Mahler: Symphony No. 9; Wagner: Siegfried-Idyll; Strauss: Metamorphosen

Editorial Reviews
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Otto Klemperer's Mahler is invariably dry-eyed, yet urgent, a valuable corrective to the number of latter-day interpreters who would either self-indulgently wallow in the music's sentiment or, even worse, treat it as pure sonic architecture, as though it were pre-Schoenberg. If this 1967 reading of the Ninth sounds slightly detached by modern standards, if its expressive points seem slightly understated, it is nevertheless deeply engaged and masterfully controlled. Klemperer was beginning to slow down by this point in his career, and the tempos are just a hair on the slow side, especially in the two middle movements. But the old firmness of conception and rocklike steadiness are still there, even in the stormy weather of the Rondo-Burleske. The recording, made in Kingsway Hall, finds the New Philharmonia Orchestra in good form, though some of the wind soloists are a bit taxed by Mahler's exceptional demands. Two discs are necessary for the account, so to fill them out EMI gives us Klemperer's readings of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll and Strauss's Metamorphosen, both with the "old" Philharmonia Orchestra, both from 1961. Klemperer does the Siegfried Idyll with solo strings, the way it was written, and absolutely beautifully. There is a nobility and a sense of gravity to his reading of the Strauss that makes the piece deeply compelling without seeming in the slightest degree overwrought; the Philharmonia strings play it superbly. Surely this is the way Strauss intended the music to be heard. --Ted Libbey

Tracks:

Siegfried Idyll
Symphony No. 9 In D Minor: I: Andante comodo
Symphony No. 9 In D Minor: II: Im Tempo eines gemachlichen Landers. Etwas tappisch und sehr derb

Tracks:

Symphony No.9 In D Minor: III: Rondo - Burleske. Allegro assai. Sehr trotzig
Symphony No.9 In D Minor: IV: Adagio. Sehr langsam und noch zuruckhaltend
Metamorphosen For 23 Solo Strings

Amazon.com

Otto Klemperer's Mahler is invariably dry-eyed, yet urgent, a valuable corrective to the number of latter-day interpreters who would either self-indulgently wallow in the music's sentiment or, even worse, treat it as pure sonic architecture, as though it were pre-Schoenberg. If this 1967 reading of the Ninth sounds slightly detached by modern standards, if its expressive points seem slightly understated, it is nevertheless deeply engaged and masterfully controlled. Klemperer was beginning to slow down by this point in his career, and the tempos are just a hair on the slow side, especially in the two middle movements. But the old firmness of conception and rocklike steadiness are still there, even in the stormy weather of the Rondo-Burleske. The recording, made in Kingsway Hall, finds the New Philharmonia Orchestra in good form, though some of the wind soloists are a bit taxed by Mahler's exceptional demands. Two discs are necessary for the account, so to fill them out EMI gives us Klemperer's readings of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll and Strauss's Metamorphosen, both with the "old" Philharmonia Orchestra, both from 1961. Klemperer does the Siegfried Idyll with solo strings, the way it was written, and absolutely beautifully. There is a nobility and a sense of gravity to his reading of the Strauss that makes the piece deeply compelling without seeming in the slightest degree overwrought; the Philharmonia strings play it superbly. Surely this is the way Strauss intended the music to be heard. --Ted Libbey

Customer Reviews:

not a good rendition of the 9th.......2006-03-14

Klemperer's got it all wrong here. Too fast in the first movement, and too slow and dragging in the second. Did he read Mahler's temp markings at all? What results is a "conductor's symphony" where the music to me almost sounds foreign. The emotion and desperation that carries this music throughout is not present here. Not how the work should be played at all. Pick up Karajan or Bernstein's recordings. Much more true to the composer's intentions.

We are in Klemperer's world more than Mahler's.......2005-10-18

I'm a bit mystified why so many reviewers here bow to Klemperer's way with this piece. They find excuses for his lackluster slow readings of the two middle movements. They gloss over his disregard for Mahler's score, which contains hundreds of precise instructions to the conductor. They accept as revelatory a version of Mahler without mystery, orgasmic explosiveness, or universal tenderness and yearning.

In this reading we get a straight-ahead, unswerving approximaiton of Mahler's dazzling soundscape. There's integrity to it, but Mahler wanted to take us to a visionary world, and I don't think Klemperer comes very close. Even in old age with a pickup orchestra of Los Angeles free-lancers, Bruno Walter (Sony) ushers us into that world from the first bar--he is the true Mahler protege, not KLemperer, who got his first break thanks to a letter of recommendation from Mahler but never actually studied with him intensively or had close personal ties to rival Walter's. As a great admirer of Klemperer, I am disappointed.

