E-Mail This Article to a Friend What the score tells me? (continued)
	Mahler mania Symphony No. 3 • The WDR Sinfonie-Orchester Köln conducted by Semyon Bychkov, with contralto Marjana Lipovsek, the ladies of the WDR Rundfunkchor Köln, and girls and boys from the Köln Cathedral Choir. Recorded live in the Köln Philharmonie January 2002: 35:12; 10:24; 18:19; 10:43; 4:34; 25:36 (Avie, two discs). • The Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Benjamin Zander, with mezzo-soprano Lili Paasikivi, the Ladies of the London Philharmonic Choir, and the Tiffin Boys’ Choir. Recorded in Walthamstow Assembly Hall, London, February and March 2003: 33:55; 9:06; 18:11; 10:25; 4:23; 23:25 (Telarc, three discs including 76:30 lecture disc). • The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Chailly, with mezzo-soprano Petra Lang, the Royal Philharmonic Choir, and the Netherlands Children’s Choir. Recorded in the Concertgebouw May 2003: 34:47; 9:38; 17.22; 10:12; 4:17; 22:56 (Decca, two discs). Symphony No. 4 • The Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Levine, with soprano Judith Blegen. Recorded in Medinah Temple, Chicago, July 1974: 16:39; 9:41; 22:02; 9:15 (RCA Red Seal). • The San Francisco Symphony conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, with soprano Laura Claycomb. Recorded live at Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, September 2003: 17:34; 9:46; 25:27; 9:27 (San Francisco Symphony). • The Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, with soprano Karina Gauvin. Recorded in the Église Saint-Ferdinand de Fabreville, Montreal, October 2003: 18:09; 10:47; 21:31; 9:28 (Atma). Symphony No. 6 • The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by John Barbirolli. Recorded live in the Berlin Philharmonie January 1966: 18:39; 14:08; 12:11; 29:09 (Testament). DVDs • What the Universe Tells Me: Unraveling the Mysteries of Mahler’s Third Symphony. Narrated by Stockard Channing. Featuring a complete performance of Symphony No. 3 by the Manhattan School of Music Symphony Orchestra conducted by Glen Cortese, with soprano Mignon Dunn (Vai, two DVDs). • I Follow a Voice Within Me: A Portrait of the Singer Waltraud Meier. Featuring a complete performance of Das Lied von der Erde by the WDR Sinfonie-Orchester Köln conducted by Semyon Bychkov, with tenor Torsten Kerl and mezzo-soprano Waltraud Meier, recorded live in the Köln Philharmonie in 2001: 8:00; 9:17; 3:19; 7:17; 4:34; 30:21 (EuroArts). Publications • The Correct Movement Order in Mahler’s Sixth Symphony. With an introduction by Gilbert Kaplan and essays by Jerry Bruck and Reinhold Kubik. The Kaplan Foundation, 72 pages.

Did conductors and orchestras of 30 years ago have a better sense of how Mahler’s Fourth ought to go? You’d have to think so after listening to RCA’s re-release of a 1974 performance by James Levine, Judith Blegen, and the Chicago Symphony. Like Paul Kletzki and George Szell in this work, Levine hardly seems to lift a finger. His orchestra is bright and clearly characterized (the second movement’s scordatura violin in particular), but not harsh or brash, as it could be under Georg Solti. There’s lucid detail, especially in the winds, and where the music should skip, it does. In 1974, Levine hadn’t yet opted for antiphonal violins, and you could ask for more swing and sway in the second-movement trios and other easeful sections, or a more knowing reading of the Apocalypse coda to the Poco Adagio. Blegen, on the other hand, seems to have been to Heaven and back, the sly edge in her voice and the tender underlining of "Sankt Ursula dazu lacht" evidence that she hasn’t lost touch with her inner child. For $10, you can hear a great Mahler conductor in the making and wonder what he’d do with the BSO today.

