The more broadcast recordings of Horenstein’s Mahler that come to light, the more obvious it becomes that the technical challenges that some of this music poses were simply beyond Horenstein’s skills as a conductor. Had he died leaving us only with his Unicorn Mahler First, and (arguably) the Third and Fourth symphonies, his reputation as a competent, occasionally inspired exponent of the music would remain largely unquestioned. His mediocre mono First and Ninth, as well as that disastrous Stockholm Sixth, might be blamed on the lousy orchestras. But we also have his appalling live Seventh, his stiffly conducted (if very well sung) Das Lied von der Erde, a mess of an Eighth, and no less than two other recordings of the Ninth, the best of which (the one issued by Music and Arts) features very powerful outer movements but suffers from unpleasantly cloudy sonics and still has enough orchestral clunkers to make us wish for something better. Is this latest effort, emanating from a September 15, 1966 proms concert, which comes to us in very serviceable stereo sound, that elusive “something better”? Alas, no.
Horenstein always led a fine first movement, and this one rises to a magnificent climax with none of the reticence in executing tempo changes that so often besets his work. Indeed, the entire passage leading to the music’s tragic collapse is so well done (including a spectacular tam-tam crash and very impressive low brass), that you wonder why the “passionate” [Mahler’s marking] string interlude at measure 210 sounds so inhibited and completely lacking in that quality, or why Horenstein ignores Mahler’s direction earlier, at measure 129, for the cellos to play their wistfully wandering solo line “suddenly very moderately and holding back”. And that’s the trouble throughout this performance: moments that come together magnificently alternate with passages so dismissive of the clear sense of the music as to seem almost the work of a different conductor.
For example, the second movement goes well. Not great, perhaps, but good, and full of character. Horenstein clearly distinguishes the three principal tempos as directed, and if before the last wild waltz episode he gets back to Tempo II in the space of two bars, where Mahler asks for a gradual return over no less than 18, well, it’s better than never getting there at all. He also adds two gratuitous Luftpausen, one at measure 76, the other at the return of the principal theme after the big climax. Neither tell us anything new or significant about the music or evidence some unwritten convention of an idiomatic Mahlerian style, but there they are, “personal touches” for whatever they’re worth. One annoying point about the otherwise decent sound also becomes glaringly obvious here: someone is manipulating the cellos and basses in the right channel. They tend to leap out of the speaker with truly crude obviousness whenever they have big solo passages, and then vanish alarmingly. You can just imagine what this does to balances in the symphony’s string-fest of a finale.
The Rondo:Burleske is a catastrophe. Starting with a flatulent trumpet and soggy strings, it proceeds from disaster to disaster. The first occurs at measure 186 (after the first loud cymbal crash), where horns and trumpets get out of sync. Next, a few seconds later at measure 198, the trumpets have disappeared entirely and the horns and lower strings can’t agree on when to play. And then there’s the timpanist. First, he misses his sforzando roll at measure 438 (beneath that wonderful chord on muted brass that introduces the first harp glissando). Then, just before the final stretto he comes in two bars early in his crucial solo, and also at his next three (!) entrances, only saving himself in time for the last few measures. And all of this takes place in the context of some very shaky ensemble (strings especially), at a plodding tempo that makes Mahler’s counterpoint sound not just disjointed but at times totally disconnected. So the outer sections move too slowly while the middle interlude, with no “holding back” as Mahler demands, comes across as too fast and sadly neutral in expression, contrast, and point.
Blame the orchestra? No way. This is totally Horenstein’s fault. Sure, live performances often suffer from the occasional flubbed note or missed cue. But when, as here, you encounter recurring episodes of major sectional disarray, or hideously obvious mistakes in counting that go uncorrected for entrance after entrance, then responsibility lies solely with the conductor. Thus, when we come to the finale, it’s no big deal in the grand scheme of things that the horn player flubs his solo entrance at measure 50, but it really matters that Horenstein won’t or can’t make the strings (and the winds too, in their mysterious interludes) observe their dynamic markings time and time again, failing to maintain intensity and volume when their melodic lines descend, missing those innumerable urgent crescendos over just one or two beats that give the music so much of its sense of forward movement and purpose. True, his earlier recording on M&A lacked these very same elements, flaws masked to some degree (I now realize) by the limited dynamic range and dull sonics. Horenstein’s pacing (a bit more than 25 minutes) and firm sense of structure in this finale can’t be faulted, making his failure to adequately color in the picture all the more frustrating.
So where does this leave us? It’s only natural to want to give Horenstein the benefit of the doubt and say that his conception succeeds despite the imperfections. But that’s evading the point in several respects, one of which is the matter of the significance and extent of those imperfections, and the most important of which is the fact that the conductor’s main task entails much more than coming up with some purely mental vision of the piece at hand. Anyone at all familiar with the music through reading the score or listening to recordings can and will do that. No, the conductor’s principal task lies in communicating his view to the players, bending them to his will, and achieving first class results both interpretively and technically, and these two qualities cannot be viewed independently. We will never know, for example, if Horenstein’s “conception” of the Ninth’s third movement would have been as ineffectual as it now appears had he been able to conduct it with more confidence (not to mention competence).
The majority of Horenstein’s Mahler performances exhibit, to a greater or lesser degree, a real rift between what the music requires and what he’s able to do to fulfill the mission. Not surprisingly, this gap narrows under controlled studio conditions. In a live context, however, it often yawns wider than the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, while we may guess at exactly what Horenstein’s ultimate vision of Mahler’s Ninth may have been, we must live with what he actually achieved in performance. In the final analysis this Ninth diminishes, rather than enhances, Horenstein’s reputation as a Mahlerian. The same holds true for the Kindertotenlieder, in which a (ridiculously) forwardly balanced Janet Baker can’t redeem the reckless excess of bad playing and stodgy conducting captured in dim, boxy sound. I wonder if BBC Legends ever considered this fact when selecting these performances for issue, or whether Horenstein’s fans understand that ultimately it is their idol who will pay the price for their indiscriminate clamoring for ever more new releases, whatever the source, quality be damned.
