Rafael Kubelik seems to be enjoying a second career since his death, thanks to the flood of live and broadcast performances appearing on CD. He certainly deserves the attention. Though a quiet and self-effacing man throughout his life, he was gifted with a huge talent. Unlike so many other conductors whose live recordings do them scant justice, Kubelik in concert not only frequently offered interpretive insights different from his studio efforts, but he also secured results from his orchestras that withstand being taken out of their live, one-shot context. This Mahler Seventh is a case in point.
So far, we have three Kubelik recordings of the Seventh: his studio effort for DG, a live New York Philharmonic performance included in the orchestra’s Mahler box, and this new one, like the DG featuring the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Captured in a single take on February 5, 1976, the performance charts a middle course between the fleet perfection of the DG, and the stunning playing and improvisatory freedom of the New York concert. The quick tempos are still in place, but there’s a bit more risk-taking than before. The very opening, quicker than usual, demonstrates how (in contrast to Horenstein’s cloddish stiffness) it’s possible to wed a swift opening adagio to a moderately paced ensuing allegro while still doing justice to Mahler’s detailed markings. Listen to the intensity that accompanies the moment of recapitulation, or the excitement Kubelik whips up in the coda, and compare this to the dreary, enervated Horenstein (the live Mahler 7 du jour).
Time after time in this first movement, you hear something startling or new, only to discover that Kubelik is actually playing exactly what Mahler wrote. For example, in the quiet passage before the central “moonlit” episode, he takes the brass and wind fanfares noticeably more quickly than the chorale theme with which they alternate. Sure enough, that’s what the score tells him to do. Of course, this being live, not everything is perfect. There are some bobbles in the brass (one really bad tenor horn entrance), the trumpets crack in the usual places both here and in the finale, and the percussion (glockenspiel and cymbals) tends to get swamped. But there’s so much more that’s marvelous that it’s easy to forgive the occasional lapse, especially when the whole is so fundamentally technically secure (again unlike Horenstein), idiomatic, and purposeful.
In the first Nachtmusik, the horns play superbly, the winds are simply incredible (clarinets!), and the whole has just the right, phantasmagoric atmosphere. Kubelik’s DG version of the scherzo may just be the most perfect on disc, and while this one doesn’t have that laser-like clarity, it compensates by relaxing the tempo just a hair in order to let the players add a touch more grotesquerie to their sound. Nachtmusik II maintains the nervous edge that characterizes this entire performance while still revealing an abundance of stylized charm. It’s the sort of interpretive tightrope, relating this seeming oasis of sanity to the whole without jeopardizing its special atmosphere, that only a master conductor can walk successfully. The finale, played fast and crazy, with clanging cowbells, delightfully screeching winds, and no excessive holding back at the final peroration, sets the seal on as aptly loony and gripping a version of this music as you will ever hear. The live recording isn’t perfectly balanced, but aside from the muffled percussion the very forward woodwind sound suits the performance very well. A Mahlerian must.
