Symphonie No.1: II. Kraftig Bewegt, Doch Nicht Zu Schnell
Symphonie No.1: III. Feierlich Und Gemesen, Ohne Zu Schleppen
Symphonie No.1: IV. Sturmisch Bewegt
Leonard Bernstein had a reputation for getting slower, heavier, and more portentous as his interpretations matured. Well, here's the disc that gives the lie to the myth. This sunny, superbly played, magnificently recorde... more »d performance captures Bernstein at his uninhibited best. Where his first recording seemed at times contrived and lacking in flow, this version has all of the naturalness, charm, and grace of a spring morning. The third-movement funeral march, here taken at a very fast tempo, has exactly the character of cartoon music that Mahler intended--this performance has its tongue firmly in its cheek. Given the fact that the Concertgebouw is one of the world's great Mahler orchestras, the result is without question the finest modern version of the symphony--period. --David Hurwitz« less
Leonard Bernstein had a reputation for getting slower, heavier, and more portentous as his interpretations matured. Well, here's the disc that gives the lie to the myth. This sunny, superbly played, magnificently recorded performance captures Bernstein at his uninhibited best. Where his first recording seemed at times contrived and lacking in flow, this version has all of the naturalness, charm, and grace of a spring morning. The third-movement funeral march, here taken at a very fast tempo, has exactly the character of cartoon music that Mahler intended--this performance has its tongue firmly in its cheek. Given the fact that the Concertgebouw is one of the world's great Mahler orchestras, the result is without question the finest modern version of the symphony--period. --David Hurwitz
Kenji Fujishima | East Brunswick, NJ USA | 06/03/2004
(4 out of 5 stars)
"This, Leonard Bernstein's second official recording of Mahler's witty First Symphony, has often been called a reference edition by many, but I've always thought that the whole was better than the sum of its parts. The first and fourth movements as performed here are indeed tremendous. In the former, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (exquisite all throughout) help bring Mahler's burgeoning spring to vivid life, and its conclusion is powerfully joyful. In the latter, Bernstein lets rip with his typically acute sense of drama, with every expressive nuance conveyed, and the coda never fails to exhilarate. That may be enough for some listeners to agree with the hype surrounding this recording. Still, for me, the inner movements have always been problematic, interpretation-wise. I've never been convinced by Bernstein's reading of the second movement Landler, just too slow and heavy-footed for my taste. And as for the third movement... This is one of Mahler's wittiest creations, a parodistic funeral march to the tune of "Frere Jacques," with elements of a Jewish cafe band thrown into the mix, as well as a beautiful pastoral section in the middle of it all. In this performance, Bernstein decides on an opening tempo for this movement that hardly suggests a funeral march at all, and while I recognize his attempt to accentuate the parody element that Mahler calls for, the fast tempo kinda destroys what is so witty and delightful about the movement in the first place. Other readings---Kubelik's, for example, in his 1968 DG recording---are more subtle with the humor of this third movement, and thus much closer to Mahler's intentions.Ok, so the second & third movements don't quite convince---but since the performances of the first & fourth movements here are so good, I think this oft-acclaimed Bernstein reading of Mahler's First Symphony is worthy of the four stars I'm giving it here. I still find it uneven, but even the unsuccessful elements are not necessarily without reason. Maybe you just have to get used to them."
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Its first performance was in Budapest in November 1889, received by many critics with varying degrees of confusion and consternation resulting from their failure to understand it, "my time has not come yet" Mahler was reported to have said in later years. Indeed it did come forty years after his death in 1911.
1889 was the year when Dvojak's symphony No. 4 was born. Renoir finished his "Girls picking flowers'' a marvelous French painting and Van Gogh produced his "Man with a Pipe" and "The Olive Grove" beautiful Dutch paintings. Tchaikovsky gave us his ballet music - 'the sleeping Princess". Also Eiffel completed his tower at Paris - the mammoth 985 feet high, and, in the USA, they erected Tacoma building in Chicago; a 13 storey's high, the first sky-scrapper ever.
Gigantic works provided by Perfectionists as they were.
Titans - offspring of heaven and earth.
Mahler was no exception. In fact he was a perfect fit and his conducting skills attest the intellectual honesty of the man.
Leonard Bernstein`s interpretation of "Titan" succeeded in creating that illusion, with such imaginary reality, without which very little can only be achieved
To conduct Mahler's First Symphony is heroic, more so to perform a task that I am sure, Mahler had his lives challenges to be able to bring to its happy conclusion - alone.
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An electrifying Mahler 1
Yi-Peng | Singapore | 11/13/2000
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Bernstein's recording of Mahler's 1st and most easily-accessible symphony is one of the best recordings available today. Though Bernstein was in the twilight of his career, especially with idiyosyncratic performances of core works, his affinity with this symphony shines perfectly here. This time he has the charges of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, who play as if they have the music in their blood, having recorded this work twice with Haitink for Philips during the stereo era, and the DG recording is excellent on every level, with every minute detail keenly captured and a sense of atmosphere well-felt.From the first bars of Wagnerian spaciousness, one is totally spellbound by the music-making. Bernstein cunjores up the atmosphere of an early morning in natural surroundings, with far-off fanfares and bird-calls well-brought out. The tempo quickens with the sonata-form allegro section, which is extremely sunny, and depicts the wayferer's early-morning walk well. The Scherzo sounds extremely rustic, and the landler middle section sounds neatly charming. The gaitey of the first two movements are abruptly halted by the third movement, which has never sounded more menacing or foreboding, and the funerial march parody is enough to shock many a liatener at the world-premiere. But in the finale, Bernstein really lets all hell break loose for the stormy, fierce, tempestuous primary theme, but makes the secondary theme wildy romantic. The frission-raising coda crowns the performance, and a hair-raising performance of this work at the same timeOverall, if there was one CD of Mahler's 1st symphony that you should buy, this should be a clear first-choice. It deserves more than the customary three stars from the Penguin Guide, but a Rosette as well."
