivo”, a quality virtually impossible to achieve without the intelligent application of vibrato. If it was not in general use, whence comes Mahler’s frequent (and fascinating) directive “ohne Ausdruck” (“without expression”), which orchestral string sections often produce by minimizing their natural intensity of vibrato? At figure 1, the counterstatement of the first theme, Mahler has the violins playing the tune normally in canon with the cellos, pianissimo and “ohne Ausdruck”. All of these timbral distinctions (and more) are lost in this performance. As you might expect, the Adagio suffers the most, with the high violins sounding both perilously thin and even sometimes out of tune, an impression exaggerated by Norrington’s choppy phrasing and generous indulgence in portamento effects. It’s a truly weird instance of following the letter of the score selectively, while totally missing its spirit.
In this same movement, Mahler actually indicates at one point the kind of vibrato he wants: “vibrando”, he tells the second violins, violas, and cellos at the passionate (Mahler’s word) climax at figure 8. Okay, so much for that. Norrington comes up wanting in other areas too. His tempos for the most part are fresh and swift (a good thing), but also distractingly erratic. The scherzo has gear-shifts so clumsy getting into and out of its trio sections, and a coda so mercilessly rushed, that it would make Mengelberg blush. In the Adagio Mahler’s “Allegretto grazioso, more flowing, very flowing” directives in one of the central variations are taken as license to make a crude accelerando from moderately slow to absurdly fast. It’s fascinating to compare this lumpish performance of the movement to Klemperer’s, which is quicker still (18 minutes versus nearly 20 for Norrington), but that catches the sense of the music so much more effectively.
It’s a pity really, because there’s a lot of talent and effort going into this performance. The woodwind playing is outstanding and gets welcome prominence, though entrances sometimes happen fractionally early (first-movement development section), and Norrington seems unable to keep his players from rushing the basic tempo. Curiously, when solo strings play (in the Scherzo and elsewhere), they sound normal, another fact that subverts Norrington’s anti-vibrato crusade. Anu Komsi is an appealing if somewhat breathless soloist in the finale, which is the best movement because the strings have so little to do, comparatively speaking. Much of the performance is very exciting: the climax of the first movement is explosive, with a mighty whack of the frequently inaudible tam-tam. But important as such effects are to Mahler, they can’t compensate for the gratuitous nonsense elsewhere.
In sum, Norrington’s “concept” fails to cast a particularly interesting or vital light on any single aspect of the work, and his personal predilections have no basis, contrary to his facile and sweeping statements on the subject, in any sort of historical reality. He is in the enviable position of being able to indulge his quirky little fantasy without anyone telling him just how silly, inartistic, and just plain ugly-sounding much of it is. Happily, or sadly–depending on your perspective–we live at a time of such extreme saturation when it comes to the basic repertoire that none of it matters very much. But it is still a sorry waste of a fine orchestra, millions of German taxpayer Euros, a respectable label, and most of all, the listener’s time.
