GEORG
SOLTI & THE CHICAGO
SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Fifteen years
were destined to separate
Georg Solti’s debut as a
guest leader of the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra - at
summer concerts of the
Ravinia Festival - and his
first Orchestra hall
appearance, downtown, as
music director in the autumn
of 1969 The first encounter,
however, in 1954, was
instantaneously productive
of a mutual respect and
rapport that deepened with
each subsequent interim
meeting. No matter who was
resident conductor in
Chicago, or what traditions
variously prevailed whenever
Solti would return as a
guest, the orchestra each
time became his ally-as such
the mirror of a singular
aesthetic temperament in our
time. The precision that
Solti has always demanded in
musical performance (as an
essential for musical
expression) has been his to
command in whatever
capacity, under whatever
circumstances, at whatever
time.
With his
appointment as music
director, thereby continuing
an artistic heritage
hand-fashioned by Artur
Rodzinski (1947-48) and
Fritz Reiner (1953-63), the
alliance of conductor and
orchestra has produced a
synchronous artistry without
parallel in Chicago’s
musical history. By no means
is this said to
underestimate the
achievements of Solti’s
predecessors, without the
finest of them he would not
now have the superlative
assembly at his summons. But
none before him in memory -
and some before him
possessed awesome powers -
could quite persuade the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
to give so eloquently of
themselves at the same time
as they sustained such a
high level of discipline.
Early on this interaction of
a great conductor and a
great orchestra surpassed
such essentially irrelevant
concerns as love for one
another.
Respect and
rapport are the rudiments of
Georg Solti’s astounding
achievement to date in
Chicago, as documented on
these discs for the first
(but surely not for the
last) time. To some persons,
as the years lengthened into
a decade, and beyond, it may
have seemed that the
eventual union of Georg
Solti and the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra was not
meant to be. But to others
of us, the long wait served
instead to whet the appetite
further for what promised,
on each visit, to be an
artistic inevitability - and
has indeed proved to be,
altogether beyond
expectations.
notes by
DERYCK COOKE
Mahler’s whole
life-work as a symphonist
can be described as a search
for an identity - which is
no doubt why his music makes
such a strong appeal to us
today, and especially to the
young.
Symphonic
music before Mahler was
written by composers who
felt themselves part of a
stable environment - men
able to take for granted the
basic assumptions of their
society, if only to rebel
against them. Even Mozart,
who had to struggle so
desperately against the
musical conditions of
eighteenth-century Austria,
did at least have this
immovable wall to beat his
head against in vain. But in
Mahler we find the first
symphonist who represents
that typical modern figure,
the man who is uprooted and
out of his element. As an
Austrian Jew born in
Bohemia, he was technically
a member of the Germanic
civilisation, but he often
used to say, according to
his wife’s memoir of him: ‘I
am three times homeless, as
a native of Bohemia in
Austria, as an Austrian
amongst Germans, and as a
Jew throughout all the
world: everywhere an
intruder, never welcomed’.
In
consequence, there was
nothing stable for him in
any of his environments, and
his work became an
unremitting quest to
discover some stable
attitude with which to
identify himself. This
involved a good deal of
chopping and changing, even
in his everyday life, as
another quotation from his
wife’s memoir shows: ‘It was
... out of the question for
me to say “But Gustav, you
said the very opposite
yesterday” (as he often
did), because he reserved
for himself the privilege of
inconsequence. This
characteristic of his was
often a great shock to me. I
could never be sure what he
thought and felt’. No doubt
Mahler himself couldn’t
always be sure himself,
either.
It is this
which explains that strange
and often-criticised element
of theatricality in Mahler’s
music. Frequently, when he
expresses a certain state of
mind, it is not out of
permanent conviction, but
out of an unconscious need
to identify himself
with that state of mind, to
believe in it passionately
for the moment, in the hope
that it may prove a valuable
one to cling to, and remain
an abiding acquisition; yet
there is always his acute
intellect, unable not to
look on from outside, and
weigh up the situation, and
consider whether the state
of mind is in fact as
valuable and fruitful as it
seems. He struggled with
this situation for long:
only from The Song of
the Earth onwards,
when he was faced with
certain premature death, did
he begin to find his way out
of it, in resigned
reconciliation with the
inescapable transience of
human life. Before that
work, each spiritual world
that he built up over a
period, and embodied in a
symphony, afterwards
vanished, as if it had never
been: each new symphony till
then was a fresh start, a
start from scratch. As Bruno
Walter said: ‘No spiritual
experience, however hardly
won, was ever his secure
possession’.
