Mahler’s Eighth Symphony
Leif Segerstam
The Eighth is so long and diffuse that most conductors end up not so much interpreters as traffic cops. A maestro doesn’t have much chance to show off his individual style when this unmanageable horde of musicians must somehow be held together for more than an hour and a half. Without an iron grip, the endlessly shifting combinations of choirs and instruments wander out of phase; none of the many, many crescendos registers as more than an indistinct blare; and the long stretches of development sink into a kind of becalmed bustle. Everyone onstage and in the audience grows increasingly bored and angry at the thought of how much of the score remains to be played–thousands of bars stretch out before them like a jammed multilane highway.
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Horenstein isn’t a name most classical listeners will know. He came out of the great European tradition of conducting–he worked for a while for Wilhelm Furtwängler–but somehow never made it into a prestige position. Instead he spent his long career (from the 40s until his death in 1973) as a perennial guest conductor at a lot of outback orchestras–a kind of wandering master craftsman of the conductor’s guild, dazzling Hicksville with a little maestro glitz. As a result, most of his recordings, which are strewn across a bunch of esoteric or defunct labels, are defaced by inferior orchestral playing or worse sound engineering. But here and there are flashes of glory: a superb set of Rachmaninoff piano concertos with Earl Wild, a furious ride through Liszt’s A Faust Symphony–and some astonishing recordings of Mahler.
The challenge for conductors–assuming they get all the cherubs to keep the beat–is to find some kind of edge in Mahler’s uncharacteristic sweetness. Ordinarily such a metaphysically heroic subject would call out Mahler’s most tumultuous dissonances, his grandest salvos of sheer noise. But throughout he maintains a deliberate tonal delicacy, avoiding harsh transitions and unharmonious crescendos, as though he were building an Everest of cotton candy.
Consider something about Mahler that’s usually forgotten: during his lifetime he was much better known as a conductor than a composer. This is true of many of the greatest maestros. They all think of themselves primarily as composers who fell into conducting as a way to pay the bills. As it happens, very little maestro music other than Mahler’s has made it into the repertoire. There’s a good reason for that: fate was not being cruel when it diverted Furtwängler and Otto Klemperer from a career in composition. But the music of these wannabes bears an intriguing resemblance to Mahler’s in one respect: a fascination with the technical resources of the orchestra.
Segerstam’s advantage is that he’s a conductor who wants to be a composer–he’s recorded 18 of his own symphonies. It also helps that his music is relentlessly dissonant, so he’s not intimidated by Mahler’s most rebarbative exercises. In fact, his take on Mahler is so accepting and exuberant you’d swear he was playing it for laughs. The funeral march of the Fifth Symphony, for instance, is as goofy as cartoon music. But what the hell: how often can you hear a Mahler performance that can legitimately be described as fun?
