Mahler: Symphonie No. 4 Trevor Pinnock

Chamber arrangement by Erwin Stein Soloists Ensemble Mahler: Symphonie No. 4 Trevor Pinnock

Chamber arrangement by Erwin Stein Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble

Claude Debussy (1862 – 1918) q Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune...... 10:39

Gustav Mahler (1860 – 1911) Symphonie No. 4 w Bedächtig, nicht eilen...... 15:59 e In gemächlicher Bewegung, ohne Hast...... 8:53 r Ruhevoll, poco adagio...... 19:39 t Sehr behaglich ...... 9:12

Total Time: 64:38

Recorded St George’s, Brandon Hill, Bristol UK from 16 – 18 Feb 2012

Producer Jonathan Freeman-Attwood | Engineer Philip Hobbs . Post-production Julia Thomas | Design gmtoucari.com . Photography Hana Zushi, Royal Academy of Music Cover Image Weisse Zickzacks, 1922 by Wassily Kandinsky © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2013. ounded in 1918 by (with the assistance of Alban Berg), the Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen F(Society for Private Musical Performances) was an idealistic exercise, born of a reactionary opposition to the increasingly commodified society of post-war Vienna. Its remit was simple: to provide performances of new music at the highest possible level in an artistic ‘safe haven’. As such, the Verein operated as a subscription concert series, which outlawed critics, proscribed applause, and published no programmes, so as to ensure that only works ready to be performed were presented and that audiences attended evenly.

Presented in the concerts was a mixture of solo, chamber and orchestral works, the last of which were either realised in keyboard arrangements or through a sizeable chamber ensemble, typically comprising a handful of wind instruments, a string quintet, harmonium and piano. The works performed were not, however, restricted to the Second Viennese School; rather, Schoenberg was keen to programme any living composers whom he felt exhibited a distinctive voice. This included music by Ravel, Debussy, Reger, Strauss, Mahler and Bartók, amongst many others. Indeed, Schoenberg forbade the programming of any of his own works until the society’s second season.

The idea of a chamber reduction of a large-scale orchestral work was one that fascinated Schoenberg, who argued that stripping away 4 Symphonie No. 4

layers offered fresh perspectives on the composer’s craft. Reductions, necessarily requiring fewer players, were also more affordable options for the financially squeezed Verein. Nevertheless, the Verein ceased meeting at the very end of 1921, owing to the austerity resulting from Viennese hyperinflation.

Published in 1876, Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem, L’après-midi d’un faune (The Afternoon of a Faun), is a sensuous evocation of this mythical half-man, half-goat’s libidinous and sultry daydreaming about a passing group of nymphs. As a young man, Debussy had set one of the poet’s earlier works and would go on to become more intimately acquainted with Mallarmé’s symbolist style through the latter’s weekly artistic soirées – a familiarity that eventually led to Debussy’s musical complement to this erotic text. Thus, in 1892, Debussy started composing a work intended to be the ‘Prélude, interludes et paraphrase finale pour l’après-midi d’un faune’; yet his project was cut short by the competing completion of his celebrated opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, leaving only the Prélude.

This single movement is an examination of orchestral colour, from the singular delicacy of the opening flute’s lingering line, through suggestive swells, to more pungent and reedy pastoralism. Indeed, Saint-Saëns was less than kind about the work, stating that ‘it is . as much a piece of music as the palette a painter has worked from . is a painting’. 5 Both Debussy and Ravel made their own keyboard arrangements of the Prélude (1895 and 1910 respectively), Ravel stating that he would like the work performed at his funeral. The chamber arrangement made for the Verein, whilst often attributed to Schoenberg, actually appears to have been made by another member of the society, Benno Sachs, who had been a student of Schoenberg and acted briefly as the Corresponding Secretary for the Verein. Schoenberg offered clear advice about how to approach such arrangements, which Sachs seems to have followed closely. As a re-orchestration it retains many of the sounds of Debussy’s original, using the span of the piano to fill out gaps in the texture, and the harmonium to sustain missing parts in the winds, additions which add much interest and afford a new coherence and sensuality to the melodic line. Indeed, because the original eschews trumpets, trombones and percussion (apart from the distinctive antique cymbals), this ‘miniaturisation’ does not lose much by way of colour – thanks to inventive substitutions – even if the spectrum of intensity is somewhat diminished. For example, in the opening passage, the clarinet re-enters earlier than in the original, so as to fill in a missing horn line.