Aaron Copland
- who admires Mahler’s music
- has taken a more critical
view. ‘The difference
between Beethoven and
Mahler’, he says, ‘is the
difference between watching
a great man walk down the
street and watching a great
actor act the part of a
great man walking down the
street’. It is easy to see
what Gopland is driving at -
the manifest element of
impersonation in much of
Mahler’s music - but he does
not go deep enough to
explain why this should be.
There is nothing superficial
or insincere about Mahler,
but only an underlying
psychological instability.
The real difference between
Beethoven and him is that
between watching a great man
walk down a street in which
he feels himself secure, and
is therefore perfectly at
ease with his greatness, and
watching a great man walk
down a street in which he
feels himself totally
insecure, and is therefore
obliged to act out his
greatness, self-consciously
and defiantly - because he
is scarcely able to credit
it in his heart of hearts,
uncertain whether the street
will not suddenly cease to
be a reassuring background
and become hostile territory
in which he will be an
outcast.
Mahler had to
walk down so many streets,
and felt at home in none of
them; and this is the
fundamental origin of the
almost disruptive contrasts
in his music. With each new
symphony - and sometimes
with each new movement
inside a symphony - we are
taken into a different
world. In each case there is
a passionate, even desperate
identification with a
certain attitude - but only,
in the last resort, for what
it is worth, suddenly the
scene changes, and another
attitude is being identified
with - but again only for
what it is worth. In the
first four symphonies we
find Mahler striving to
identify hirnself with four
different kinds of idealism:
The power of the will
against fate in the first,
the Christian belief in
resurrection in the second,
a dionysiac pantheism based
on Nietzsche in the third,
the indestructibility of
innocence in the fourth.
Into all these symphonies
the youthful lyricism of
Mahler’s early songs enters,
either in instrumental
arrangements or else
actually sung by voices -
the voices of children, or
of adults possessed of a
childlike, trusting faith.
None of these
idealistic worlds proved a
haven to rest in, and the
Fifth Symphony, completed in
1902 at the age of
forty-two, brought a more
than usually determined
wiping of the slate. It
marks the beginning of
Mahler’s full maturity,
being the first of a trilogy
of ‘realistic', purely
instrumental symphonies -
Nos. 5, 6 and 7 - which
occupied him during his
middle period. Gone are the
programmes, the voices, the
songs, and the movements
based on songs, and the
delicate or warm harmonic
sonorities which formerly
brought relief from pain
have been largely replaced
by a new type of naked
contrapuntal texture,
already foreshadowed in
parts of the Fourth
Symphony, but now given a
hard edge by the starkest
possible use of the woodwind
and brass.
In the Fifth Symphony,
although it has no actual
programme, there are two
manifest and utterly opposed
attitudes which are set side
by side, with so little
reconciliation between them
as to threaten the work with
disunity. The Symphony might
almost be described as
schizophrenic, in that the
most tragic and the most
joyful worlds of feeling are
separated off from one
another, and only bound
together by Mahler’s
unmistakable musical
personality, and his
extraordinary command of
large-scale symphonic
construction and
unification.
The first of
the work’s three parts
consists of the two opening
movements: linked
emotionally and
thematically, they explore
to the full the tragic view
of life, and give only a
late and fleeting glimpse of
the opposite view - that of
triumphant life-affirmation.
