Search - Mahler, Miller, Walter :: Walter Rehearses & Performs Mahler Symphony 9

Walter Never Falters

Will Miller | Ann Arbor, Michigan | 06/27/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In a world seemingly saturated with young, angry Mahler conductors; and dark, brooding Mahler interpreters; there has never been a better conductor of the music of Gustav Mahler than Bruno Walter. Why, Mahler himself would have no other conducter premeire his two greatest-and final-works: Das Leid von Der Erde, and this, his Ninth Symphony. We might get a fairly accurate account of his premeire performance by listening to his legendary (and newly reissued) recording with the Vienna Philharmonic, but we should never neglect to couple that recording with this one. The contrasts are phenomenal. Whereas he once conducted a work of hate and anger in the shadow of the Third Reich, he here conducts a work of refinement and poignancy. Walter conducts Mahler like Beethoven, and there is nothing in the world wrong with that. The tempos are remarkably slower than his Vienna interpertation, and not merely because he is eighty four. You see, he infuses the whole work with an almost weightless, ethereal quality. He pulls remarkable sounds out of an Orchestra that-if hardly virtuostic-seems to have been made for him; it was. He presents us with a piece not merely hinting at Schoenberg, but founded in Bach. It is silly to laud all the various independant attributes of this recording, because it needs to be taken as a whole. No sound clips or great solos would truely represent this most cohesive of interpretations. Of course, this Ninth should not stand alone in your library. There are other amazing Ninth's: von Karajan's live recording with the Berlin, Walter's Vienna reading, and-so I am assured-Bernstein did a pretty appealing version as well. But your library-if you appreciate the accomplishments of either Mahler or Walter-should in no way be without this transcendent reading. No less a historic document than the Vienna recording, as this is a tribute to two great men so eleqouent that only the music of Gustav Mahler could aptly articualte it."

An epic, intense Mahler 9, one of the best

John Grabowski | USA | 05/17/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This isn't always cited as one of the greatest Mahler 9ths out there, which surprises me. Walter has a reputation for smoothing Mahler over and minimizing the intensity, but this is one earth-shaking recording, with triple fortissimos and pianissimos, and a heart-rending reading that contains all of Mahler's sadness, nostalgia and joy. My only (mild) complaint is I'd prefer a bit more of a raucous third movement, but that's probably because Bernstein is ringing in my ears. Two of the biggest moments, the first movement opening tutti and the shattering fourth movement climax (where the trombones of the Berlin Philharmonic famously held out on Bernstein) are brought off here with more power and conviction than I've ever heard before, and special mention goes to the orchestra's timpanist, whomever he was. I'm not sure how much attention should be paid to the fact that Walter was Mahler's understudy. Willem Mengelberg also learned Mahler's works "at his knee" so to speak (though not in the official capacity of student), yet his interpretations of Mahler, judging by what he's left us, are so different from Walter's as to bear no relation. I don't think it's a matter of Walter's relationship to Mahler; I think it's simply that Walter was a great conductor period, at least in the Germanic tradition, whether the composer was Mozart, Mahler, or Beethoven. Certainly this 9th is a testament to a great musical mind.The accompanying rehearsal commentary, while not up to the standard of Walter's rehearsals of Mozart and Beethoven Symphonies with the Columbia Symphony, is interesting nevertheless. Walter was a master at getting musicians to do what he wanted as they played, without having to stop after every twenty bars, and the players loved him for it. The radio interview is fascinating--Walter talking about his earliest experiences both in the recording studio and with his mentor Mahler. I have listened to this conversation countless times and still find it interesting.Sound is very good for the period. The presentation is fine, the price is right, and this recording stands up to Haitink, Barbirolli, Bernstein and Karajan. What are you waiting for?"

The true spirit of Mahler's Ninth

Paul Bubny | Maplewood, NJ United States | 07/25/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Having owned, at one time or another, about two dozen different recordings of Mahler's last completed symphony, I guess you'd say I've "heard it all," from Bernstein's tortured angst to Karajan's Olympian calm. But it's hard to imagine a greater contrast between two performances of the Ninth than Bruno Walter achieved. His 1938 world-premiere recording, cut live (on 78-rpm discs) in Vienna a few weeks before the Nazis took over, is as emotionally raw as his 1961 remake is serene and spiritual.But is "serene and spiritual" a valid interpretation of a dark, frequently dissonant work which concludes with the composer seemingly anticipating his own death? It is if you accept Walter's statement that the Mahler Ninth is filled with "a sanctified feeling of departure." This doesn't mean that Walter soft-pedals the music's implications--it's just that he doesn't wallow in them. The resigned despair that other conductors (notably Bernstein, especially in his Amsterdam Concertgebouw recording) emphasize as the "bottom line" of this symphony just doesn't square with the hope expressed by Mahler's brief quotation, in the finale, of a phrase from one of his "Kindertotenlieder," as the bereaved parent envisions his dead children transfigured in heaven. Mahler was a deeply spiritual man, and a bereaved parent himself by the time he composed the Ninth, so that quotation's implication of belief in an afterlife justifies the ray of affirmation Walter shines into the finale. By the way, his finale at 21 minutes is among the fastest on records (maybe a shade too brusque), and is too imbued with stoic nobility to wring our tear ducts. (Although that's not necessarily a good thing.) It's not the most doom-laden Mahler Ninth, or the most tearful, or the most dramatic, or even the most texturally transparent, and probably doesn't present the greatest contrast between the symphony's bitter and sweet aspects. It isn't the most immaculately played, either, although the hand-picked Columbia Symphony delivers what Walter was looking for. But it just may be the most faithful to the life-affirming spirit (yes, life-affirming--time to quit generalizing Mahler as an overwrought, death-obsessed Gloomy Gus) that animates the Ninth and Mahler's music as a whole. That said, it's a little perverse that the writer of the CD's liner notes disparages Walter's overall approach."