Anna Larsson - Mahler: Symphony No. 3
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Anna LarssonComposer: Gustav Mahler
Conductor: Claudio Abbado
Orchestra: Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Edition: Music CD
Format: Live
CD Release Date: 2002-06-11
Music Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
- Kraftig. Entschieden: Kraftig. Entschieden
- Kraftig. Entschieden: Immer das gleiche Tempo
- Kraftig. Entschieden: Tempo I
- Kraftig. Entschieden: Zeit lassen
- Kraftig. Entschieden: Zeit lassen
- Kraftig. Entschieden: Immer dasselbe Tempo (Marsch)
- Kraftig. Entschieden: Im alten Marschtempo (Allegro moderato): 3
- Kraftig. Entschieden: Tempo I
- Tempo di Menuetto. Sehr maBig: Tempo di Menuetto. Sehr maBig
- Tempo di Menuetto. Sehr maBig: L'istesso tempo
- Tempo di Menuetto. Sehr maBig: A tempo (Wie im Anfang)
- Tempo di Menuetto. Sehr maBig: Ganz plotzlich gemachlich. Tempo di
- Comodo. Scherzando. Ohne Hast: Comodo. Scherzando. Ohne Hast
- Comodo. Scherzando. Ohne Hast: Wider sehr gemachlich, wie zu Anfang
- Comodo. Scherzando. Ohne Hast: Etwas zuruckhaltend: 6 Takte
- Comodo. Scherzando. Ohne Hast: Tempo I: 2 Takte vor
- Comodo. Scherzando. Ohne Hast: Wieder sehr gemachlich, beinahe
- Sehr langsam. Misterioso. Durchaus ppp: Sehr langsam. Misterioso.
- Sehr langsam. Misterioso. Durchaus ppp: Piu mosso subito: 6 Takte
- Lustig im Tempo und keck im Ausdruck: "Bimm bamm! Es sungen drei
- Langsam. Ruhevoll. Empfunden: Langsam. Ruhevoll. Empfunden
- Langsam. Ruhevoll. Empfunden: Nicht mehr so breit
- Langsam. Ruhevoll. Empfunden: Tempo I. Ruhevoll
- Langsam. Ruhevoll. Empfunden: Nicht mehr so breit
- Langsam. Ruhevoll. Empfunden: Tempo I
- Langsam. Ruhevoll. Empfunden: Langsam. Tempo
- Langsam. Ruhevoll. Empfunden: Applause/Beifall
Free Music Notes for Mahler: Symphony No. 3
Free Music Review: SUMMER IS ICUMIN IN
Hit: 5 Stars
This live performance dates from 1999 and preserves for us a visit of the Berlin Phil under Abbado to London. They did not bring their own chorus with them, and the choirs taking part are the LSO Chorus and the CBSO Youth Chorus. The contralto soloist in the 4th and 5th movements is Anna Larsson, and we are also told the names of the violinist and posthorn player who are given certain prominent parts. The first disc is given over to the multi-part first movement only, with the remaining hour or so of music on the second. Division into tracks is sensibly aligned with the rehearsal-breaks in the composer's score, and there is a final track consisting of applause lasting three minutes and 20 seconds. Mahler himself was at pains to stress the non-traditional elements that the score incorporates, and it occurred to me to wonder whether he thought of extending this spirit of inclusiveness to take in audience clapping as an integral part of the composition.
I would call the performance excellent without reservation. The great and unique Mahler sound is presented in all its splendour by the orchestra. The two choruses perform admirably in the very different roles assigned to them, and Anna Larsson is completely superb, beautiful in tone and soulful in expression. Tempi throughout are broad and unhurried, which is how I like them, and the great exalted conclusion is magnificent, well deserving the rapturous reception it got from the London audience. The recording suits me very well too, but you will certainly have to use a high volume-setting or some of the distant pianissimo effects will be verging on inaudible. This gives me no problems in a sitting-room of very average size while my neighbours are out. There is no trace of strain or distortion in the loudest sequences, and the drum reverberating through the floor thrilled me absolutely. Above all, this account captures for me the true tone and expression of Mahler as I imagine it, part transfigured, part anxious and even neurotic. This symphony is one of the most lyrical in the Mahler series, and Abbado has been rightly and successfully concerned to convey the sheer beauty of this score as well as intense personal expression that any of Mahler's music majors in.
Very properly where Mahler is concerned, there is a thoughtful liner note that tries to interpret the composer's own voluble comments on the `meaning' (if that is the right word) of the music. The eight sections of the first movement carry Mahler's own captions, some sort of image of summer `marching in' followed by what various agencies - flowers, animals, night, morning bells, love and a child - tell him. Even at this brief level of explanation angels double for the morning bells, and we have the distinguished expertise of Mr Donald Mitchell to help us integrate all this with what the composer had to say about it at greater length elsewhere. The marching has a sinister sound to it for one thing, and we could tell that from the music without any commentary. It is not my own usual idea of summer, and it is reinforced by military-sounding bugle-calls later in the work. Mr Mitchell takes us like Virgil through higher and higher circles of imagery. Evolution is apparently symbolised, by summer and by the innocent-sounding suggestions of summer, birds, animals and whatnot, at one level. However Nietzsche is here too in the fourth movement with his familiar aspiration to escape the bondage of meaning and the intellect, and in the fifth movement there is another setting from Mahler's beloved Knaben Wunderhorn, expressive of innocence obviously, whatever the further import of innocence might be in this context.
By 1999 Mr Mitchell had been at this kind of hermeneutics for a good 45 years to my certain recollection. What he doesn't try to do, no doubt wisely, is suggest what order the composer's thoughts came in - did the extraneous ideas suggest the music, was it the other way round, or is there no way of telling, as I myself suspect is the case? If one may say so without unintended disrespect, Mahler's chatter was of a familiar aesthete's kind in his time. There is no way that I can see of making anything completely coherent out of his statements, and Mr Mitchell has more sense than to try to. It is all more suggestive of a painting with different levels of images overlaid on one another, and I like to think that tact and discretion would debar any of us from asking such a Maler with naïve incomprehension `what it means'. Anyway, there is also an alternative liner note not much more than half the length in German. This I have not attempted to read from reasons of faintheartedness, but French-speaking listeners have the opportunity of reading Mr Mitchell's musings in their own tongue, presumably in an accurate and idiomatic translation.
At the end of the day, music is music. Any ideas and concepts it may be connected with do not have to be coherent, but the music itself does. I love Mahler, I felt a duty to struggle through the familiar process of wrestling with the background concepts that he himself expounded with such enthusiasm, but as usual I was happy to forget all that before long. This music coheres magnificently to my own ears, this performance coheres magnificently, the execution is superlative and the recording seems to me to do them all justice if you set your controls right. It is perhaps my own outright favourite among the Mahler symphonies, I have no good explanation for why it has been absent from my collection for so long, and whatever other fine versions may be available I would say with confidence that you ought not to feel you could go wrong with this one.
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