Stoically moving.......2004-11-18

The contrast between the valedictory recordings of Mahler's valedictory Ninth Symphony by Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer--both of whom were Mahler proteges as young men, and both in their 80s when they recorded this work in stereo--probably has to do with the differences between the men themselves as well as the differences in how each perceived this score. Walter has Mahler bid farewell to life with serenity and confidence in what is to come. Klemperer's account is sterner, more sardonic--and when we get to the final pages, the sense of leave-taking is more ambivalent even as a hard-won acceptance breaks through. The "victory" is all the more moving for having been achieved through stoic struggle.

There are other ways to play Mahler's Ninth than Honest Otto's dry-eyed integrity admits, but few if any achieve the craggy heights of this performance. The slowish tempi in the two middle movements take some getting used to, yet they fit in with Klemperer's overall conception and emphasize the bitter humor. For me, what sets the seal on this release is that the Ninth is the centerpiece of a 2-CD program that begins with Austro-Germanic Late Romanticism in full flower (Wagner's "Siegfried Idyll") and ends with its utter dissolution as the culture that gave rise to it lays in ruins (Strauss' "Metamorphosen"). The performances of these shorter works are on the same level as that of the Ninth.

A Masterpiece in Every Sense.......2004-07-24

I only have a brief note to add to this discussion. There may be superior performances of individual movements of the Mahler Ninth-Tennstedt's first movement, Horenstein's last movement-but for a wholly conceived, front-to-back performance of this masterpiece, I have come to feel, after many years, that Klemperer's is the best that has been recorded. (This was written before the release of Jascha Horenstein's BBC Ninth, which has taken first place for me, but let my words stand: this is a great interpretation.) It is also, I think, a deeply mysterious performance. To go no further into Mahler and Klemperer's highly bipolar psychologies, it may be enough to point out that while Klemperer reins in Mahler's most extreme expressive gestures-and Mahler is nowhere more deeply and intimately extreme, I believe, than in the Ninth-he yet achieves a performance that is more inclusive of Mahler's essential artistic-spiritual-expressive thrust than any other on record. How or why this is possible must probably remain a mystery, but it is one worth listening to again and again. There are more famous recordings of this symphony out there, certainly, but they sound slightly ridiculous in comparison with Klemperer's towering achievement on these discs. The Metamorphosen is on the same exalted level of conception and execution, and, you know, the Wagner's not too shabby either.

One of the best Mahler Ninths on CD.......2003-04-12

Klemperer's performance of the Mahler starts in a rather straightforward fashion, but it doesn't end that way. As you might expect for a late Klemperer performance, it is on the slow side, though by present-day standards for the Mahler Ninth there is nothing here that sounds eccentrically slow (unlike Klemperer's Mahler Seventh).

In the first movement, Klemperer seems to let the music unfold in the most natural fashion possible. There is nothing showy here, but he is constantly adjusting the tempo just slightly. And the phrasing is full of touches that do not call undue attention to themselves or try to whip up forced drama. That does not mean it is an understated performance. Klemperer and the Philharmonia do not hold back. The playing is full of character and unforced power.

Klemperer makes the second movement especially grotesque and nightmarish, slow and lumbering. The third movement is even more on the slow side, but this makes it sound like another dance, a drunken, clumsy dance, rather than just an essay in contrapuntal dissonance. For the interlude, he doesn't adjust the tempo much. Some might prefer performances that make this section more of a contrast, but the only slight change in tempo highlights that the theme of the interlude is just a variation on the main theme of the movement. And as it moves along it becomes clear that Klemperer doesn't view the interlude as all that peaceful. It is much more anguished than in most readings, more of a piece with the rest of the movement. And bravo to the New Philharmonia oboist for a very daring and effective bit of phrasing in this movement (though this may have just been a happy accident).

I find Klemperer's reading of the last movement the least resigned performance I've ever heard. In Klemperer's vision, Mahler is trying to convince himself to accept death with grace and peace, as a longed-for rest, but doubts and anguish and longing keep flooding back. Though the movement is certainly not taken at a fast pace, it is not as slow as with some conductors. Until near the end, there is always a forward motion here that suggests that Mahler is searching, searching for peace and the willingness to accept death, but never quite finding it. There are moments of understated beauty, but overall this is one of the least understated and peaceful readings of this movement out there. It is unsettling, with a disturbingly unresolved feeling at the end.

After that, the comforting opening notes of the Siegfried Idyll are so welcome that it's a good idea to keep listening when the Mahler is over. There are moments when the orchestral version of this piece may work better than the chamber version heard here, because the winds at times do overwhelm the strings a bit in the chamber version, at least in Klemperer's low-key performance. On the other hand, there are times when hearing just a few strings in this music creates an even greater feeling of intimacy, warmth, and tenderness than you get in the version for larger forces.

But the main thing here is the Mahler. There are many great performances of this symphony on disc, among them those by Karajan, Horenstein, Walter, and Kubelik. But I usually turn to Klemperer and the New Philharmonia when I want to hear the Mahler Ninth.

I have an earlier CD release that just contains the Mahler and the Wagner, so I can't comment on the Strauss.

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