Mahler: Symphony No. 9 in D major (Philharmonia Orchestra / Esa-Pekka Salonen) [CD]

Salonen has done it again...Breathed new and refreshing life into an old war horse. I saw him do it at one of his last performances at Disney Hall with Beethoven's 5th Symphony, and I have heard his magic at work again on this recording. Salonen has thoroughly cleaned, polished and oiled Mahler's brilliant and wonderful 9th into an even more beautiful, modern-sounding piece. Every instrument shines. Every single note sparkles. Salonen has carefully sculpted the 9th down to its pure essence, allowing the listener to hear clearly what Mahler is saying. What this symphony is saying to me is that it is a summing-up of life through whimsical memories and sober reflection. The joy and sadness we experience. The lovely and the frightening. The tender moments and the tragedies, the hopes and resignations, etc. An honest appraisal of our journey through this fascinating existence. I wish I had the musical vocabulary to express just how perfectly this 9th forms and plays and finally subsides. Other versions of Mahler are weighted down too heavily, and often are muddied or muffled or even flabby. Salonen lets the melodies and harmonies radiate the warmth and wisdom of the composer by doing away with such excesses as heavy orchestration and/or slower tempos. This complex symphony is stated fluently, clearly and elegantly by Salonen. I predict that this recording will win Mahler many new fans. Stepping-in to conduct Mahler's 3rd at short notice brought Salonen instant fame at the beginning of his career. Salonen proved then and shows again now, that he has an intuitive sense about Mahler. I hope Salonen wants to continue exploring through the cycle. Comments from more experienced Mahler listeners who can direct me to other Mahler symphonies that are presented in a Salonen-like way would be welcomed and appreciated. I know he has already recorded the 3rd and 4th. I am very much impressed with the 6th by Boulez (Vienna) and Chailly's version of the 10th. Chailly's version of the 8th has moments of indescribable beauty. So again, I look forward to some guidance from more experienced Mahler listeners.

A review of this concert performance in June, 2010 made an astute observation, I think, when he said that Salonen plays the Mahler Ninth more as prophetic music than nostalgic. Although he has made only a handful of Mahler recordings in the past three decades, Salonen's readings make a strong impression for exactly the same reasons as Szell's equally cool and dispassionate accounts did: there is dazzling clarity, detail, and orchestral virtuosity. But Salonen is warmer and more urgent in the Ninth than Szell ever was. The score is actually interpreted rather than ex-rayed. Having taken the performance n tour, the Philharmonia gives a lived-in reading that couldn't be bettered, really, when it comes to accuracy and balance. Signum provides equally impressive, very detailed sound that carries us close, right next to the conductor's elbow.

At 25 min. the first movement has many propulsive moments, and from the almost matter-of-fact way that the opening theme is uttered, one senses that Salonen isn't going to micro-manage the phrasing. His interest is in the titanic sound world of the Ninth, not in Mahler's emotional conflicts. As in his highly successful Sony recording of the Third, Salonen works on such a huge canvas that unfolding cross-rhythms, inner detail, and swirling colors works to stupendous effect.

The Scherzo is such a wide-ranging parody of folk dances that it doesn't work if taken too straight (as Klemperer, for all his Mahler credentials, did). Salonen doesn't aim to be witty or sarcastic, but his quick-footed reading doesn't come off as poker-faced because, as in the first movement, he displays the brilliance of Mahler's orchestration in amazing detail - I doubt that I can remember a rival who comes close. You keep being reminded that it takes great focus on the part of conductor and orchestra to carry off such a feat. All the more because the basic tempo is often quite fast. The same concentration is applied to the Rondo-Burleske, which makes up for lack of savagery through virtuosity.

Salonen had me holding my breath up to this point, but with some anxiety about the final Adagio, where the most emotional interpretations are inevitably the most moving. the slightest hint of impatience or coldness is a serious flaw. Here Salonen's use of subtlety to keep the line moving in one beautiful arc saves the day. His overall timing of just under 24 min. could deprive the music of emotional depth, but it doesn't. He never leans in too hard or forces the sentiment. You find yourself marveling that such familiar music can be sustained in long paragraphs. There are very few Mahler performances that succeed almost entirely on objective grounds like this, but Salonen's Ninth is one, a triumph of technical achievements o every front.

