El Mahler de Claudio Abbado

A ver si retomo este hilo...

Ya había señalado brevemente en el hilo de las integrales que esta Segunda (incluida en la segunda integral mahleriana de Abbado) es muy interesante, superior a la lectura digital con la Filarmónica de Viena, pero que no superaba los registros anteriores con la misma Filarmónica de Viena (mono) o el con Chicago en DG.

La crítica estuvo dividida por esta Segunda. Ya pasados sus años, podríamos concluir que no remece la discografía, pero que presenta momentos bien notables. Para un servidor, lo mejor está al final. Pero en fin, de eso hablarán un par de reseñas profesionales.

Lo que quisiera destacar esta vez es el hecho de que esta Segunda se presentó en una edición de vídeo absolutamente novedosa en su momento. Antes de esta Segunda, los vídeos oficiales de esta sinfonía eran los de Bernstein-LSO, Haitink-Concertgebouw y Haitink-BP. Todos ellos bien notables y probablemente superiores a este intento de Abbado, pero lo que hace que esta Segunda sea quizá la Resurrección más vista en pantalla sea la calidad técnica y su nuevo estilo de filmación. Más allá de las cualidades técnicas de la pantalla en 16:9, de su sonido, de su detalle (que mejora en su edición de Blu-ray), es el manejo de cámaras y la edición a cargo de Michael Beyer: Más natural que los teatrales enfoques de Burton con Leny o de los impersonales manejos de los videos con Haitink. Con Beyer, la cámara nos inserta con desparpajo en medio de la orquesta, la sigue a ella ya su director con criterio más musical que cinematográfico. Quizá sea por ello que es el vídeo de Mahler que más he visto.

Esta Resurrección no remece la discografía mahleriana, pero sin duda marca un hito en la filmación de la música de conciertos que me parece que ya hace escuela.

A 2003 concert by the Lucerne Festival Orchestra led by Claudio Abbado (DG, 2 full-priced CDs) is far more bold. I must admit with some shame that I bought this out of morbid curiosity to see how Abbado’s near-fatal bout with cancer had affected his artistry. Claudio Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra (DG) As perverse as it might sound, the fact is that confrontations with mortality transformed artists like Dinu Lipatti and Ferenc Fricsay to produce transcendent performances that boosted their perception even beyond the extraordinary levels they had previously attained. After all, the sheer knowledge that a performance of a work is likely to be his last charges an artist with heightened responsibility and can endow the result with a special aura. An earlier Abbado Berlin Mahler Ninth was of staggering insight and intensity, as perhaps could be expected, given the extreme sense of identification fostered by the conductor's and the composer’s mutual awareness of impending doom. The Lucerne Resurrection, while deeply heartfelt, takes a different turn, consonant both with the work's fundamentally youthful character, as well as the nature of the Lucerne ensemble, essentially a temporary collection of top-flight players from European orchestras during their summer vacation season. The Mahler is preceded by a La Mer that is both fascinating and disconcerting, as the balances are so often skewed from those we have come to expect – the climactic end of the first movement sneaks up with a woodwind onslaught that so dominates the texture as to obscure the intricate detail of Debussy’s complex orchestration. And so with the Mahler, where the individual lines tend to be spotlighted and entire sections break away from the ensemble. Unlike Pablo Casals’ Marlboro Festival Orchestra, a similar summer assembly of superstars who sublimated their egos into cohesion, the Lucerne group is based on chamber music principles, with successive solo displays creating a constant dynamic excitement of emerging and receding highlighted details. For those familiar with the work, this approach certainly is unique and can be either refreshing or disturbing, perhaps both. Surely Abbado was sorely tempted to sieze this opportunity to attempt a definitive reading of a work whose complexity all but defies such an approach, but rather, to his lasting credit, he chose for his final journey with the Resurrection to take it down a wholly new, untravelled and visionary path.

The performance of Mahler’s Second is also a revelation. Recalling perhaps most closely a superlative Mahler Second which Abbado gave with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1968 (and available occasionally on unofficial labels) it has a searing quality that is largely missing from the two performances he recorded for DG earlier in his career. It is not that Abbado has radically rethought the work – he eschews, for example, any of the changes introduced into the new Kaplan edition - it is rather that the flaws which mar his other recordings (notably a slackness of pace) are here almost entirely overwritten. What is notable about this latest performance is its tension – at times quite unyielding – and the enormous span over which Abbado is able to sustain it. Tempi are markedly different than earlier – the second movement moves with much more alacrity (some may find it too brisk) – and the power which he brings to the final movement is compressed and cumulative. In short, this is a supremely well balanced reading. This is also a performance that rages like a furnace – climaxes are constantly ignited by fire – and one that has natural and unforced spontaneity to it. So secure is the playing – and this is one of the best played performances of any Mahler symphony you will hear – that Abbado is able to concentrate on mastering the evolution of the symphony without having to focus on matters of ensemble. To paraphrase Albrecht Mayer again, this was a performance where both orchestra and conductor were unified in their conception of the work.

Some (most) performances on record benefit from a detailed dissection of how a conductor shapes each movement, but Abbado’s Mahler Second is one of the rare examples of a performance that should be listened to, and written about, in its entirety rather than critically taken apart. This is a visionary performance that from the savagery of the opening movement’s ’cellos and basses (and they are absolutely thrillingly played) to the power and apotheosis of the vast finale’s closing pages has a single unbroken thread running through it. One could point out numerous individual instances – the ‘humming’ strings at Fig 5 in the first movement, the perfect glissandi at Fig 23 in the Ländler, the apocalyptic crescendo at Fig 50 in the third movement, the unhidden – and unabashed - terror at Fig 8 after the final movement’s opening explosion – that separate this performance from others. However what one is constantly aware of throughout the trajectory of this reading is what Mahler himself thought when he heard the symphony: ‘One is battered to the ground and then raised on angels’ wings to the highest heights.’ Both Abbado’s soloists and chorus are equal partners in helping to achieve this.

The KKL concert hall in Lucerne – one of the most magnificent in the world - provides almost the ideal ambience in which to record this symphony and DG’s recording is indeed full bodied and unrestricted. Climaxes are natural and focused. Depth of sound and transparency of texture are cleanly heard. They add bloom to performances that are second to none and make this one of the most remarkable discs of either work to acquire.

Esta Segunda desde youtube