Finally, it's time this column took note of Bernstein's cycle of Mahler symphonies currently being energetically promoted in Taiwan. As a specimen I watched symphonies number seven and eight, recorded in the early 1970s with the Vienna Philharmonic, and they're quite astonishingly good.
In a short bonus track, Bernstein says that Mahler must be played with unceasing intensity and, given his boyish enthusiasm even in old age, Bernstein himself is clearly the man for this job. The Vienna Philharmonic has the reputation of playing the same way whoever is conducting it, and so an almost redundant Bernstein becomes instead the iconic figure who guides you through the whole sprawling, rhapsodic, sometimes problematic sound-picture. With his racked facial expressions and expansive gestures he teaches you how to feel about this music.
The Seventh is a somber, nocturnal prelude to the ineffable splendors of the Eighth, one of classical music's periodic attempts to exceed the bounds of music itself, usually by moving in the direction of religion. Massed choirs, huge chunks of transcendental text (a Catholic hymn, Part Two of Goethe's Faust) - this is music hammering on heaven's door. And if anyone is going to be your companion in these celestial regions, Leonard Bernstein - simultaneously sage and repentant sinner, you feel - could hardly be improved on. Mahler and Bernstein were both men who, in their totally different ways, wore their hearts on their sleeves, and this pair of DVDs is highly recommended.
RSS