After spinning this disc, I quickly found myself thinking that this is the sort of reading of the Mahler ninth symphony that, perhaps, the failed Pierre Boulez disc w Chicago SO may have aspired to be. The Philharmonia of London is playing at top form. The recording sound is good, too, though at these high levels of instrumental expertise, one may belatedly wish that we had this reading in SACD multiple channels. Lacking that, I still enjoyed this single disc version of the symphony to such an extent that it easily finds space on the keeper shelves.

Salonen's take on this gigantic work may raise eyebrows, and as one reviewer here has put it, get demerits for being 'too cool' in Mahlerian angst. I really, really like lots of Weltschmerz overall in Mahler, and the ninth symphony is no exception. What Salonen and the PO London serve up has enough size, dimension, and complexity that it kept me involved throughout. My single disc benchmarks for the M9 started w Barbirolli w Berlin, and evolved from there. I typically like the two-disc readings by, say, Wyn Morris, James Levine, Sanderling, Klemperer, and others. Yet some single disc readings do have staying power. Salonen's may be among the keepers, even though I would never, ever want this single disc outing to be my only Mahler ninth.

Tempos are on the faster side, and the musical flow is always moving forward under Salonen. The balancing of textures is so clear that at times the instrumental playing across band departments seems etched in fine lead crystal, ringing like crystal in many Mahlerian moments. The five-tempo polyphony of the first movement is simply so expertly handled, given Salonen's frame, that it might sound too easy, and to that extent, too cool or less than committed, involved. What rescues me from hearing the first movement as only less instead of more, is simply the tremendous virtuosity of the orchestra. Intervals are so clear and clean that an endless flood of intense tonal colors seems available, and as if tone color were not enough, one also begins to hear a fascinating intensity of musical concentration. No, Salonen and the band are not at all taking a heart on sleeve approach. For that I would spin Wyn Morris or James Levine or whomever. But the intellect that reveals, shapes, paces, and culminates throughout the first movement's grand polyphony has a lot of heart, taken on its own particular terms. To my hearing, that heart, color, and intensity are nearly intolerably exquisite at times, not least because the ear catches the whole music so lit with a burning pallette. Salonen's glacier ice sheets burn, burn, burn.

The two middle inner movements are fine in their own ways, though the polyphony is so constant that one can feel exhausted by the profound xray vision that seems to expose everything in the music, without necessarily taking sides ... for a texture over a main theme, for a sardonic or gut-wrenching lyric over the movement's big pictures, or over the ninth symphony's big pictures as a whole.

Come the final movement, Salonen stays on his chosen musical path. The virtuoso band players ramp it up a few notches, if that is possible. One aspect of that gifted superlative comes across as a sort of touch of relaxing, letting go just a very, very little. An ache throbs in those final movement long lines, that was not pulsing quite so vividly in the three prior movements. The forward motion never really stops, however, so part of the sense of grief, mortality, inevitability of farewell may stem simply from the excruciating melodies, laden with such implicit feeling or meaning, still intertwining, still dwarfing in shape and pain, an individual listener. One almost frightening aspect of this reading seems to really come through in the final movement, gangbusters. To my ears Salonen is enacting sonic and musical perspectives, as masterfully in his way, as I tend to associate with the von Karajan reading.

This Mahler ninth is a funereal train, destined to leave the station, right from it's finely judged opening bars. The Everyman who has left us is lying in grand state, no doubt, yet all the pomp and circumstance is hardly a softening of the brutal fact that we have lost someone, someone formerly alive, someone formerly much cherished. One may think of John Donne's famous ... "send not to know for whom the bell tolls, ..." if a listener can even partly identify and get wrapped up in this music that Salonen and the band sculpt into fierce, burning ice.

As in every true reading of the symphony, the final movement is well nigh asymptotic in beauty, as in pain; intolerable, except that sooner or later we must all come to grips with how much we love life and love people, in spite of the fragility, transience of all. No matter how beloved. No matter how deeply beautiful.

If a listener gets this Salonen reading with the Philharmonia, London in tip top form, I promise it will never serve as any sort of background music. You spin this one, and if you get it, you will be compelled to hear, listen, attend, and let it speak to you, if not also in you, and finally through you. One does not pull out out the evening paper or a favorite research journal, all that fast after the final pages cease. A listener lingers. If this reading has grabbed you, then you will indeed need time to recover.

Five stars, ... probably not an immense success on all conceivable listening terms, for everybody no matter what ... but a striking musical achievement in virtuoso orchestra playing, as well as in a certain modernist reading that is completely organized in George Szell-like clarity and open air exposure. Five stars.