(++++) A SENSE OF THE ALL-ENCOMPASSING

Mahler: Symphony No. 3. Catriona Morison, mezzo-soprano; Prague Philharmonic Choir, Pueri gaudentes and Czech Philharmonic conducted by Semyon Bychkov. Pentatone. $26.99 (2 CDs).

     The famous exchange of opinions about symphonies between Jean Sibelius and Gustav Mahler is often misunderstood. It is known only from Sibelius’ recollection of it, in which he remembers Mahler saying, Die Symphonie muss sein wie der Welt – es muss alles umfassen. If Sibelius' memory is accurate, the last word is crucial and often mistranslated. “The symphony must be like the world – it must encompass everything” is the English version: not so much “contain” or “embrace” or “consist of,” as translations often state, but, at least in this case, “include.” Yet that does not mean that a symphony’s musically massed contents must be metaphorically thrown at listeners’ ears in the hope that some will penetrate and stick. Sibelius says Mahler made his comment after he himself “said that I admired [the symphony’s] strictness and style and deep logic, which requires that all its motifs must be linked to each other.” But “deep logic” and linked motifs are precisely the most integral building blocks of Mahler’s symphonies – notably his Symphony No. 8, written just a year before he and Sibelius had their discussion in 1907. Indeed, the merger of “deep logic” and linked motifs dates back to the very start of Mahler’s symphonic production – and is combined with the notion of es muss alles imfassen in his Symphony No. 3, completed more than a decade earlier (1896). Mahler’s Third, his longest symphony and the one conceived on the grandest scale, opens with a horn fanfare whose notes and patterning pervade all six movements: this work of operatic length (more than 100 minutes) all flows and grows from its first minute or two. This is motivic linkage taken to an extreme – but combined with a scale and scope that do indeed include pretty much everything in the world, from the changing seasons to elements of nature (notably, birdsong) to quotidian human concerns (the posthorn) to human despair and striving (Nietzsche) to an all-embracing love that exists so far beyond words that it can be communicated only orchestrally (the finale).

     It is the sheer vastness of Mahler’s Third that Semyon Bychkov explores thoroughly convincingly in a new Pentatone recording that is the fifth in Bychkov’s Mahler cycle: Symphonies Nos. 1-5 have now been released. Bychkov’s understanding of Mahler is at the highest level in Symphony No. 3: he beautifully grasps the solo-vs.-ensemble elements of the score, its individualism paired with gigantism, its extended pauses (notably amid the sections of the first movement and at key points in the finale) contrasted with its headlong forward progress. The brass and percussion sections of the Czech Philharmonic are simply wonderful here, abetted by a recording that picks out individual instruments to perfection while allowing full-orchestra massed sound to flower unimpeded. Bychkov has no fear of Mahler’s Third fragmenting into a series of disconnected episodes, as it can in less-thought-through performances: he does allow individual portions to emerge, flourish and disappear – again, this is especially notable in the first movement – but he keeps everything within an overall vision, an overarching structure, that does indeed include everything Mahler perceived and imagined, presenting it all with a foundational understanding through which the pervasive material from the opening fanfare makes perfect sense as a transcendent conclusion more than an hour and a half later.

     This is not to say that Mahler’s Third is not discursive. Bychkov embraces this element of the music, too: no matter how far things seem to diverge from the path set forth in the first movement – which Mahler wrote last, knowing by the time he created it exactly how it would set the scene for all that would follow – Bychkov remains aware of how the puzzle pieces will eventually coalesce into a fully realized whole that is so much greater than the sum of its parts. Thus, the graceful woodwinds and strings of the second movement, and its gentle Tempo di minuetto pacing, are all the more affecting because of the way they contrast with the rhythmically pounding, brass-heavy march that pervades the first movement and eventually crowns it. The second movement sounds as if it is always airborne or about to take flight, gliding gently along with a beauty of simplicity that brings a pervasive calm that lays to rest the turmoil of the first movement – which, however (and Bychkov clearly understands this) has been necessary to set the scene for this island of tranquility. Then, in the third movement, birdsong-reflecting elements conceal, or at least dress up, something more complex: Mahler starts the movement by quoting his own setting of Ablösung im Sommer, a “changing of the guard for the new season” song in which the death at the end of spring of the simple-sounding cuckoo (symbol of lovers’ infidelity) paves the way for the nightingale’s extended, florid song anticipating new love and a flowering of nature that recalls Pan from the first movement but provides an entirely different context, now expanded into the human realm – even though the distant sound of the posthorn and the human existence it represents are, for the time being, largely ignored by the natural world.

     The fourth movement then focuses matters firmly on human concerns, and Bychkov elegantly explores the major mood change associated with the introduction of the human voice and Nietzsche’s words, sung with appropriate depth of sound and dour expressiveness by Catriona Morison. The movement emerges from complete silence – the orchestra’s ability to play almost inaudibly is exceptional – and Morison gives the opening words a sense of both pleading and near-despair, a strong contrast to the delicacy and exuberance of what has come just before. By the time she reaches the words Die Welt is tief, the depth of troubled human expressiveness is abundantly clear – but Bychkov ensures that the instrumental elements, while sometimes reinforcing the words, at other times sound in contrast to them, recalling earlier and less-fraught moods while setting the stage for the uplift that the fifth movement will bring. That light and lovely children’s-choral movement is refreshingly brief, emerging almost as a kind of purgatory between the pain of the fourth movement and the still-to-come gorgeous beauty of the finale. (Interestingly, the only other Mahler symphonic movement as short as this one is in Symphony No. 10 and is labeled Purgatorio.) The fifth movement, as naïve in expression as it seems mostly to be, is not without darkness: Morison returns to sing of bitterness and ask for pity, and the bell sounds after her plea initially cast a pall over the uplifting choral message. But then the words Die himmlische Freud’ are sung three times, pointing to heavenly joy that will literally elevate human beings above all their turmoil and distress.

     And then the finale moves beyond words – a brilliant concept by Mahler, and one that allows Bychkov to call again upon the tremendous expressiveness of which the Czech Philharmonic seems to possess an unending supply. The gentle opening of the finale restores the quietude of the nonverbal second and third movements, but in a new context and almost at the length of the first movement. Placidity is what Bychkov emphasizes here, but this is not the simple acceptance of existence of the second movement: this is the fulfillment of the striving of the fourth movement and the promise of the fifth, turning this vast canvas from a natural-world-centered one into one with a distinctly human focus – until the very end, when Mahler shows that the two disparate portraits of the world are really one and the same, and Bychkov allows the first-movement-echoing music to burst forth in a resplendent D major with beauty and joy and an affirmation that everything, everything, is pervaded by love (if not always peace) that “passeth all understanding.” It is a wonderfully knowing and poised conclusion to an absolutely first-rate performance that displays tremendous understanding of Mahler’s messaging and of the way the composer not only includes the entire world in his Symphony No. 3 but also produces a work of pervasive “style and deep logic” subsumed within an emotional landscape of surpassing beauty, meaning and tenderness.