BBC PO/Noseda M6 concert 10 May

[akiralx]

Just booked tickets for next month's performance of M6 with the BBC PO under Gianandrea Noseda in Manchester, UK - looking forward to this, I'm sure it will be pretty vigorous like their M2 I heard last year, a few bloopers didn't mar it. 

But the best performance I heard in the Bridgewater Hall was the Hallé/Elder M3, that was superb, recorded by the BBC - they should release it.

[barry guerrero]

I really like their Chandos recording of Mahler 10 - very much so, in fact. I just wish that Noseda had tried one of the more adventurous performing editions instead of Cooke III.

Noseda's Chandos recording of Prokofiev's "The Stone Flower" is terrific.

Barry

[akiralx]

This M6 on Saturday was very intense, played with the Scherzo second - perhaps to accommodate Noseda's idea of only having a 2 sec gap between i and ii.  Many folk who didn't know the work would hardly know another movement had started... 

One criticism I would make is that the woodwind barely played below mf throught, though that may have been caused by our seats being only 5 rows from the front.  The sound was occasionally rather shrill though. 

Overall very well played, but rather glacial - whatever warmth there is in this work was totally expunged by Noseda.  It confirmed what I suspected, that of all Mahler's instrumental symphonies, this is my least favourite.

In fact the highlight of the day in Manchester was my buying a Leica M8 digital camera...

[barry guerrero]

I've often thought that one solution might be to make the last note of the first movement, also be the first note of the scherzo - linking the two without any break. If nothing else, that would be interesting from a purely rhythmic standpoint, because the first note of the scherzo begins on beat three - in 3/8 time - and not on beat one. Linking the two movements would draw attention to the fact that everything is a bit off-kilter at the start of the scherzo. It would also keep everybody from playing the scherzo too slow, assuming that's it's desirable to have the start of the scherzo be the same tempo as the end of the first movement.

Just from what you describe, I think that Noseda's M6 might have been very much to my liking. I seem to be the only person on the planet who feels that Noseda's M10 is really good. I just wish his hadn't been in the standard Cooke version; or, that Noseda might have had the gumption to augment and alter the percussion parts, here and there.

If Noseda's M6 is going to get broadcast on the web at some point, I'd like to know about that.

Barry

[Polarius T]

This is a bit shooting from the hip withough picking the right time and place, but why should we have a M10 to begin with? Isn't there something irrespectful and even morbid in the efforts to scavenge the remains and reconstitute the remnants in an image we think is but a fair enough of a look-alike? One might easily see the ambition as something grotesque and self-serving and the outcome as entertainment only.

As I recall this was also the attitude of those nearest to him: Walter, Klemperer, maybe Mengelberg, and many of the more serious Mahler conductors of our time (Boulez and Abbado for example). Most of them wouldn't even perform the Adagio as a standalone work.

PT

[barry guerrero]

Polarius,

I respond to the very same attitude that Deryck Cooke himself took. Primarily, the material itself is too interesting not to root around in. More the point, the 10th really isn't an attempt to do the 9th all over again. Mahler truly - at the expense of sounding hackneyed and cliche' - "comes back to life" much more in the 10th. It goes along the same lines as what De La Grange is attempting to point out in his Vol. IV. It's my guess that De La Grange is probably very much in favor of trying to move forward on the M10 question.

Cooke posed this question to critics, which I think is a truly valid one: Could you know what the 5th symphony would be like, if you only had the first movement and middle movement scherzo to work with? (the first movement and "Purgatorio" are truly complete on M10)

There's no question that the 10th is a flawed work in any of its performing versions. I, myself, am particularly frustrated with the first scherzo (second movement). But much of the material is truly original and interesting. In my opinion, those who are opposed to performances of any of the "performing versions", shouldn't dictate to others as to whether they should hear them or not. It should be a purely personal choice. I choose to forge ahead - in terms of orchestration, I think it can be made to sound far more idiomatic of late Mahler (2nd, 4th, and 5th movements).

Barry

[John Kim]

Hi Barry,

When are we going to hear Hurwitz/Guerrero version of M10th symphony?

John,

[barry guerrero]

John, don't go there. Dave and I live on opposite coasts these days. I work seven days per week, and am having to spend more and more spare time with my family (parents and cousins). There's simply no time to do the work required. David has a professional career, outside of Classicstoday, and also has family to attend to. Someday we'll do it; when we both have time and money. If not, just imagine it in your head   

[John Kim]

But I imagine only a revised M9th in my head

John,

[mister bob]

I haven't logged on for a few days so I've missed this thread.  I too was at the concert last Saturday, but enjoyed it a lot more than akilrax did.  I concur with his view of the reading; it was indeed unrelenting, and I had something of a rung-out dishcloth feeling at the end of it.  But I think that this is a perfectly valid interpretation of the work - I think that Mahler wants us to stare into the abyss.  [This is my main reason for preferring the andante second in fact; the returning themes of the scherzo take us right back where started, just as we had started to almost get comfortable...]

The few seconds that separated i] from ii] last Saturday was a real surprise, they almost ran into one movement, and my feeble attempt to record timings fell apart at this point.  Yes, it was a performance which laid on the despair, and also the irony very thickly, but there was real terror at times in the brass and strings, and I found the pacing of the first movement to be very telling, it built up gradually and carefully, the climaxes coming over as sharp and biting.  What it did lack for me, was some mystery.  The quieter passages did lack subtlety, and the cowbells failed to add the air of other-worldliness that the best performances/recordings all contain.  [The new Gergiev excels in this area I would claim.]  For the record - I thought of you at this point Barry! - there were three sets of cowbells at the back, going from behind the clarinets to behind the harps.

On the whole I would say that I mostly enjoyed this as a spectacle, and a cathartic experience.  Noseda threw himself body and soul into the symphony - marching in quasi-military style, and leaving the floor with both feet on numerous occasions - and I felt I shared whatever dark night of the soul that Mahler went through in composing it.  As a reading it did lack subtlety and finesse, but what it set out to do it did very well - I didn't expect to leave the Bridgewater Hall skipping.  If they record it I will gladly buy it, but will probably avoid listening to it after a bad day at work...