Published Reviews
By Chawkin
American Record Guide
01-Oct-2006
It seems that only yesterday (though it was a year ago, Sept/Oct 2005) that I was marveling about how well the Eighth could withstand the wide difference in playing time between the Nagano and Rattle performances without sounding pushed at the faster or dragged at the slower ends. Here comes another reminder of the same phenomenon. Some ten minutes in playing time divides Haitink's and Solti's performances (both from September 1971�it's worth a smile to think of Harper finishing up as Solti's Soprano I in Vienna and hopping onto the shuttle to Amsterdam to be Haitink's Soprano II).
Two other notable phenomena came to my attention here.
The first is how precipitously some musical reputations fall after the death of the artists who inspired them. In his lifetime, Solti would sell out concert halls effortlessly. His recordings were commercial hits and recipients of many critical awards. These days, his reputation has plummeted. When he is remembered at all, it is as a brutal, rigid martinet.
The second is what different ears we sometimes bring to old much-loved recordings when we revisit them after many years. I recently listened to Solti's first Mahler 5 and was shocked at how pedestrian parts of it sounded. How would the 1971 reissues stand up on reacquaintance?
Haitink's, which I had been fond of when it first came out, was mostly a disappointment. I don't know how well he knew the piece back when he recorded it (he has said that he doesn't particularly like it and has dropped it from his repertory), but parts of it sound more than aloof. I am tempted to write that they sound phoned in.
The big differences among the performances here are in Part II. Haitink's Introduction is straightforward to a fault. No suspense, no scene-painting. Where Colin Davis and Mitropoulos had the ear riveted in an instant, Haitink plods along. Setting us up for more later? But the later isn't in the opening chorus. No huge vistas here. The echoes are dutiful, not spooky or even atmospheric. Prey's opening lines are so full of expression and life that they are like a reproach to the conductor. It's as if he was thinking "how can you play like that when I'm singing like this?"
Like Prey, Sotin is in really good voice, a bass with real weight and color. Haitink plods along patiently but, by the time the More Perfect Angels (a title that sounds like something out of Monty Python) sing their "Uns bleibt ein Erdenrest", the conducting is almost unbearably pedantic.
Cochran's voice is a dryish light helden�tenor. It's almost a Loge sound. Acceptable but not inspiring. The sopranos are so-so. Cotrubas sounds lovely. Harper sounds ordinary (what must she have been thinking after having just been through the piece with Solti?) and Van Bork is competent. The altos are both acceptable: Finnila has a more solid voice, though she is stretched by the high parts of her role. Deileman is lighter in voice.
Haitink finally comes to life in the "Blicket auf" section with tenor and chorus. It is thrilling, as is the second half of the Chorus Mysticus: those final brass calls have tremendous weight and perfect emphasis. They really do sound as if they are reaching out to the universe.
Choruses (and especially the boy choir) sound wonderful. The orchestral playing is good in color, but lacking in intensity and specificity. About six minutes of a wonderful musical experience and 64 minutes of something less than that.
Wit's Mahler performances that I've heard have never been bad, but they haven't quite risen to the highest level. This Eighth, which is unfortunately spread onto two discs, thereby giving up Naxos's usual price advantage, is more of the same. If I had heard it as a concert, I would have been pleased. On records, you have to go back again and irritants get compounded. The lack of weight in the chorus and the odd moments annoy: the shaky ensemble and awkward trumpets in the "Gerettet" chorus and the incoherence in the end of the "blicket auf" chorus up to the Chorus Mysticus. The soloists are so variable: an unpleasant, bleaty tenor, who manages to pull himself together for "Blicket auf' but is a nuisance elsewhere and a bass without much color or juice in his voice. Amends come in the presence of a fine baritone, good sopranos, especially Boberska, a haunting Mater Gloriosa, and the more than acceptable altos. Naxos, probably with help from the Polish Radio, has come up with a spectacular recording. The roar of the percussion at the end is something to marvel at.
Solti's was a famous recording in its day. It has worn well with time. The cast is a great one, in great form. There are other Eighths with strong singers. Kubelik's has fine women (Arroyo, Spoorenberg, Mathis, Hamari, Proctor). Davis's has Ben Heppner in lovely voice. Mitropoulos has a powerful cast. None of these is a match for Solti's.
I've never heard a mountain sing, but if I were to and it didn't sound like Talvela, I would be disappointed. Shirley-Quirk has to work a little at the top of his range, but is solid and powerful. Kollo is simply thrilling. Along with Mitropoulos's Giuseppe Zampieri and Heppner, his is the pinnacle of this part on records. He is in his best voice here: clear and ringing, effortlessly beautiful and heroic, with the Chicago strings shining like sunbeams around his voice. Harper is incomparably better here than she was for Haitink. Her voice and Popp's are sweet and fresh and blessedly in tune. Auger is the Mater Gloriosa that dreams are made of. Both altos are superb; Minton is a little darker than Watts, but they blend beautifully with each other and with Popp in the trio.
The redoubtable Wilhelm Pitz has the choral forces in fine shape. The Vienna Boy choir is at its formidable best, and the orchestral playing is a delight. The Chicago under Solti could sometimes be brutal and colorless, but not here. The playing is superlative and effortless.
Solti's conducting is also fine here. His Part I combines nuance with propulsion in a way that Haitink, who is plain to a fault, and Wit, who is more expressive than Haitink but not especially perceptive, don't. His introduction to Part II is not much less straight than Haitink's, but is so much more alive. Solti was an old opera hand, and setting a scene in music was second nature to him, as was musical storytelling. Tension and release, light and shadow are perfectly managed in this wonderful reading. Does Solti fall short at all? I'm afraid he does. The very end of the work, so beautifully set up by all that went before, doesn't quite take off the way that Haitink- not to mention Mitropoulos, Davis, and several other performances-manages to. Something extra is missing. It's not enough to spoil or even mar the performance, but I can't help wishing that someone had told Solti and company to give it one more try.
Wit has excellent modern recorded sound with presence and space and a huge dynamic range. Nothing to complain about there. Haitink has the extra presence of SACD, which is an impressive advantage, set off by tape hiss that's also audible in the CD tracks. Solti's sound was impressive in its time and remains so. The hiss is almost inaudible and not in the least distracting in the face of the performance.
Solti comes with text, translation, and a nice liner note by Michael Kennedy. Wit and Haitink offer no text or translation. The former gives a liner note and short biographies of the musicians (I was fascinated to learn that the bleaty tenor is known as "the best Hungarian tenor" even though he is not Hungarian. Information like that is worth many texts and translations!) Haitink offers a quite good note on the music and some discussion of four-channel techniques that Philips was experimenting with at the time. It also has a cover photo of Haitink conducting with eyes closed. At first I wondered if he was doing a Karajan imitation, but after rehearing this performance, I suspect that even he was having trouble staying awake.
The Mahler 8 situation is a complex one. The most riveting performances both have problems. Mitropoulos's sound is not very good, even in the Orfeo release, its best mastering. Colin Davis's female singers are not the best (he is burdened with Sharon Sweet, who also disfigured Maazel's Vienna recording). The Horenstein on BBC is dramatic but inconsistent. The Nagano and Rattle are both pleasant and well recorded, if not exactly life-transforming experiences. There are Bernstein performances on both Sony and DG where the conductor works the musicians, the audience, and himself tremendously hard to produce a symphony that's only a little bit less compelling than Mahler's original.
The Solti is a very strong performance. It will probably be a first choice for many listeners who don't want to deal with Mitropoulos's sound or Davis's sopranos, though they will be giving up that last measure of grandiose elation that is so much a part of this huge work.
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