Above: Alma and Gustav Mahler
Ben Weaver writes about the 'finale' of his MahlerFest: a performance of composer's 10th symphony by the London Symphony Orchestra led by Sir Simon Rattle at David Geffen Hall.
~ Author: Ben Weaver
Monday May 7th, 2018 - When Gustav Mahler and Alma Schindler married in 1902, Gustav insisted that Alma - who had composed some lieder - that there was only enough room for one composer in their home. Alma acquiesced, giving up composing and becoming a fully supportive wife and mother of two daughters. But she wrote in her diaries: “How hard it is to be so mercilessly deprived of ... things closest to one's heart.”
In 1910, shortly after a triumphant premiere of his 8th Symphony, Gustav Mahler discovered that Alma was having an affair with an young architect, Walter Gropius. Devastated by the discovery he sought the advice of Siegmund Freud, who suggested to Mahler that one problem in their relationship may be that Alma was resentful of being forced to give up composing. Mahler accepted Freud’s advice and began encouraging Alma to begin composing again, even editing some of her music and helping to promote it. That same summer of 1910, while on a break from his duties as artistic director of the New York Philharmonic, Mahler worked on his 10th Symphony. (Finished on his desk were Das Lied von der Erde and Symphony No. 9. Neither would be performed during Mahler’s lifetime.)
Of the 10th Symphony, Christopher H. Gibbs notes in the Playbill, “[Mahler] laid out the entire sweep of the symphony - the melodies, much of the counterpoint and harmony, and various indications of instrumentation. He then went back and started the full orchestration.” Mahler only managed to complete the first movement, most of the second and part of the third - just half of the symphony before returning to New York in October 1910 where he resumed his work with the New York Philharmonic. In late December Mahler complained of a sore throat. On February 21, 1911 - with a fever of 104 F - he conducted his final concert at Carnegie Hall, which included the world premiere of Ferruccio Busoni’s “Berceuse élégiaque.” He was diagnosed with bacterial endocarditis, a disease that people with his heart problem were prone to. The Mahlers boarded SS Amerika on April 8, bound for Europe. By May 11 they reached a sanatorium in Vienna, where he developed pneumonia and slipped into a coma. Apparently hundreds of visitors came to see him to pay their respects. He died on May 18, 1911. Gustav Mahler’s small funeral on May 22 was attended by Arnold Schoenberg, Bruno Walter and Gustav Klimt. On doctor’s orders Alma did not come. Mahler’s tombstone only has his name engraved on it because, Mahler said, “any who come to look for me will know who I was and the rest don't need to know.”
Alma tried to get the 10th Symphony completed. At various times she approached Schoenberg, Shostakovich and Britten, but they all refused. In the late 1950’s a musicologist, Deryk Cooke, began to work on a completion of the score. Using Mahler’s sketches Cooke worked on the symphony on and off for decades, creating more definitive editions as additional Mahler sketches surfaced. In the end - and with Alma Mahler’s blessing of his continued work - Cooke published what he called “a performing edition” in 1976, shortly before his death. His is the most often performed and recorded version of the symphony. It is the one Sir Simon Rattle has performed over 100 times and conducted on the final night of Mahler Transcending with the London Symphony Orchestra, part of the Great Performers at Lincoln Center's series of Mahler’s final three works.
Above: Sir Simon Rattle
The symphony’s first movement, Adagio, the only one Mahler completed, opens with a lengthy, dark melody for unaccompanied violas, before violins pick it up for a new, achingly beautiful melody that’s both sorrowful and romantic. The violins of the LSO played it with so much soul and feeling. Further development leads to a violent climax of a dissonant nine-note chord near the end. The second movement is a Scherzo and it includes a ländler dance.
The rest of the symphony Maestro Rattle played without pausing between movements. The third movement, which Mahler dubbed Purgatorio and orchestrated the first 30 measures of, begins with familiar Mahlerian sounds of dancing violins and bird calls from the winds, reminiscent of several early Mahler works, including some Wunderhorn songs and the 4th Symphony. The following Scherzo is a series of dances including a demonic waltz. Mahler left annotations in the score (not meant for publication) and in this moment he wrote: “The Devil dances it with me.” The waltz settles - only to be interrupted by the shocking military drum, which is then repeated 5 more times at the top of the final movement. This is the drum Alma wrote she and Gustav heard in New York City during a funeral procession for a fallen fire chief. Flutes rise out of the darkness, accompanied by a harp; something reminiscent of the famous Adagietto from the 5th Symphony - a movement Mahler gave to Alma as a love song when they were married. The military drum is heard again and the shocking dissonant chord from the first movement reappears. But calmness returns and a beautiful melody is heard from the violins and harp, and then only the winds, as the symphony begins to fade.
The performance by Simon Rattle and the London Symphony could really not be improved. Sir Simon has made this work a specialty and he conducted it tonight without a score. Once again, extraordinary playing by the LSO and every single member of it deserved the massive standing ovation they received. A shame, of course, that Mahler was unable to finish the symphony. Who knows what wondrous things he would have written if he had time. But Deryk Cooke deserves our thanks for his extraordinary work. Finishing music like this is a thankless task. Just ask Franco Alfano who completed Puccini’s Turandot. Someone once said that Alfano is not the man who finished Turandot, he is the man who Turandot finished. Perhaps what makes Cooke’s work so successful is that he - not being a composer - did not try to finish the symphony, he did not try to add anything to it. And Mahler left enough for Cooke to be able to assemble what he called “a performing edition.” Not intended to be a definitive statement on Mahler, Cooke merely tried to respectfully give us a chance to hear what was and what might have been.
For all of Mahler’s obsession with death - perhaps over-analyzed by all of us - when he did say goodbye to life at the end of the 10th Symphony, he did it in a surprising way: not with anger or pity. The melody played by the fading woodwinds is picked up by the violas; will they conclude the symphony the way they began it? Turns out - no. The whispering violas are rescued by a swirl of the violins: a searing postlude of a ravishing melody finally concludes the symphony. In the annotations in the score Mahler left for himself, here he wrote: “Almschi!” That was his private name for Alma. So it seems that Mahler said goodbye to life not with fear or anger, but with a kiss.
~ Ben Weaver