Gustav Mahler (1860 - 1911) Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor Symphonie cis-moll – en ut dièse mineur Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra Conducted by Hartmut Haenchen PTC 5186 004 DSD recorded

 

 

A SYMPHONY OF SUBTLE FORM
Bernard Jacobson

Mahler’s symphonic output is in one sense much smaller than, say, Mozart’s: 11works (including Das Lied von der Erde and the unfinished Tenth Symphony), compared with about 50. But if you multiply those numbers by the respective durations of the two men’s works, the result is two roughly equal figures, and if the size of Mahler’s orchestral forces and the complexity of his textures are taken into account, it can be seen that in purely quantitative terms there is a lot more symphony here. – The Fifth Symphony is a characteristic though not extreme example of Mahler’s symphonic scale, and the formidable group of tempo and expression markings that heads the movements is typically Mahlerian in its mixture of German and Italian terms. The list suggests, moreover, an overall structure very different from that of earlier symphonies. Here the divisions are laid out according to two distinct lines of demarcation: there are five movements, yet three parts.

The central scherzo ("Powerful, not too fast") stands alone. The outer segments comprise two movements each, slow followed by fast in both cases. In Part I a solemn funeral march ("With measured tread; rigorous, like a cortege") leads into a strident quick movement ("Stormily agitated; with the greatest vehemence"). Part III correspondingly links an exquisite Adagietto, or "little Adagio" (marked "Very slow"), for strings and harp with a cheerfully energetic rondo. – In one sense this scheme can be regarded as a gigantic expansion of a regular three-movement structure, with each of the outer quick movements preceded by a slow introduction. That formulation has its validity, and it is useful insofar as it underlines the new trend exemplified by this first of Mahler’s middle-period symphonies: the trend toward concentration rather than expansion. Its three immediate predecessors had all, in one way or another, modified the four-movement pattern of the First Symphony’s final version.

The addition of voices in one or more of their movements had introduced an unconventional though not unprecedented element into the symphonic fabric. Now, with the Fifth Symphony, completed in 1902 when he was 42 and first performed two years later, Mahler moved toward a more classical clarity of structure. In this and the next two symphonies he used a purely orchestral apparatus, though one that was still vastly bigger than that of Beethoven, Brahms, or even Bruckner. – But then, even to say that the outer sequences of movements are "slow followed by fast in both cases" is to oversimplify the extraordinarily subtle form of the Fifth Symphony. It is more or less true of Part III, but only sketchily so of Part I.

For what Mahler actually does in this remarkable pair of movements is to break down, gradually and inexorably, the distinction between slow and fast material. Thus the first is a slow movement that is constantly striving to move ahead, and the second a fast movement whose urgency is constantly being brought under restraint. It is a technique of interpenetration that Mahler had already tried in the Fourth Symphony (particularly in the variations of the third movement); and quite apart from the profound effect it was to have on his own later work, it has also influenced the whole direction of 20th-century symphonic thought. Among many possible examples, the music of such later symphonists as Allan Petterson, Andrzej Panufnik, and Wilfred Josephs in Europe, or Roger Sessions, William Schuman, and Richard Wernick in America, amply bears this out. – The essential unity of the two movements in Part I is furthered by strong and pervasive thematic links. The suggestion of an exultant chorale just before the end of the second movement derives from a tiny upward-aspiring motif, gradually evolved in the course of the first as a countermelody to its main funeral-march material. – These links, indeed, reach out beyond Part I.

The embryonic chorale will be found interwoven, in the symphony’s finale, with a protean fantasy on the themes prefigured in the Adagietto. This same chorale provides not only the melodic shape of the perky tunes that begin the finale but also, in a grandly expanded version, the peroration that gathers all the threads together at the very end. – In this progression the scherzo is no mere side-issue. Its tumultuous life affirmation is the pivot on which the whole work turns. Try to imagine the effect the Adagietto would have if it followed directly on the bleak, hollow ending of Part I, and you will immediately see the crucial role the scherzo plays. It seizes on the triumphal ecstasy of the snatch of chorale heard a moment earlier, and establishes it as a viable, steady world-view instead of a piercing but transient vision. And it does so, by no means incidentally, with themes – like the one completed in the first few measures by the obbligato first horn – that are themselves forged from the same material as the chorale and its companion themes in the outer movements. –

As he told Sibelius at the two men’s famous meeting, Mahler thought the symphony as a medium should be all-inclusive like the world. But his unflagging endeavour, torn as he was by spiritual and consciously racial conflicts of schizophrenic magnitude, was to reduce the teeming contrasts of that world to some kind of order.

The force behind a Mahler symphony is centrifugal and centripetal at the same time. It is a force driving in equal measure toward expansion and toward concentration. In the present case, the chorale theme – and the tonality of D major to which it eventually conducts the symphony after its C sharp minor opening – can be seen as the focus of the whole multifarious plan. When you come to the end, you realise that the centre was there all the time, however shadowily at the outset. And this, no matter how cavalier a composer’s attitude to traditional patterns may be, is the underlying unity that has always been the point of symphonic form.

© 1991Bernard Jacobson

“Very nice dynamics, and a lovely variation in tempo that never drags or goes too fast. I can confidently recommend this disc”
--vonwegen, SA-CD.net

“Recorded live in Amsterdam's famed Concertgebouw, the sound is not overly reverberant, but nicely balanced. Played at realistic volume levels, climaxes have shattering power, while quiet passages sound clear and focussed….You hear lots of detail because the sound is so open and transparent. .. A very good performance, superbly recorded.”
---Classical and Audiophile Music Review Archive
( issue 25)

“Haenchen produces an unprecedented robust fierce and vehement Fifth, in many places overwhelmingly intensified”
---Kasper Jansen, NRC Handelsblad (August 2002)