A poetic stimulus also underlies Mahler’s Symphonie No. 4, this . time from his formative discovery of the collection of folksongs, . Des Knaben Wunderhorn (‘The Boy’s Magic Horn’) in the late 1880s. The first four symphonies all include references to Wunderhorn, which

6 Gustav Mahler Symphonie No. 4

led Mahler to suggest that they were a quasi-tetralogy, with the fourth as its ‘tapering, topmost tower’.

Certainly, the symphony’s more modest proportions lend themselves to both this description and a chamber arrangement. Omitting both trombones and tuba – even if he had considered their inclusion in . the climax of the slow movement – and content with just triple woodwinds (except the flutes), the relatively benign forces confused the audiences who were just becoming accustomed to Mahler’s big-boned works and original structures. It was also the first of his symphonies to adopt the traditional four movements (the first symphony having originally comprised five).

Although by the end of his life Mahler had dispensed with explicit musical programmes, this symphony is coloured by references. For example, the violin solo in the second movement, with its deliberately sharpened strings, evokes the sound of a folk fiddler, who is perhaps himself some sort of macabre figure, Mahler having labelled the solo in his sketches with the phrase ‘Brother Hain strikes up.’ Similarly, the third movement is a set of variations spelled out through rondo form, the theme of which reminded Mahler of his mother’s ‘sad and yet laughing’ face.

At the symphony’s heart – although not revealed until the final, . fourth movement – is a vocal setting of the Wunderhorn poem . 7 Das himmlisches Leben (‘The Heavenly Life’, although later renamed by Mahler as ‘What the child tells me’), which he had originally intended to be the finale of his third symphony. Its naivety informs each movement, as Mahler tried to capture the ‘undifferentiated blue of the sky’, directing the singer to adopt a ‘childlike, cheerful expression, entirely without parody’. It is this heavenly aspiration that also led Mahler to consider calling this symphony a ‘humoresque’, as he understood humour to be a key to a ‘higher world’.

Three of Mahler’s symphonies were performed at the Verein: the sixth and seventh in keyboard arrangements, and his fourth in the present reduction for fourteen instruments and solo soprano. This arrangement – premièred on 10 January 1921 with the soprano Martha Fuchs – was made by one of Schoenberg’s earliest composition pupils, Erwin Stein, who also took over the directorship of performances in the Verein from 1920. The exercise is a revealing one, as both Stein’s choices and the nature of such reduction expose more of Mahler’s counterpoint through the leaner textures: a logical extension of the original’s chamber-like ideals. In the years following the closure of the society the original instrumental parts were lost, only recently to be reconstructed by Alexander Platt from Stein’s annotations on a complete score of the symphony.

© Thomas Hancox, 2013

8 9 Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble

Violin Clarinet Eloisa-Fleur Thom Rozenn Le Trionnaire Konrad Elias-Trostmann Percussion Viola Michael Rareshide Wenhong Luo Ben Lewis

Cello Harmonium Romain Dhainaut Nikola Eckertova

Bass Piano William Cole Albert Lau Chia-Ying Tu Flute Mi Ri Seo

Oboe Soprano Hannah Morgan Sónia Grané 10 Gustav Mahler Symphonie No. 4

11 The Royal Academy of Music

‘The Royal Academy of Music in London is internationally known and recognised as representing the highest values of music and musical society.’ Daniel Barenboim

‘This building has been absolutely at the centre of everything that I have done; everything that I have learnt.’ Sir Simon Rattle

