Since I really don't have time to do the download, and since I'm not going to be purchasing the CDs, could you summarize his thoughts about the tempo for the descending run at the end of the first movement? Much appreciated.
Being a musical ignoramus I'm not in the best position to respond in any great depth Barry. The talk is broken up into tracks and the one discussing the end of the first movement is Track 08 (12:52).
Zander first plays three examples to illustrate how differently conductors have taken the descent:
Klemperer 1960 - very rapid
Rattle 2011 - very slow
Tilson Thomas 2004 - in between (Just right?
)
He then goes on to look at metronome markings for the opening (144), and for the funeral march section (84-92) which he states that virtually no conductor follows except for Oscar Fried in 1924. Most conductors apparently settle for something much slower, illustrated by Bernstein (63) and Barbirolli (76). Zander states that he has usually settled for 72-76 in his performances. He recorded M2 with the Philharmonia in 2009 and wanted to be true to Mahler's instructions, settling for metronome 84. He was apparently horrified at how fast it sounded and gave this as one of the reasons for recording the work again. An extract from the 2009 recording is provided to help make his point.
Zander then goes on to use the funeral march from Beethoven's 'Eroica' (metronome 80) to show that it is way too fast. He says that Beethoven intended the marking to be metronome 40; "it is a slow march in two, not a fast march in four". Zander set a slow tempo at metronome 42 for his new recording "and the orchestra caught it perfectly" (sample followed). He then went on to mention a third tempo (metronome 96) for the "dramatische section which is Tempo secondo" ....
and I was even more lost than before. But, Zander obviously felt that everything now fitted perfectly.
Then he got to the issue of the final scale. In the first edition Mahler marked it "schnell" and presumably that was what Klemperer followed in his 1960 recording. Mahler crossed out "schnell" in his own performing score and wrote "Tempo primo". Zander concludes that Rattle presumes that means the tempo of the funeral music making it sound so very slow. "If only Mahler had distinguished Tempo primo and Tempo secondo earlier in the movement, he could have written Tempo secondo over the final scale at the end of the movement, and then everyone would have known to play it around 96 which suggests just the right kind of precipitation but still feels related to the funereal material of the main body of the music" (sample follows).
I don't really understand what I have just written and hope it makes some sense and helps you understand what Zander was getting at.
By the way, Track 09 (7:45) of the discussion contains "Urlicht" from Zander's unreleased 2009 recording sung by Katarina Karnéus (a replacement for Sarah Connolly who became ill at the time of those recording sessions) . It is a lovely performance in my opinion, and worth downloading.
