Mahler - Symphonien 2 • 10 [Adagio] (B.Bonney • M.Phillips • Atlanta Symphony Orchestra - Y.Levi) - 2002

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Mahler - Symphonien 2 • 10 [Adagio] (B.Bonney • M.Phillips • Atlanta Symphony Orchestra - Y.Levi) - 2002

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Yoel Levi’s Mahler has been a mixed bag: marvelous versions of Symphonies Nos. 4 and 6, a good but not great No. 1, and a dull 5 and 7. The Second is one of the great ones, though, a performance of the type that Bruno Walter or George Szell would have appreciated. It will not appeal to those who need their Mahler to sweat blood, and Levi is not the kind of conductor who makes his interpretive points through attention-getting tempo adjustments and exaggerated string portamentos. Rather, his personal touch reveals itself in scrupulous attention to dynamics, care with instrumental balances, and finely honed ensemble. Such an approach always risks blandness, if only because the result can sound effortless just when the music needs to express tension and a sense of strain; but when it works, as here, it can offer more sheer musical satisfaction and staying power than many more demonstrative efforts.

In order for Levi’s approach to succeed, the orchestral playing must be uniformly stunning, and about that there can be no question. The lower strings really dig into their opening riffs, the brass sound full but never coarse, and the winds play with gorgeous smoothness and attention to the niceties of phrasing and dynamics. Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the first movement (and much of the performance as a whole) is the top-to-bottom transparency of texture, even during the climaxes. This permits all of Mahler’s coloristic detail (the quiet tam-tam strokes, low harp notes, mysterious suspended cymbal sounds) to make the most atmospheric contribution possible, and it helps Levi sustain the music’s tension over the long spans of calmer music. Nor does he underplay the climaxes: the actual point of arrival at the first-movement recapitulation is overwhelmingly powerful, even if a bit more emphasis on those “pesante” brass chords wouldn’t have hurt.

The second movement features wonderfully cultured string playing, beautifully phrased and perfectly nuanced. There’s no attempt to make more of this charming movement than appears on the surface: it’s a lovely interlude. The scherzo features incredible ensemble work by the winds, which pass the music’s kaleidoscopic phrases off between instruments with impressive seamlessness. A little more schmaltz would have added character to the trumpet-led trio, but you can only admire the way Levi manages the ensuing transition back to the initial tempo of the scherzo: it’s an object lesson in how such things should be done. Telarc correctly places the symphony’s last three movements on the second disc, thereby permitting them to be played as Mahler requests, without a break.

Mary Phillips sings her fourth-movement solo sensitively, and how much better the brass playing sounds here than in Chailly’s recent recording, with its awful “stick ‘em off stage” experiment. The finale erupts with tremendous force, and the purely orchestral episodes have plenty of tension and mystery. Levi doesn’t stint on the big percussion crescendos leading to the “dead march”, which in turn has real bite and an inexorable forward thrust. The next episode places the offstage trumpets and percussion very far away, exactly as Mahler requests in fact (their sound “scarcely audible as though borne on the wind”), and they actually do come much closer, again as specified, before the next big climax. It’s smooth sailing from then on: the Atlanta Symphony Chorus has few if any peers today; Barbara Bonney sounds radiant in her solos; and Levi allows the final climax to develop with a wholly natural, unforced grandeur that’s never rushed. The final pages, with crashing tam-tams and excellently balanced organ, set the seal on a superbly musical experience.

If anything, the performance of the Adagio from the Tenth (Ratz edition) is even better. There’s nowhere to hide in this music, no special effects or coloristic devices to deflect the attention from the movement’s pure Mahlerian polyphony. Levi’s performance demonstrates just how superb his Atlanta players are in all departments (how gorgeously those strings play!), and how effortlessly they sustain his very slow (27 minutes) tempo. It all culminates in the single most hair-raisingly intense central climax that this music has ever received, in any performance or edition. Telarc has captured both performances in ideally warm, detailed sound of demonstration quality. There are other ways to play this music, for sure, but of its type this comes about as close to perfection as we’re likely to hear.
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