My friend Gustav

This is a translation of a posting in Danish from February 4. 2009

My friend Gustav has written a lot of wonderful music. Well – he is not a personal friend I have met and his last name is Mahler. But I have been a great fan of his music since way back.

It has been a while since I last listened to any Mahler. It takes really good speakers and understanding surroundings to get the full benefit of the large orchestras in the Mahler symphonies.

Yesterday evening he got some playtime again and it was a great return.


It was the Symphony no 7 in a recent recording with Valery Gergiev leading the London Symphony Orchestra. I bought this recording at the iTunes shop sometime during the last fall and have it on my iPod. It sounds good here, but really good it became last evening when I connected the iPod to the stereo kit. When cranked up somewhat the TQWT's (my homebuild quarter-wave horns with Fostex FFE166e units) can shine in their handling of the deepest bass and the complex soundscape at the same time. And without loosing either the air or the details in the recording or compressing everything to one compact lump in the powerful passages. Pure delight.

And so is the music!

That wets the appetite for listening to more of the recordings I have. Most of them are older and on LP. For example no 1, 3, 4 and 9 with Jasha Horenstein. No 5, 6 and 7 with Bernard Haitink. The adagio from no 10 with Boulez or the dublicates: no 1 with Klaus Tennstedt, no 4 with Karajan and no 9 with Klemperer. For some reason I have never got hold of no 8 – even not on CD. I have only got a few of the symphonies on CD – no 1 with Petroschof, no 2 with Neumann and no 5 with Wit. Not any of these recordings can reach the knees of the old LP's. My favorites for Mahler is without any doubt Horenstein and Haitink.

We must not forget the songs with orchestra. On the LP shelves we find Das Klagende Lied in the first complete recording with Boulez as conductor and Evelyn Lear, Elisabeth Söderström, Grace Hoffman, Stuart Burrows, Ernst Häfliger and Gert Nienstedt as singers from 1970 (on CBS). It is a marvelous recording giving wonderful shivers and deep oppression. Das Lied von der Erde is with Haitink at the front and Janet Baker and James King as singers. On CD I have got 2 Rückert Lieders with Robert Wagner conducting the Symphonieorchester Innsbruck and Maura Moreira singing the alto voice. Well yes – quite a suspect recording – the label also hints in that direction “The Rose Collection”.

One thing that fascinate me by Mahler is his way to have multiple things going on in the orchestra at the same time and in a way that every instrument is totally audible almost without regard to what else is going on. For example can a solo oboe have its own private comments contrary to the rest of the orchestra – and be totally audible. In this Mahler in fact reminds me of one of my other favorites in the large scale symphonic repertoire – Carl Nielsen. He has got a little of the same (some times a lot) quirky way of letting a single instrument stand up against the rest of the orchestra. By Nielsen the clarinet and the side drum are typical examples, but they are not the only ones.

Another parallel to the Mahler way of using the orchestra I find in the Gurre Lieder by Arnold Schönberg. There is in fact quite a lot here reminding of Das Klagende Lied. Gurre Lieder is on my shelves in the classic LP version with János Ferencsik leading the Danish Radio (DR) Symphony Orchestra and with Martina Arroyo, Alexander Young, Janet Baker, Odd Wolstad, Niels Møller and Julius Patzak as soloists. The recording was made March 18., 1968 in the DR concert hall – and it was not released until 1974. We waited a long time for that! It is almost symbolic for the time that Schönberg used to finish the composition (and very typical for the unbelievable problems DR always had to get their recordings release during those years – that almost could be the basis of a major historical posting). I am not quite sure if I attended that concert myself. But I am sure that I attended a couple of the great DR concerts in 1972 that first was release on LP in 1976 – more of this another time.

Well isn't it quite a while since I last heard some Carl Nielsen? - I have got a nice handful of the good classic recordings on CD also, they might be put on the music server so the Squeezebox can have a chance? There is the very classic recordings of Symphony no 3 and 5 with Bernstein – those that made Carl Nielsen known outside tight circles abroad and a fine lineup of other older and newer recordings of mainly the symphonies. The classical recordings are naturally also found on the shelves in LP version bought (very) early in the 1970's. In fact there is 11 single LP's with music by Carl Nielsen plus two box sets and 12 CD's. That could be the ground for a new posting ;-)

And that in fact came the 18. and 22. of february and was translated on the 23. of February.
This will be the last of the old postings I translate. Stay tuned for new postings in both Danish and English.

Dette var det sidste gamle indlæg jeg oversætter – hæng på for nye indlæg på både dansk og engelsk.