The first movement is a
black funeral march in C
sharp minor, beginning with
a hollow trumpet fanfare in
the minor mode, which is to
strike in at various focal
points as a kind of iron
refrain. Curiously enough,
this beginning stems from a
passage in the Fourth
Symphony, as though Mahler
wanted to preserve at least
a thread of continuity
between his new ‘realistic’
world and the world of naive
innocence he had just left
behind. The minor-mode
trumpet fanfare had already
appeared at the one really
bitter juncture of the
Fourth - the nightmarish
collapse of the development
section of its first
movement - and at the same
pitch of C sharp minor, far
removed from the movement’s
main tonality of G major:
The opening
movement of the Fifth
alternates its main slow
funeral-march music with
ferocious outbursts of
grievous protest in a faster
tempo; and the first of
these starts with a
three-note phrase
(marked which is
to be the chief means of
unifying the two opening
movements:
The phrase
becomes pervasive, and
towards the end of the
movement it appears in a new
accompanying form, in the
key of A minor which is to
be that of the second
movement:
And this form
of the phrase also pervades
the opening allegm material
of the second movement,
eventually acting as the
starting point-point of its
main theme:
The A minor second movement
is frenetic, and it reverses
the situation of the first:
the ferocious mood of
protest is basic, and there
are slower sections which
are related to the
funeral-march music of the
first movement - not only in
mood, but in some of the
actual thematic material. It
is, however, the phrase X
which is the chief unifying
factor, and at four separate
points it turns to the major
mode which is to dominate
the remaining three
movements of the Symphony.
The first time (Ex. 5a), it
introduces one of the
reminiscences of the first
movement, bringing back the
consoling secondary idea of
the funeral-march music; a
little later (Ex. 5b), it
introduces a cheerful
popular-type march-tune of
deliberate, sarcastic
triviality, a little later
still (Ex. 5c), it flashes
through the prevailing
darkness a vivid blaze of
light which is immediately
eclipsed; and finally, a
good deal later (Ex. 5d), it
brings the climax of the
movement - a noble
chorale-like passage in the
actual key of D
major in which the Symphony
will settle from the third
movement onwards.
It will be noticed that,
from 5b onwards, figure X
rises higher all the time: F
and E flat in 5b, F sharp
and E natural; followed by G
sharp and F sharp in 5c; and
finally, reaching a peak in
D major, A and G in 5d. And
this last passage culminates
in a chorale-like theme,
which looks out across the
rest of the Symphony to the
finale, of which it is to be
the final climax:
For the time
being, however, this too is
eclipsed, and the movement
eventually dies away
shadowily in A minor, the
despairing last word being
with its main theme, based
on the figure X:
 So ends the
tragic first part of the
Symphony. The second part
consists of the third
movement only - the big
Scherzo - and the moment it
begins, the schizophrenic
character of the work
emerges. It completely
contradicts the nihilistic
mood and minor tonality of
practically everything that
has gone before, by
switching to the brilliant
key of D major, and to an
exploration of the joyfully
affirmative view of life,
both of which are to occupy
the rest of the Symphony.
Thus the dark world of Part
I is not gradually dispelled
by a process of spiritual
development: it is abruptly
rejected in favour of a
completely different
attitude. The tragic view of
life is one way of looking
at things, the Symphony
seems to say, and this is
another: the two different
attitudes are always there,
and either or both may be
right - but it is impossible
to reconcile them.
Nevertheless,
since they are being
presented in a work of art -
a symphony - they are
provided with the necessary
musical unification: not
only through the eventual
reappearance of the
chorale-theme of Ex. 6 near
the end of the finale, but
also at the very outset of
this third movement. Part I
of the Symphony, as we have
seen, ended with a
despairing reference to the
main theme of the second
movement (Ex. 7), based on
the chief unifying figure,
X; and if we transpose this
reference from A minor to
the new key of D major (Ex.
8a), it stands clearly as
the basis of the joyous
opening horn-theme of the
new movement which is Part 2
(Ex. 8b - see asterisks).
This Scherzo is a
symphonic Ländler,
with an ebullient
obbligato part for the
first horn-player of the
orchestra. Admittedly, the
waltz-like trio-section
brings a mood of
nostalgia; and there is an
awesome climax with horns
echoing and re-echoing
across mountain distances,
which leads to haunting
music full of sadness and
loneliness. But these
passages have nothing
emotionally in common with
the despairing laments of
the first part of the
work; and in any case,
they are subsidiary to the
excited Ländler music,
which returns all the
time, in rondo fashion,
and eventually brings the
movement to a jubilant
ending. The Scherzo is
really a dance of life,
evoking all the bustle of
a vital existence, as
opposed to the
concentration on the
inevitability of death in
the funeral marches and
ferocious protests of Part
I.
