Das Lied von der Erde; Rückert-Lieder by Mahler; Kollo; Berlin PO; Karajan; Das Lied von derErde by Mahler; Baker; King; Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orch; HaitinkReview by: Richard EvidonThe Musical Times, Vol. 118, No. 1611 (May, 1977), p. 401Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/959024 .

Accessed: 22/12/2014 03:47

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Musical Times Publications Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheMusical Times.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Mon, 22 Dec 2014 03:47:03 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

its own effect; '0O generous love' is vastly preferable in the spring of its rhythms to the beknighted manner we may be used to but which was never Elgar's. Yet the overall effect is lightweight, most noticeably at the start of Part 2, where the un- earthly calm is missed, and in the Angel of the Agony's pleas, with Benjamin Luxon's masterful delivery needing more time for its full effect. Alfreda Hodgson gives a heartfelt performance as the angel, generous yet controlled, and both chorus and orchestra shine in a version that has all the vital virtues but hasn't quite penetrated the work's 'insidest inside'. ROBERT ANDERSON

MACDOWELL Sonata eroica op.50; Woodland Sketches op.51. Clive Lythgoe

PHILIPS 9500 095 (£3.50) This is an interesting and fine record; two contrasi- ed works from the height of MacDowell's career show his control and power in a large-scale form and his poetry and imagination in the smaller, more famous, characteristic pieces. This is all very good music, and Lythgoe and Philips are to be congrat- ulated and encouraged in making it available. The Sonata is idiomatic virtuoso writing in a pro- grammatic setting, after Liszt and Raff; it is sub- titled 'Flos Regum Arturis' and MacDowell pro- vided a detailed programme in a subsequent letter to a friend. It is a rich, intense work, with an especially impressive slow movement; the four movements are thematically linked. The ten Wood- land Sketches are more familiar and were once very popular-deservedly so, for they are characteristic pieces with character. The set contains much variety with some lively rhythms and even an Indian melody (no.5), and the piano is used both delicately and opulently. Lythgoe's impressive range of touch is a delight, with a beautiful pianis- simo, melting and sparkling by turns, and a positive but velvet forte. His climaxes, phrasing and sense of shape are most musical, and his liberal and liberally used rubato generally likewise. He gets to the heart of this music and convincingly articulates it. His performance of the most famous piece on the record is not to my taste; in Wild Rose the rubato is continuous, and there is not enough artlessness in Lythgoe's response to MacDowell's semplice marking. Still, MacDowell himself is said to have missed an important job because his playing was too romantic. ROBERT PASCALL

MAHLER Das Lied von der Erde; Ruckert- Lieder. Kollo/Berlin PO/Karajan

DGG 2707 082 (£7.18) MAHLER Das Lied von der Erde. Baker, King/

Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orch/Haitink PHILIPS 6500 831 (£3.50)

The first performance of Das Lied von der Erde was conducted by Bruno Walter in 1911; between the mid-1930s and 1960 he recorded it in Vienna twice and in New York. Against Walter's special identi- fication with the piece (and it grew steadily as he attained gracious old age) all other performances have had to be measured. These two from Karajan and Haitink (and Klemperer's) are probably the most distinctive and worthy supplements to Walter ort disc.

Haitink, of today's Mahler interpreters, has come to pace, phrase and wield the orchestral paint brush the most surely and instinctively. Here he makes sonorities and inner parts spring to fresh life, in

Philips's warm, transparent sonic environment. You do not really notice his tempos, but with Haitink, moderation in Mahler never means characterlessness; in fact, just the opposite. With Karajan, you do notice details. Solos sometimes sound spotlighted as if by cunning microphone or instrument shuffling; certain effects of remoteness sound as if assisted by an echo chamber. The results are often fascinating, even illuminating, though they could never be achieved in a concert. You also notice Karajan's tempos: Der Abschied takes about four minutes longer than Walter's slowest (New York) performance, but also acquires gradually, cumulatively, an unequalled breadth and creates, finally, the impression of time sus- pended.

Of the two tenors, Kollo, for Karajan, succeeds in combining amplitude with flexibility. He has a distinct approach to each of his three songs (under Solti's stiff direction, he attempted little differentia- tion), and in the last manages real poignancy and delicacy. If Patzak and Hafliger, for Walter, made more of individual words than Kollo, they were helped by close miking (electronics can be a big help to tenors against Mahler's unfair scoring: in this respect, performances in the studio have a real advantage over those in the hall). In the first song, there is rather too much of Mime in Kollo's timbre. King, for Haitink, on the other hand, sounds like Siegfried throughout, and succeeds best in the opening Trinklied for which a heroic quality is apt. Later, he tries to lighten up, and he reads the text more sensitively than he did in the neurotic Bern- stein performance; but heavy labour will not turn his prose into verse.

The alto, of course, has more, though not neces- sarily more taxing, music. At last we have Janet Baker's much-loved version of it on disc. It is such intimate music, and Baker expresses in it more fully than anyone else the isolation and withdrawal from worldliness in the poems of the closing song; while towards the end of Von der Schonheit, she points up the 'fairest maid's' smould- ering passion by elegantly tapering the phrases. Sometimes she lets line hold sway over diction- that consonantless moony sound floating in a clarinet heaven in the Abschied is actually a 'Silber- barke', though here it is hard to tell. Baker produces more than anyone else of the soft singing Mahler requested, though not without audible effort or loss of tonal variety below piano. Could this last fault lie deeper-in the sacrifice of feeling and spont- aneity in making a selfconsciously permanent statement? Ludwig, for Karajan, brings emotion nearer the surface, even when she smothers the line in plush tones (she is less involving in the Ruickert songs, and for these one should go to Baker with Barbirolli or Fischer-Dieskau with Bohm). Neither lady is a contralto-a few minutes listening to Kathleen Ferrier in Walter's second Viennese recording will make apparent what the other two lack in depth and richness. And the mezzo in Walter's New York recording, Mildred Miller, plain and dry of voice compared with any of her rivals, gives a performance more impassioned than Baker's or Ludwig's and more idiomatically de- claimed than Ferrier's. Indeed, with all the indiv- idual beauties and insights of Haitink and Karajan and their superb orchestras, it is in Walter's valedic- tory performance that 1 hear Mahler's voice most clearly. RICHARD EVIDON

Music Here is a new monthly music newspaper for Surrey; it is available (price 12p) from 37 Victoria Avenue, Surbiton, Surrey KT6 5DL.

401

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Mon, 22 Dec 2014 03:47:03 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions