A recording no Mahler fan can ignore
NewsFrom the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
Some time in the late 1980s, questions were raised as to whether Gustav Mahler really wrote his first two symphonies. The issue arose after a recording appeared of an E-minor symphony by Hans Rott, a fellow-student of Mahler’s at the Vienna Conservatoire. Rott’s symphony was found to contain trademark phrases from Mahler’s first two symphonies, especially the second.
So here’s what we know…
Read on here.
And here.
In Spanish here.
In Czech here.
En francais ici.
In The Critic here.
“Mahler, in a contemporary remark to a woman friend, acknowledged Rott as ‘the founder of the new symphony as I see it.’” . . . Very good point, Norman. It is a really good recording of Rott’s symphony, just as you say. Mahler was certainly not above ‘borrowing’ a little of this, and a little of that.
Strangely, everybody else is labouring under the mistaken impression that the symphony is in E-major.
It’s much more likely that Rott borrowed from Mahler!
Mahler was a musical genius and all the symphonies are masterpieces, especially the second! Rott who?
Unfortenately,Rott died a few years before Mahler wrote his 2nd,from which Mahler quite shamelessly stole his second theme from the first mvt…..Mahler wrote his first Symphony 4 years after Rott´s death.maybe this fact escaped your attention.It debunks your claim within a split second.
Nonsense. Mahler also nicked significant parts of the famous adagietto from the 5th symphony from Rott. Its from a chamber work for strings (a quintet as I recall) written long before Mahler’s famous work.
To me, it does seem like Mahler’s 1st, 2nd and even the famous Adagietto have a different feel and sound than other Mahler. It certainly needs more investigation. I agree with Norman on Hruska, he’s very, very good.
Hi again, I am listening to Rott’s first symphony performed by a very good conductor, Dennis Russell Davies and orchestra, Radio Symphonieorchester Wien. They do an excellent job. Hrusa is not on YouTube for this but I have no doubt he is also good but I simply am unable to access his recording.
To me, Rott #1 sounds very, very Brucknerian which perhaps explains Brahms’s dislike for it and Rott. Witness the finale of the 3rd movement, which indeed has “waves of sound” or the 4th movement around the 40th minute, a giant buildup about 46 minutes in and almost this, the entire final movement but especially around 48, around 50 and the remainder of the finale.
For a first symphony, this is excellent–well worth hearing– and only the Russian, Kalinnikov, surpasses it (much better themes, again, in my opinion) by someone who is outside the “body” of classical music and little performed today. This is my own feeling. But Kalinnikov was special.
I am not a trained musician, although I played a brass instrument to a high level, but it does not, to me at least, sound like Mahler very much. It has none of the quirkiness of Mahler, for instance, no brass, marching bands, no funeral march. A comment from one of the listeners, however, says he hears Mahler’s famous Adagietto in Rott’s Quartet in C. This I have not listened to but will try to track down.
As it is, this is better Bruckner than Bruckner himself.
I have found the Hrůša on You Tube. At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-QgKBrews4
Very nice.
I’m all for recording obscure and forgotten music like the Rott, and maestro Hrusa rightly wanted his vision of it on CD. But we have half a dozen versions of it already. There are so many other wonderful works that could use the DG treatment and I hope Hrusa will champion them: the Raff 5th, the Bloch C-sharp minor, for example.
I think DG should have commissioned NL to add to the CD’s liner notes, which, except for Hrusa’s personal notes about his own ignorance, is not very informative.
It’s hard enough to accept that the current chief conductor of the Bambergers had never heard of Rott’s symphony before.
But even less acceptable is the fact that there’s not a single word about the events leading to the work’s premier in the late 1980s.
The recording is good but seems to have a limited dynamic range, like a CD-R.
Thus I would like to recommend Segerstam’s excellent 1992 recording on BIS with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra!
Looking on Discogs, I’m not seeing any recordings of Rott’s music before 1989 BUT I have a distinct memory of a very knowledgeable salesperson in a record store in suburban Philadelphia (the Franklin Music store, at the Echelon Mall in NJ, to be exact) sometime 1972-75 showing me a recording of something by Rott and mentioning the links to Mahler. I can’t remember the label (definitely not one of the majors) or the piece but his emphasis on the Mahler echoes made me think it was this symphony until Discogs showed me no recordings in that period.
I listened to the Hrusa recording, although not in the best circumstances (via Amazon Music, while driving) and enjoyed the first 3 movements, while not considering it a great, unjustly neglected work. He lost me in the 4th movement. It meanders all over the place before finally deciding to be bombastic at great length. Some hear Brahms but I also thought I detected the Meistersingers trying to shove themselves onto the stage. Some reminders of a Bruckner finale but without his self-restraint.
No discography is perfect; there are just too many small, almost local, semi-vanity, and sometimes vaguely larcenous, labels for that. So your recollection of that conversation at the record store may well be correct.
There’s a (currently incomplete) discography on the German site of the International Hans Rott Society:
http://www.hans-rott.de/cde2.htm
The question is: when will the VPO discover Rott?
And with whom?
By far the best recording of this piece (Paavo and the Frankfurt RSO come pretty close).
But where’s the triangle?
Or is it interfering with my tinnitus?
I have the Hrusa recording. It’s very good indeed. Rott’s symphony is terrific.
Find here two live recordings of Rott’s symphony with the BPO anf The Philadelphia Orchestra, both conducted by NEEME JÄRVI in 2007:
https://www.erpmusic.com/live-symphonic/
It’s sad in a way that Rott’s symphony is still being treated like something exotic. It should become standard repertoire in the way Neeme Järvi has been programming it over decades.
Rott’s symphony is far more significant than Mahler’s 4th with its neoclassical sleigh ride and boucolic sing-song.