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62.108.1.71

I'm repeating something earlier written at this forum, perhaps you can do something with it, because either you don't understand Mahler ( who does?) or you didn't watch very well.

Mahler liked special effects avant la lettre, trumpet 'Aus dem Ferne' which is outside of the hall, but Masure makes it three of them, which I don't understand the the Frere Jacques start of the third movement should be played on a solo double bass and the link with 'Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen is quite obvious.

Rob

About the Hungarian music, you're quite right. The third movement was called the 'Funeral of the Hunter' and it was to provoke the extreme outburst of pain in the first measure of
the final. Nobody understood why he put that gypsy street-orchestra in the third movement, but Mahler only wanted to be seriously funny and a critic therefore renamed it in
'Sinfonia Ironica', because of the contrast between lyricism and the plebeian streetmusic which was rather provocative in those days when Richard Strauss wrote tonepoems,
Bruckner massive symphonies, etc. It was shocking and haunted him his whole career, even his pupil and advocatee Schonberg never really liked it.

When the symphony opens, rather Beethoven 9-like, the sun rises and light comes through the leafs and you should imagine a hunter in a forest, hearing birds beginning to sing, in
short a new dawn. Of course you also hear the hunting horns, like Siegfried's horn-call in Wagner's Ring and far away are military fanfares playing and together with the final and
the second movement the third can be seen as funny intended. It's still a miracle or an enigma how he possibly could have written that movement in that period of time, and though
I don't like it very much, hearing those 'cuckoos' etc, it's quite effective, even more in a symphony-hall where the movement is opened by only one lyrical double-bass which was
also new to me. In the last movement all trumpets should stand up with their cups up and his little tricks with colouring, like the first trumpet 'aus dem Ferne', which in the
Concertgebouw means outside the hall with only one door opened to give you the impression it's a hunter or something far away in the forest.

That's the strange thing about Mahler, he thought about every musical detail, always writing hints in the borders of the score and he wrote that peasant kind of music and that's
what attracts me to him, that contrast between heavenly and being a people's man, putting lots of folk-music (He was a born Bohemian, former Austria-Hungary), natural and
environmental motives (Naturlaut) and cow-bells into his music and other things that make you laugh while you a couple of minutes before that heard yourself climbing enormous
mountains, walking through a forest along streams of squibbling water while the birds whistle and you almost get religious because he makes you see things you never saw before.
And than that platitude part where that cuckoo from the first part comes back and it's played rather annoyingly to say the least, but it's a forecast to the other symphonies,
because it already contains everything what makes Mahler a unique composer.

You should know the first movement is more or less stolen from the songcycle 'Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen' and when you'll get acquainted with it you'll sing inside your
head while you've got the symphony spinning in the cdp: 'Ging heut' Morgen ubers Feld, Tau noch auf dem Grasern hing. Sprach zu mir der lust'ge Fink' and that's what should be
coming from the speakers, the whole movement asks or demands you to answer whether the world isn't a wonderful place and again, having said 'Yes, mister Mahler, it is....' a
third part will follow later:-)

Hope I didn't make myself clear, as usual with Mahler's music. I understand it, but I'll never get a hold on it.......




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