If someone set up a microphone and captured live a below-average subscription-concert performance of a difficult large work and then published the resultant recording as a disc premiere, what do you honestly think the chances are, several decades and dozens of recordings (many superb) of the same work later, that the result would still merit consideration as a top recommendation? This is exactly what we have here: a third-rate rendition that, wholly as a result of historical and political (i.e. non-musical) circumstances, has achieved undeserved significance. What were these non-musical circumstances? First, the presence of the Vienna Philharmonic and Bruno Walter, both connected to Mahler yet neither (the orchestra particularly, both then and now) an infallible guarantor of Mahlerian greatness in performance. Second, there’s the circumstance of this recording in January, 1938, just before the Anschluss and Walter’s effective expulsion from Austria, which, with the generous benefit of hindsight invests this slapdash, insensitive reading (at least for some) with “unique” tension and excitement. Third, there are the “seat-of-the-pants” circumstances of live recording, which theoretically excuse and even justify the lousy sound and countless moments of flawed execution.
Walter himself had no illusions as to the value of this performance. He wrote: “My last European performance of Mahler’s Ninth took place shortly before Hitler marched into Vienna. A gramophone recording was made during the actual concert and sent to me in Holland, where I was lucky enough to be engaged during that catastrophic period. But I was so concerned at that time about [my daughter] Lotte that I couldn’t devote the necessary attention to the test pressing, with the result that it turned out to be deeply unsatisfactory.” That says it all. “Deeply unsatisfactory” certainly describes the dreadful string playing in the first movement, where at one point (the lengthy contrapuntal interlude before the big climax) the players fly out of control, scarcely attempting to realize what Mahler wrote. “Deeply unsatisfactory” also characterizes the sloppy and rhythmically approximate Rondo:Burleske, the ludicrously rushed and therefore contrapuntally smeared and coagulated finale, and recorded sound in which vast swathes of Mahler’s preternaturally clear textures (especially bass lines) vanish entirely into the sonic murk.
Ideally this sorry relic of an unfortunate event, at least from a purely musical point of view, would best be forgotten, but because of the various considerations outlined above, it will cast its long shadow of mediocrity over this music for generations to come. And because it’s in the public domain, anyone can issue it. So to the question of whether or not this transfer improves on previous ones, the answer is, “No”. For the best sound, Dutton’s recent issue can’t be beat. It has more presence, clearer textures, a more open top, and greater dynamic range than this effort, which essentially replicates what we hear on EMI’s diffuse and muddy last reissue. Dutton’s budget-priced effort also costs no more than this Naxos edition, so if for some reason you want to hear this dismal but “historically significant” approximation of Mahler’s Ninth, Dutton remains the way to go.
