Gustav Mahler: Symphony #5

Another run in the last couple of days through the ten symphonies composed by the great Gustav Mahler and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Klaus Tennstedt was a treat, especially during these increasingly chaotic, unstable and troubled times.  An EMI boxset collects these works, albeit broken up in some instances, into an 11-CD set.

These lengthy, massive works are, for this listener, highly immersive, seductive sound environments that, for the occasional heavy intensity and bombast, also have sublime quiet passages and sections with achingly beautiful melodies that belie all that is troubled in our world.  The complexity, ingenuity and innovation of Mahler is on full display in the Fifth Symphony.

The piece is justly celebrated for its fourth movement, the Adagietto, with one of the most famous of melodies in all of classical music.  Mahler worked on the symphony in 1901-1902, including during a period of recovery from a hemorrhage that nearly killed him, in a hut at a newly completed cottage in southern Austria.  Yet, the entirety of the piece is striking and memorable, from the funereal and stately first movement led off by a trumpet fanfare to the power and intensity of the second, the strength of the third and the rondo that marks the finale.

Again, there is not enough knowledge of the technical points of music for this blogger to try to weigh in on the value of the Fifth Symphony from that standpoint.  Fortunately, we have liner notes and Kenneth Dommett provides a useful quote from the composer's wife, Alma, also a composer as well as a writer and who commented "I heard in it the relation of adult man to everything that lives, heard him cry to mankind out of his loneliness, cry to man, to home, to God, saw him lying prostrate, heard him laugh his defiance and felt his clam triumph."  Dommett summarizes the movements, noting the keys, but also the feelings expressed from cries of distress to outrage to affirmation of life to triumph.

Naturally, an untutored listener doesn't need to know the structure, the keys or how color and texture are established.  The sheer range of emotion, as well as the use of the full resources of an orchestra with its huge sound but also the lighter touches found everywhere in Mahler's symphonies, are thrilling and the brilliant performance by Tennstedt and the London ensemble pulls you into this deep, rich and rewarding musical experience, a badly needed tonic just now.

Henryk Górecki: Miserere

Miserere means "have mercy" and, in these particularly troubled times of war, sectional strife, deportations, political assassinations, searing heatwaves as our planet warms, and much else, this recording of Henryk Górecki's choral masterpiece of that name seems particularly timely.  The work was composed nearly 45 years ago in response to a militia's violence against a Polish union during the Solidarity movement that began in 1980 and helped lead to the transfer of power from the Soviet-backed Communist government there nine years later.

As the liner notes observe, Górecki usually avoided political and social commentary in his work, but he quickly wrote the piece with a simple five-word text: "Lord our God, have mercy on us."  Because of conditions in Poland, the work was not performed until 1987.  It is also noted that the "architectural procedure" of "Miserere" is "very close to the canon at the beginning of [his] Third Symphony," which  was first performed in 1977 and became a worldwide sensation fifteen years later when Elektra Nonesuch, which issued this recording, released a version that sold more than a million copies.

This blogger attended a live performance of the Third Symphony at the Hollywood Bowl in 1993 and it was a powerful experience.  This would almost certainly be the same for "Miserere," which the notes state "demands concentration and thoughtful consideration" because it "is a heartfelt plea for peace and understanding from a composer who believes in the values of personal individuality and compassionate responsibility."

There are three other choral pieces on this 1994 recording, including Górecki's first unaccompanied choral work, "Euntes ibant et flebantm" with quotations from Psalms; "Wislo Moda, Wislo Szara," which is about the great Vistula River; and "Szeroka woda," also based on well-known Polish folk songs.  These flow naturally with "Miserere" in terms of the composer's fondness for slower tempos, modal approaches and deep interest in textures that included sustained notes.  The Chicago Symphony and Chicago Lyric Opera choruses and, for the Vistula work, the Lira Chamber Chorus, perform with great beauty and sensitivity and this recording has been playing a lot these days as more compassion and mercy are badly needed, for people and for our planet.