I'll listen to it again. I'm of the opinion that the opening is often times performed too swiftly for what's written. If it sounds 'dead', then it's most likely a problem with rhythms not being incisive enough, and/or textures not being made clear enough. If you look at the third and fourth beats in the first measure of the score, the middle strings play repeated thirty-second notes (sometimes played as a tremolo - wrongly in my book). They should be made clear and distinct. Also, if you follow the tenor horn (usually played on Euhponium) and trumpet parts, there are clear distinctions between when they play their fast notes as thirty-second notes, and when they play them as sixteenth notes. The tempo needs to be slow enough to make those differences discernable (the thirty-seconds should sound twice as fast as the sixteenths). In spite of their great reputations as Mahler conductors, Abbado, Bernstein and Solti all play the opening too fast to make the differences in the rhythms discernable. I definitely remember thinking that Nott's Tenor Horn player could have played his part in a more rhythmic manner, and be less concerned about sounding 'melodic' in a smooth sort of way. Orchestral musicians ALWAYS have a tendency to want to make their parts sound 'pretty' because they think that that's what the conductor and audiences ALWAYS want. It's up to the conductor to tell the player not to 'pretty-fy' their part and concentrate on sharp rhythms instead. I feel that Boulez has done a real good job of 'objectifying' Mahler's opening to the symphony.
If you know much about the basic mechanics of conducting, I would conduct that opening with a subdivided four-beat pattern, so that you're essentially showing eight quicker beats.
There's another minor element as well: the trombones have a crescendo marking where they play their sustained long notes (two beats length). This is a problem of taking Mahler's marking too literally. By that, I mean that those two crescendos do need to be exaggerated a bit to have any real effect. If you play the dynamic marking too literally, the crescendo sounds underplayed and just ends up sort of 'clogging' your aural memory. Segerstam was real good about bringing out those two trombone crescendos.
As a further comment, I would not put too much stock in the 'rowing on the lake' business. Mahler said that the idea for the opening came to him while rowing across the lake. That doesn't mean that he was wanting to imitate the sound or feel of rowing. As always, there's some difference between what was 'subjectively' said at some point, and what's actually on paper in the score.
* Ahhh, now I remember one thing that did bug me about Nott's opening. At the spot where Mahler writes "less breit" ("breit" being the German word for "broad" or broadly), Nott kept the tempo quite slow there. Wait a minute . . . I might be confusing Nott with when I just recently re-listened to the Levi/Atlanta M7 at work. The point is this: there are some indicated tempo fluctuations before we reach the Allegro proper. It's up to the conductor to navigate those fluctuations in a way that's not contrary to what Mahler indicates (in my opinion, the composer got it right in about 95% of all cases). Again, for my taste, Boulez gets the opening about as correct as anybody. In fact, I like his somewhat slower approach to the whole first movement, but find him largely too fast in the two Nachtumusik movements (especially in proportion to eveything else). Cleveland plays superbly though.
Topic: quick thoughts on Jonathan Nott's M7 recording. (Read 9250 times)