Sparkling Minnesota Nights in Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 “Take Away” ResMusica

More details

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911): Symphony No. 7. Minnesota Orchestra, conductor: Osmo Vänskä. 1 SACD hybrid BIS Records. Recorded at Orchestra Hall in Minnesota, United States, in November 2018. Record in English, German and French. Duration: 77:30

BIS Records
–

The sixth milestone in Mahler’s complete symphonies by Osmo Vänskä and American training is the most successful of the series. Served by a remarkable sound recording, the Finnish conductor’s reading places the work halfway between the twilight of romanticism and the dawn of the expressionist. A choice assumed with magnificence.

“It’s Nature roaring! »Says the composer when he talks about the first movement of the symphony. Vänskä steps quietly into this limping machinery colored by the tenor horn (saxhorn). The rhythmic progression is unstoppable in the dense grain of the first violins and an orchestra magnificently captured in the depth of the desks. The necessary hesitations are hardly marked and the vibrato of the strings gives a length of sound, a natural elegance to this music which unfolds slowly and without massiveness. Vänskä avoids all the pitfalls, the worst of which is triviality without justification. It recreates a Viennese walk that is larger than life. The flexibility of the orchestra which reacts to the slightest inflections of the direction translates this curious sensual abandonment thwarted by an inexorable pointed rhythm.

Vänskä chooses to open the first Nachtmusik not like a grandiose curtain raising, but in a rather intimate and above all noisy atmosphere. The brass are in the background. The march is illustrated by multiple interventions which distract from its deeply grotesque character. Here is a version overloaded with colors and intentions which we expect in each sentence, a new element of seduction. An alpine hike without the shadow of danger!

“Ghostly” (schattenhaft), the Joke unfolds like a “slippery” waltz in the Ravelian sense and just as much as a half-open and terrifying door on expressionism. This movement, perhaps the most avant-garde in all of Mahler’s writing, is rendered with seductive finesse. However, the sound potential of the orchestra seems contained. We would have liked the evil spirits to “howl” and revolt rumbles among the specters. To be honest, that the perfect balance and the beautiful sound without pathos are not imposed so easily. However, the show remains grandiose with American brass instruments that sound like the Chicago Symphonic of the great era.

The mandolin and the guitar united to the two harps color the second Nachtmusik. From this Italian serenade, a parody of love and polychrome, Vänskä composes a chamber and pointillist ballad. His apparent ingenuity evokes the finale of the Symphony No. 4, without the presence of the soprano. The conception is of a “baroque” vein, the soloists being free to breathe at their convenience. Vänskä thus achieves a pure atmospheric page, which loses a little of its density in the center of the movement, a density fortunately restored by the first violins. The interpretation remains consistent with the three previous movements.

How to organize the sonorous fair of the finale which brings forth so many varied refrains under the pulsation of the timpani and the brass? In this page made up of delicate collages to be isolated by the listener, with the notable exception of Master singers by Wagner, the orchestra plays on the flexibility of the pulsation. It carries all the desks and especially those of the woods particularly concentrated in a saturated sound space. Vänskä offers a surrealistic landscape whose composite elements he lets slip, balancing his interpretation between a deceptively superficial theatricality and a demonstration of power. It is a great skill and justifies that this version joins the discographic references of Bernstein, Gielen, Tennstedt, Haitink, Solti and Sinopoli.