Leon Botstein, champion of the unusual, turns in a fine performance of Bruno Walter’s grandiose, hour-long symphony. Listeners may well be curious about the degree to which the music sounds like Mahler, who was unenthusiastic about the work when Walter played it to him in 1907. The answer is “not much”, save perhaps for a certain fondness for atmospheric use of the bass drum. Stylistically, you might call the piece “proto-Berg”, with its murky chromatic harmony and exciting if overloaded climaxes.
Indeed, what Mahler probably found disturbing about the piece is its lack of clarity, both in terms of theme and structure. Timing also is an issue: to follow a 19-minute moderato opening with a 17-minute adagio simply confounds logic. That Bruckner got away with it in his Seventh Symphony is the exception that proves the rule. The last two movements, a demented waltz of a scherzo and a more thematically interesting Agitato finale, offer some compensation, even if they still come across as somewhat unmotivated, expressively speaking.
But what most listeners will find particularly interesting is that fact that Walter, who cultivated an image (and was seen) later in his life as the sweetest, gentlest of men, wrote music of such raw, expressionist intensity. There’s no questioning his sincerity, but it’s equally easy to understand why he never wished to emphasize his career as a composer. It’s hard to square the great Mozart and Brahms conductor with the edgy, impulsive, if somewhat disorganized composer on display here. Nor, interestingly, did he come to champion the other Viennese composers whose music most resembles his own. So for all of its defects, this music sheds fascinating light on the character of a major 20th-century artistic voice. Fans of the Viennese School of the early 1900s likely will find it irresistible.
