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That's pretty amazing. Right after Rattle's inaugural concert with the BPO, in which he used an extensively revised version of M5, I asked how well we can really trust our musical scores. How much errosion takes place over time? I think this discovery highlights the point. How can we ever be totally sure which version of M1 is correct?Having said all of that, Mahler himself was all in favour of conuctors messing with his orchestration, provided they had legitimate reasons for doing so. So long as his music sounded good and communicated his ideas, he was pretty happy.
Mahler sure did approve of wide interpretive licence in performing his music - or anyone else's. That was the style of his day, and he "messed" (as you so astutely put it) with his own scores in actual performance to a degree that would cause today's ultra-purtitanical audiences (and conductors) to suffer immediate and massive coronaries.
There are some conductors (and audiences) I'd gladly see suffering massive coronaries. However, I don't advocate whimsical alteration of music, especially Mahler's, whose encouragement of alterations in his own music was probably a result of his long-standing self doubt.Isn't it revealing that some of his finest orchestration occurs in works (the 9th and Das Lied) he neither heard nor revised?
Self doubt has nothing to do with it. Get yourself to a good reference library and research actual performance practices of the 19th century. Conductors back then would practically re-write a score, putiing in and taking out gazillions of things. To prissy, puritanical modern ears, they "hauled" and "mauled" the music at will.Such was Mahler's own style. You may find a direct - and I mean mind-meld direct - input into what conducting was like back then if you can get access to the anottated Brahms symphonies of Bulow. or some analysis thereof (as I've seen). What he did to the music would horrify you. I mean it - horrify.
It would send most of today's bland, Norrington-fed listeners into convulsive electo-shock. And, remember, the scores are just half the story. What the conductor would've done live would go even further.
For the best glimpse of the way music was played when Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, etc., were alive (and it's just a glimpse), listen to Mengleberg.
As for Mahler's abilities in orchestration, the thread below with a link to the young Mahler's (early 1st version of Sym #1) leaves no doubt to his god-like abilities in this regard. By the 9th, he had the power to express himself in the media down cold. Still, I agree that it's impressive nonetheless. A genius.
Arturo Toscanini is generally credited with founding the "back to the score" or high-fidelity approach to conducting. Unfortunately the literalists who came later lacked the Maestro's talent.A friend of mine who died recently heard Toscanini/NBC on their 1950 cross-country tour, in Seattle. He never forgot the brilliance and power of the music, and the sheer impact of the Maestro's unapproachable conducting style.
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