Hard to believe, but it’s been more than three decades since the fabled Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra took Mahler’s Second Symphony into the studio, and a lot has changed since Bernard Haitink’s superb 1968 recording, not all of it for the better. The orchestra still boasts spectacular winds, and the percussion section has acquired some new instruments to excellent effect. On the other hand, as recorded here, the brass section sounds distinctly timid and the strings in the second movement are often thin, though this may have something to do with Chailly’s interpretation as well.
At 23 minutes, Chailly’s view of the first movement resembles Bernstein’s, only with less contrast in terms of tempo and dynamics. There’s a lot here to like: the gruff tone of cellos and basses at the opening, the powerful sound of the massed woodwinds, and the way Chailly takes care to give fermatas and rests their full value. Like Haitink before him (and virtually no one else), he correctly times the “breath pauses” at the movement’s climax, noting that the trumpets and drums don’t have similar markings and therefore that the intention is not to stop the music but rather to allow these instruments solo prominence in pressing forward. And yet, the clashing brass chords that lead to the recapitulation have more sheer power than the actual moment when it finally arrives. The gorgeous string playing just before the creepy coda features generous use of portamento, but Chailly allows the ensuing death march to get too loud too quickly, even if the final pages have impressive gravity.
The second movement strikes me as almost a complete failure. The denatured sound of the strings (cellos in particular) allied to excessive sliding between notes creates a strangely dead, inexpressive impression (almost a caricature of the real Mahlerian idiom), while the agitated contrasting episodes lack just the unsettled quality that the music demands. On the other hand, the scherzo is marvelous, with brilliantly characterful clarinets, flutes, and bassoons to the fore, and all of the “special effects” (the boom chick-chick of bass drum and rute, col legno strings, “cry of despair” climax, and final stroke on the tam-tam) perfectly in place. You simply won’t hear it done better. In the fourth movement, I can admire Chailly’s scrupulous observance of Mahler’s dynamic markings, but surely the brass chorale at the opening should have more sheer weight of tone, however quietly it’s played! Happily, Petra Lang sings with a purity of intonation and diction that’s positively breathtaking, and whatever the shortcomings of the purely instrumental introduction, Chailly as accompanist offers her the perfect platform on which to operate.
The epic finale does not erupt without pause out of the preceding movement as the score asks, but the opening explosion as such is quite satisfying. Chailly takes the movement’s initial stages rather slowly, and after a magnificently sonorous brass chorale the glorious passage of fanfares surmounted by thrilling woodwind trills suffers from comparatively timid horns and trombones. Chailly also could have taken more time over the two solo percussion crescendos that follow, though the march episode that they introduce benefits from its moderate basic tempo. It also disintegrates with a satisfying crash. The next passage, with offstage trumpets and percussion, reveals one of the very few instances on disc that takes Mahler’s instructions literally for the distant instruments to move progressively closer, and the effect leading into the next huge climax is truly ear-opening. For Mahler specialists, this moment alone offers a good reason to hear this recording, as it truly vindicates the composer’s vision.
After a very atmospheric cadenza for flute, piccolo, brass, and timpani, with well-defined on-stage and off-stage perspectives, Chailly again takes Mahler’s dynamics very seriously indeed at the choral entrance. The hushed tone really does compel our attention, but Chailly’s treatment of the orchestral interludes between verses (despite taking careful notice of the score’s tempo indications) fails to communicate any sense of ecstasy. (Remember Abbado’s Chicago recording on DG, which had exactly the same problem?) The difficulty seems to stem from a stiffly metronomic beat allied to an artificially deep recording perspective that robs the sound of body at lower dynamic levels. You can hear this very clearly at the duet for the two soloists just before the final chorus, where Chailly misses the “Aufschwung” (impetus) that Mahler indicates, even as he follows the score’s other instructions quite literally and finally arrives at a good basic tempo for the big peroration (which comes off quite impressively until the singing stops and the horns sound as though they’re stationed at The Hague).
It’s difficult to tell how much of the blame for the comparative lack of impact of much of this performance stems from the recording, and how much from Chailly. I don’t think there’s much question that the engineers simply don’t give him a sound that supports what he’s trying to do interpretively. For example, as captured here, the orchestral textures wallow in an excess of reverberation that covers a great deal of detail: suspended cymbals in the first movement’s coda or after the scherzo’s climax; rapid figurations in the cellos and basses in the latter passage and at the beginning of the finale; the quiet dotted rhythms in timpani in the second movement; that very anemic brass chorale in the fourth movement; subdued tam-tams and bells at the symphony’s end. Deep bass has impressive presence, albeit at the cost of excessive tubbiness, while brass and percussion suffer from being placed too far to the rear of an obviously artificially deep sound stage. So despite much really fine playing, many a lovely (and in one case revelatory) passage, a fantastic mezzo soloist, and a serious if less than ideally dramatic interpretation, this performance fails to captivate and simply overwhelm in the way Mahler intended.
Oh, one more point: Chailly includes as filler a perfectly decent performance of Totenfeier. Let’s dispense with this quickly. Totenfeier (Funeral Rites) is simply the name Mahler gave to what is basically a rough draft for the first movement of the Second Symphony, the final version of which is so superior in every respect that there’s simply no reason for dragging out this early sketch and playing it as an independent work. Mahler never did, and just because a score is now available for all to see, that doesn’t mean there’s anything to be learned (other than in a purely academic sense) by tossing it into the pot here. I have no doubt that Mahler would be horrified at the very idea.
