Mahler: Symphony No.4

The potent personal charisma of Valery Gergiev is obviously well-suited to powerhouse classics – think only of his profoundly savage interpretation of Igor Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps to get an idea of his capacity for ferocity – but he might not seem on first consideration to be the right conductor for lighter works in the symphonic repertoire, such as the Symphony No. 4 in G major of Gustav Mahler.

If you can get past the 1940s monaural sound (and if you are not already familiar with this performance, you will get a shock). This is the gentlest, most right sounding rendition I have ever heard. The tempi are uncommonly brisk, though they never sound that way. The third movement has never sounded more beautiful. Halban is perfect in the finale. Walter passed away before he could record this work in stereo. His later performances were very different and I'm still not sure whether or not his later slower tempos and even greater expression were an improvement.

The DVD is a killer invention suited to a killer musical program. It is helpful to our understanding the drama of opera, movies, and symphonic works performed by a symphony orchestra. It is easy to see how “catching on” to an opera (or a feature film) depends on the body language and facial expressions of the players. It’s more difficult to explain how a video representation of an orchestra at play helps us “get” a mostly auditory experience. Some people use orchestral music to fall asleep by, after all. Others like to watch the byplay of the musicians, how they hand off to one another. Some insist watching an orchestra play is as exciting as watching jazz musicians play off one another. How does this work?

When the Bamberg Symphony and their principal conductor Jakub Hrůša went on tour in Germany with Mahler’s Fourth Symphony in January 2020, no one would have thought that this symphony in particular would become a kind of “symphony of fate” of the year, for only two months later, the performance of major symphonic works was impossible for a long time after the “corona lockdown” in Germany, which hit cultural institutions particularly hard.