Not many would wonder what the young Canadian director Yannick Nézet-Séguin is doing with the Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal — certainly not when they see him wearing a leather jacket in his press photo and learn that his (only?) previous recording was Nino Rota: La strada. Yet his Mahler Fourth, recorded in Montreal’s Église Saint-Ferdinand de Fabreville, has space and depth and a fresh, boyish approach, with characterful winds that would get Otto Klemperer’s imprimatur. The violins don’t appear to be divided, and in the second movement, the reverberant acoustic robs the scordatura violin of some presence. Nézet-Séguin can be callow, too: he doesn’t grasp the importance of the second trio’s bursting into D major at bar 254 of the second movement, and he’s light on the anguish (no body in the lower strings) in the third — it’s the child’s psychopomp as lullaby. But he’s a scamp in the finale, where soprano Karina Gauvin gets caught not too uneasily between operatic and childlike.

FINALLY, there’s Sir John Barbirolli’s live performance of January 13, 1966, with the Berlin Philharmonic, which has now been released by Testament. It’s more volatile than his 1967 EMI studio performance; the first movement alone is almost three minutes faster, 18:39 as against 21:15. In neither case did Barbirolli take the repeat; if he had, the studio movement would have lasted well over 27 minutes and been the slowest on record. Even the Berlin version has the same heavy, implacable tread; it also has, unfortunately, Barbirolli humming along, which is a distraction and a drawback throughout. Other demerits include over-busy first-movement cowbells, the Philharmonie audience coughing in the Andante, an undercharacterized Scherzo with little contrast in the "Altväterisch" episodes and a backward xylophone, a lack of emotional weight at the finale’s climax (bar 773), and some wayward tempo shifts. What you’re buying it for is the conductor’s instinct and intelligence; his organic phrases breathe from within as opposed to being sprayed with feeling, and when he lets loose in the Andante’s stormy climax, his passion is volcanic.

You’ll have noted that in this performance, the Andante is the second movement and the Scherzo is the third. That’s how Barbirolli performed the Sixth, and in fact that’s how almost everyone performed it until 1963, when the Internationale Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft’s new Critical Edition stated that the composer had, before his death, reverted to the original Scherzo-Andante movement order (that’s what appeared in the first printed edition of the symphony, but Mahler changed it to Andante-Scherzo before the premiere in Essen). Such was the authority of the IGMG that EMI switched the order of movements in its Barbirolli recording to Scherzo-Andante without the conductor’s approval.

Now, a new publication from the Kaplan Foundation, The Correct Movement Order in Mahler’s Sixth Symphony (available at www.mahlerarchives.net/archives/symp6.html), makes it clear that then IGMG Critical Edition editor Erwin Ratz had no basis for his statement. With an introduction by Gilbert Kaplan, exemplary essays by Jerry Bruck (the engineer who back in 1964 helped persuade Alma Mahler to permit Deryck Cooke’s "performing version" of her husband’s unfinished Tenth Symphony to be performed) and current IGMG Critical Edition editor Reinhold Kubik, and numerous reproductions of manuscripts and performance programs, The Correct Movement Order proves that the correct movement order, for Mahler, at least, was Andante-Scherzo, that in his lifetime the Sixth was never performed any other way, and that there’s no evidence he ever changed his mind. EMI’s Double Forte re-release of the Barbirolli studio Sixth restores the order composer and conductor favored; Mariss Jansons’s 2003 LSO recording adopts the Andante-Scherzo order, and recent performances by Leonard Slatkin, Sir Charles Mackerras, Zubin Mehta, and Michael Tilson Thomas have done so as well. (Tilson Thomas’s Scherzo-Andante San Francisco Symphony recording of the Sixth was made before The Correct Movement Order came out.) It’s not that this and other decisions Mahler made — dropping "Waldmärchen" from Das klagende Lied, dropping "Blumine" from the First Symphony, telling Alma to burn the unfinished Tenth — aren’t still open for discussion; many conductors, especially those who’ve been performing the Sixth Scherzo-Andante for decades, will want to weigh in on why he might have been wrong. But The Correct Movement Order sets the record straight.