Mahler: Symphony No. 2. Wiebke Lehmkuhl, contralto; Nikola Hillebrand, soprano; MDR-Rundfunkchor Leipzig and Sinfonieorchester Basel conducted by Markus Poschner. Prospero. $22.99 (2 CDs).
Bach: Cello Suites (complete). René Schiffer, cellos. AVIE. $26.99 (2 CDs).
Meticulous attention to detail, especially of pacing and dynamics, consistently marked Markus Poschner’s approach to his very extended and very in-depth consideration of Bruckner – and is now in evidence as he begins a Mahler cycle with a live recording of the “Resurrection” symphony on the Prospero label. The deep-seated spirituality underlying the symphony leads to an eventual proclamation of faith that is both hard-won and freely given to those who believe – a bit of a contradiction in terms that Mahler reflects throughout a symphony whose segments using large orchestra and chorus are counterbalanced by many others of quietude and delicacy. Poschner gets those quieter elements just right, along with the work’s expansiveness. The music really sounds like a funeral cortège in the first four minutes of the opening movement, the leisurely pacing in slower portions strongly contrasting with quicker ones. Quiet sections are very quiet, with Poschner drawing attention to the notable delicacy of Mahler’s scoring. The complete silence halfway through this movement is genuinely eerie in its stasis, while the overall impression is of a work in which the bucolic contrasts with the dramatic. Lest there be any question about the pacing that Mahler wanted for the second movement, he specified both Sehr gemächlich, “very leisurely,” and Nie eilen, “never rush.” But the note values themselves require alternating slower and faster sections, an apparent contradiction that is common in Mahler and that Poschner handles with sure understanding of the underlying unity of all the material. Then the third movement starts with a heavy opening timpani stroke that contrasts strongly with the quiet ending of what has gone before. Again Mahler is quite specific in what he wants here, labeling this exceedingly delicate Scherzo (with some contrasting outbursts) both calm and flowing. The music comes from Mahler’s earlier song setting about St. Anthony of Padua’s sermon to the fish, calling up (for those who know that earlier work) the irony that “the sermon was wonderful but they remain the same,” a touch of irony and ambiguity that fits this part of the “Resurrection” symphony well: real change and full affirmation of faith will come later. The fourth movement, Urlicht, is here blessed (no pun intended) with the exceptional contralto voice of Wiebke Lehmkuhl, who is highly expressive at all volumes and, abetted by Poschner’s sensitive accompaniment, carefully explores the genuine emotion of the words. And then calm and peace are shattered by an exclamation from full orchestra that emerges here like sound sweeping a scene clean. What follows communicates a clear feeling of anticipation and yearning. In Poschner’s pacing, the proclamation of the brass at about eight minutes into the movement seems like an invitation to Heaven – but we are not there yet, given the portentous and conflict-ridden passage that follows. It is at this point that the full massive strength of the orchestra comes through – all the more effectively since Poschner has until now focused so much on quieter and more chamber-music-like passages. Although conflict and difficulty now become musically apparent, there is a sense of the music surging always toward peace. Against this backdrop, the very, very quiet choral entry is highly effective, and the gradual ascent of volume parallels the long-awaited ascent of the soul. Both soloists – Lehmkuhl and soprano Nikola Hillebrand – emote with great feeling; they are at their best when singing together. Poschner reserves another elegantly managed dip into the nearly inaudible right after the word auferstehn just five minutes before the end of this 84-minute performance. The result is that the very loud final chorus is all the more affirmative and effective. The interpretation, orchestral and vocal performances, and very fine sound on this two-CD release bode very well indeed for Poschner’s future plans for Mahler performances and recordings.
Huge instrumental vocal and instrumental forces are scarcely necessary for heartfelt expressions of belief and religious fervor: a single instrument can be more than enough. And that is what Bach used in his six Cello Suites, according to some out-of-the-box thinking by René Schiffer, who has been principal cellist of the Apollo’s Fire period-instrument ensemble since the group was founded in 1992. As an instrumental performer, Schiffer is one heck of a writer – and conversely, as a writer, he is one heck of a cellist. He makes all this clear in his essay on the Bach Cello Suites, even as he obscures, mostly deliberately, some of what he is saying. Schiffer clearly has fun with prose, and sometimes with trotting out remarks intended mostly to showcase a mixture of erudition and devil-may-care thinking: “Linda Ronstadt would not have been caught dead singing an American standard the way she learned from Maria Callas’s recordings to sing Puccini.” It is not always easy to know when Schiffer is being serious and when he is kidding his audience, as when, in writing about Suite No. 6, he talks about a third minuet “found in a recently discovered manuscript (unknown because I found it myself and have not told anyone about it yet).” Levity (or potential levity) aside, Schiffer has an intriguing view of the Cello Suites as being an instrumental tracing of the life of Christ, and he points to specific musical examples that, in his view, support that thesis. This makes it crucial to perform the suites exactly as their sequence is numbered, which is not the order in which many recordings present them (although this two-CD set from AVIE, of course, does so, following Schiffer’s determination). Yet if Schiffer is right about the underpinning he suggests – and it is certainly true that religion imbues everything in Bach – he is oddly unwilling to match Bach’s supposed “framing tale” with the trappings of the composer’s own time. Importantly in this regard, he uses the modern pitch standard of 440 Hz as his basis “because my instruments sound better in high pitch,” a somewhat shallow remark (and specious argument) that creates an unresolved conflict between “sounds better” and “sounds right” in terms of Schiffer’s approach. Also – and this is highly unusual – instead of merely opting for a violoncello piccolo with a fifth string for Suite No. 6, as has become customary in historically aware performances (and, by the by, helps support the “life of Christ” thesis musically), Schiffer uses that instrument for Suite No. 5 as well – and in scordatura tuning – simply because he feels like it: “I discovered that on my five-string violoncello piccolo…this suite sounded much more transparent.” Well, that is akin to the old “if Bach had had a Bechstein he would have written for piano” notion, or indeed to any argument for playing Bach on instruments that did not exist in his time – or, in Schiffer’s instrument’s case, on one that did exist but that Bach chose not to use in Suite No. 5. And does Schiffer really think the change of instrument somehow bolsters his theory about the Christ’s-life nature of the Cello Suites? What he writes is a blend of the fanciful with the thoughtfully analytical, so it can be hard to know how seriously to take some of what Schiffer says: does he believe it all himself? In reality, the "truth" of Schiffer’s notion of the undergirding of the Cello Suites is not especially significant – it is a guiding light, and every performer needs one. If it deepens the interpretation and thus the listening experience, then objective “right” or “wrong” scarcely matters. What does matter here, with or without the elaborate religious subtext that Schiffer suggests, is the sheer excellence of the performance of every individual movement of every one of the suites, and the feeling that Schiffer manages to convey that even though each collection of movements stands on its own, everything is intricately interrelated and part of a larger whole. It may be just as well to leave aside possible extramusical meanings, interesting or questionable instrumental choices, and clever if deliberately abstruse commentary, such as Schiffer’s remark that performing Suite No. 6 on a four-stringed cello is “somewhat the equivalent of playing Saint-Saëns’ Rondo capriccioso on the erdu.” What truly matters, what Schiffer offers musically, is sumptuous tone throughout a beautifully played, well-considered, elegantly presented, somewhat quirky presentation of music whose foundational meaning may be a matter of interpretation but whose spectacular beauty and felt-if-not-fully-understood significance emerge with full force from hands and instruments wielded with the tremendous skill and thoughtfulness that Schiffer possesses and that he so generously shares through this always-engaging recording.
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