12 Gustav Mahler Symphonie No. 4

he Royal Academy of Music has been training musicians to the highest professional standards since its foundation in T 1822. As Britain’s senior conservatoire, its impact on musical life, both in the UK and abroad, is inestimable. The music profession is permeated at all levels with Academy alumni, including classical giants such as Sir Simon Rattle, Sir John Tavener and Sir Harrison Birtwistle, pop icons Sir Elton John and Annie Lennox, a host of opera stars such as Dame Felicity Lott, Lesley Garrett and Susan Bullock, principals in some of the world’s leading orchestras (including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, the Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera New York, and all of London’s leading orchestras), innovative soloists including Dame Evelyn Glennie and Joanna MacGregor, best-selling recording artists such as Katherine Jenkins, and media celebrities Gareth Malone, . Aled Jones and Myleene Klass.

An institution that trained Sir , Sir Henry Wood, Sir John Barbirolli, Lionel Tertis, Dame Myra Hess, Dame Moura Lympany, Richard Lewis, Dennis Brain, Sir , Philip Langridge and John Dankworth, and with strong associations back to Mendelssohn, is bound to be proud of its history; but the Academy is firmly focused on refreshing creative traditions for tomorrow’s musical leaders in the classical, jazz, media and musical theatre worlds. Every year some of the most talented young musicians from over fifty countries come

13 to study at the Academy, attracted by renowned teachers and by a rich artistic culture that broadens their musical horizons, develops their professional creativity, and fosters their entrepreneurial spirit. In addition to a busy schedule of lessons, classes and masterclasses, students benefit from the Academy’s ambitious and unrivalled calendar of concerts, operas, musical theatre shows and other events, in which they work with leading practitioners such as Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Yan Pascal Tortelier, Trevor Pinnock, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Semyon Bychkov, Thomas Brandis and Barbara Bonney. In 2012 Maxim Vengerov became the latest renowned performer to join the Academy’s teaching staff: as Menuhin Professor of Music, he works every term with students in masterclasses, . one-to-one teaching and other events.

All these facets of Royal Academy of Music life contribute to ’s recent ranking of the Academy as top UK conservatoire for three years on the trot, and praising its ‘cosmopolitan confidence that is in tune with the global music industry’.

The Academy’s museum is home to one of the world’s most significant collections of instruments and artefacts, including stringed instruments by Stradivari, Guarneri and the Amati family; manuscripts by Purcell, Handel and Vaughan Williams; and an incomparable . and growing collection of performing materials that belonged to eminent musicians. 14 Gustav Mahler Symphonie No. 4

As the Academy approaches its bicentenary it goes from strength . to strength. It has recently been rated the best conservatoire for research and the second-highest rated UK institution for student satisfaction. The Guardian consistently rates the Academy amongst the very best places to study music, and has also placed it top of all UK specialist institutions.

This is the first recording in a new partnership between Linn and the Royal Academy of Music.

15 16 Gustav Mahler Symphonie No. 4

Trevor Pinnock Trevor Pinnock is recognised worldwide as a harpsichordist . and conductor who pioneered performance on historical . instruments with his own orchestra, The English Concert, . which he founded in 1972 and led for the next thirty years. . He now divides his time between conducting, solo and . chamber music and educational projects.

He works regularly with orchestras such as Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, Kammerakademie Potsdam, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

In 1992 he was awarded the honour of CBE and he is also an . Officier des Arts et des Lettres.

17 Trevor Pinnock’s contribution to musical life at the Royal Academy . of Music is considerable, with regular conducting commitments . as Principal Guest Conductor of the Academy’s Concert Orchestra . in addition to conducting Royal Academy Opera productions, including the acclaimed production of Haydn’s La vera costanza . in November 2012.

With this recording, Trevor and the Academy retrospectively reignite Schoenberg’s vision for the pioneering Chamber Society for Private Musical Performance: plans include further performances and recordings featuring chamber arrangements of symphonic repertoire, including newly commissioned arrangements for this series.

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