The third
and final part of the
Symphony consists of the
last two movements. First
comes the famous Adagietto
for strings and harp only,
which is a quiet haven of
peace in F major between
the strenuous activity of
the D major Scherzo and
the equally strenuous
activity of the D major
Finale. Pervaded with the
familiar romantic mood of
withdrawal from the strain
and tension of life into
the quietude of the inner
self, the Adagietto
has much in common with
Mahler’s great song Ich
bin der welt abhanden
gekommen (I am lost
to the world), which ends
with the words ‘I live
alone, in my own heaven,
in my love, in my
singing’. And this
movement too is related
symphonically to all that
has gone before, by its
use of the chief unifying
figure, X. Its main theme
can be shown to be based
on the figure, but more
striking is the threefold
quotation of it at the
crucial point when the
movement switches suddenly
to the new and ecstatic
key of G flat major:
Out of this
movement’s quiet retreat,
the Finale emerges
immediately - and
magically. A single
horn-note, like a call to
awake, is answered by a
drowsy echo on the
violins, which is in fact
a repetition of their
last, long-drawn, peaceful
note in the Adagietto:
the Symphony is unwilling
to turn from meditation to
action. The note is A, the
third degree of the Adagietto
key of F major; but it now
stands as the dominant
(fifth degree) of D major,
switching the Finale back
to that main key of the
last two parts of the
Symphony. Various
fragments of cheerful
folk-like melody are given
out straight away by
unaccompanied woodwind
instruments and horn,
providing much of the
thematic material of the
movement. The first quick
one on the bassoon was
taken by Mahler from his
satirical Wunderhorn
song Lob des hohen
Verstandes about the
singing-contest in which
the cuckoo beat the
nightingale because the
donkey acted as the judge;
but the second and third,
on clarinet and bassoon
respectively, may sound
even more familiar in the
present context. They are
in fact speeded-up
versions of the two
separate segments of the
big chorale-theme of the
second movement - as
becomes clearer when,
after the horn has
introduced another idea,
the clarinet plays both
segments continuously (cf.
Ex. 6, figures Y and Z):
The last
four notes of this theme
immediately become the
starting-point of the
Finale’s main rondo tune,
given out by horns and
strings: the mood is again
joyful and exuberant, but
this Finale - like that of
Beethoven’s Eroica
- brings the symphony to a
vital culmination which is
concerned, not so much
with the expression of
particular life-attitudes,
as with the composer’s
artistic joy in symphonic
creation, of building up a
large musical structure.
It thus follows naturally
on the Adagietto,
the haven of recuperation
from life’s turmoil; and
this is further emphasised
by the use of an actual theme
from the Adagietto,
at a quicker tempo, as the
Finale’s second subject.
Mahler’s structure is a
huge one, combining sonata
and rondo, and including,
as part of the opening
group of themes, a fugal
exposition on a bustling
subject. The final climax,
before the Symphony races
away to its cock-a-hoop
conclusion, is a full
restatement of the big
brass chorale introduced
so fleetingly towards the
end of the second movement
(Ex. 7, via Ex. 10).
Ultimately - and
notwithstanding the subtle
unifying power of the
ubiquitous figure X - it
is this explicit
cross-reference between
the most anguished
movement in Part I and the
most joyous movement of
Part 3 which is the main
cross-beam holding
together the dangerously
disparate elements of
total darkness and total
light at either end of the
Symphony.
Mahler’s use
of a phrase from his song
Lob des hohen
Verstandes as a
motive in the Symphony’s
finale, mentioned above,
was the last (and least)
quotation of this kind
that he made. Earlier, he
had drawn on other songs
from the same collection -
the settings of poems from
the German folk-anthology
Des Knaben Wunderhorn
(The Boy’s Magic Horn) -
for whole movements, or
sections of movements, in
his second, third and
fourth symphonies. The
songs on the fourth side
of the present issue, also
from this collection, were
not drawn on for the early
symphonies; though
curiously enough, two of
them were to have faint
repercussions in the Tenth
(much as a phrase from the
last of the Kindertotenlieder,
is hinted at in the finale
of the Sixth). The voice’s
initial yodelling phrase
in Verlorne Müh’ -
in the form it takes at
the opening of the second
verse - is identical with
the initial phrase of the
Ländler-like trio-section
of the Tenth’s first
scherzo; and the sinister
ostinato accompaniment of
Das irdische Leben
has something in common
with the sinister ostinato
accompaniment of the
symphony’s ‘Purgatorio’
movement.
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