Very erratic - For Bernstein fans only
Mike G. | Cincinnati, Ohio | 12/27/2009
(2 out of 5 stars)
"I've had mostly negative feelings about this recording for a long time, but I decided to give it one more try today, and I will try for now to withhold most of the overt contempt that dominates some of my other Bernstein reviews.
The beginning of the first movement through the end of its exposition is actually ok. Bernstein commits no serious offences that I haven't heard from other conductors, and despite the fact that his pacing seems a little inconsistent, he still elicits a wonderfully atmospheric sound from the Concertgebouw. He takes a leisurely tempo in the exposition that is in line with what Mahler indicates. It's the development that really gets my goat though. In the transition back to the sustained A's in the violins (around Rehearsal 12), Bernstein slows waaay down, and then adopts an uneven range of 50-70 bpm - his tempo for the introduction. Mahler marks 96, a much faster tempo that is more residual of the exposition. Bernstein then has nowhere to go, holding the tempo where it's at through Mahler's numerous requests (Etwas zurückhaltend, ritardando, Immer noch zurückhaltend, Sehr zurückhaltend) to slow down even more. Then, as if to compensate for this, he adopts the tempo of the exposition (about 84 bpm) for the famous horn theme, where Mahler suggests a much slower and mystical 66 bpm. The rest of the movement follows pretty much by the book, i.e. no worse than usual. Here's the problem: this first movement is supposed to be about the awakening of nature and the human spirit. Nature is constantly in flux, and Mahler reflects this in his tempi more than anything else. Rarely is there a measure where the tempo isn't gradually speeding up or gradually slowing down, and this is supposed to create a lot of tension. Bernstein just doesn't seem to grasp this. He is always either at Point A or Point B, never traveling in between, never exercising this tension.
I'm not a fan of Bernstein's tempi in the second movement either. Mahler marks 66 to a measure in the scherzo and 54 for the trio (Walter's early NY Phil recording, Abbado's remake, along with Zander's and Boulez's, are all very close). Bernstein stays around 50-54 and 29-38 respectively, quickly dispatching any sense of 'Kräftig bewegt' that the orchestra may have had before then. This is one of the slowest second movements on record. Correct me if I'm wrong, but where does Mahler write, "ignore my tempi suggestions completely and play this like a slow landler"? In fact, for that matter, I feel no sense of dance-like quality coming from the Concertgebouw anyway. It's just too stiff. Where's the rubato? Where's the Viennese in this movement?
Bernstein does a complete about-face in the third movement, and for the better, I believe. What a nice tempo! Bernstein lets the sarcasm peak through every once in a while, without going overboard. The interpretive norm nowadays is to take the opening much too slowly for Mahler's `ohne zu schleppen' to be realized. It's the middle sections that are supposed to be slower, not the opening. Bernstein recognizes this, and lets the first couple minutes breathe naturally for once. My only complaint is his entirely new and much slower tempo at Rehearsal 17, at which point the music suddenly begins to drag its feet as it disappears into the distance. The Concertgebouw plays excellently in this movement, bringing out Mahler's expressive colorings much better than they do in the second movement. The acid test is at the 'Ziemlich langsam' section, played here with a very sensuous lilt.
The last movement is a tough nut to crack, and again I have mixed feelings about the execution. The fast sections will get your blood racing for sure, but at the same time I feel that the core of the orchestra's sound is a little anemic. It could just be DG's rather dry recorded sound, but there's no way they can account completely for the overly raspy trumpets and rather feeble horn section, which plague Bernstein's Concertgebouw Mahler 9 as well. The strings come to the rescue in the lyrical sections, in a big way, but again, Bernstein doesn't fully commit to Mahler's more subtle tempo changes, opting for more sustained tempi. His interpretive exaggerations come to the fore in this movement as well. For example, the unmarked ritenutos at measures 7 and 22 detract from the momentum that has just been unleashed. His unmarked piu mosso at the end cheapens the grandeur of the victory and leaves no room for Mahler's own accelerando (and how about those bass drum whacks in the last measure??). There are just too many markings throughout the symphony - often relating to tempo but not always - that are either exploited or ignored, and it really adds up. If you aren't a fan of Bernstein's, I would encourage you to shy away from purchasing this as a first recording. There's just too much of Mahler that is absent or skewed. I'm very picky about the 1st symphony, but for what it's worth, my current favorite is Ben Zander's epic recording with the Philharmonia on Telarc. He is very extroverted in expression, like Bernstein, but in a way that is often more in line with Mahler's own thoughts in the score."
Track Listings (4) - Disc #1
