Hamburg’s American Youtuber takes down Gustav Mahler
OrchestrasThe Elbphilharmonie concerthall tells us that its inaugural Creator in Residence Nahre Sol amassed 13.5 million views for her videos of the course of a year.
Sounds promising.
Here’s her take on Mahler’s Adagietto.
To my mind it’s a bit like Mahler 101 at Brandeis or some other classroom with ivy on the window.
Your thoughts, please.
my thought on the Adagietto – all the performances are too slow.
Have you looked at the score? . . . There are markings for slow going all over it. The very opening says “Molto Adagio, sehr langsam”. The word “langsam” is plastered all over it. In contrast to that, the slow movement to the 6th symphony – marked “Andante moderato” – doesn’t show the word “langsam” even once!
Interesting comment. It is an adagio movement (the “etto” in the title means that it is a brief Adagio, a small Adagio; “adagietto” is NOT a tempo marking meaning slightly faster than adagio, as many people mistakenly believe). And every marking from the composer indicates that he desired very slow tempo (Sehr langsam, molto adagio). Why do you think that it needs to necessarily be faster?
Adagio is one thing, dragging another. Some conductors take it as slow as possible and then the music sinks to the level of whining.
Your “whining” is my moment of repose from three very good very good movements that also have A LOT of bombast (and yes, I like Mahler 5), and is followed by a very busy sounding (but terrific) finale. What the heck difference does another moment make in the grand scale of things?
Because Adagietto is a tempo marking, because we have a piano roll of Mahler himself,because we have two recordings based on his accounts(Mengelberg and Walter)….It is a tiny Intermezzo between two big mvts, same as the 2nd mvt of the Schumann piano concerto. The meter is in 4, not in eight.
‘Adagietto’ is, of course, NOT a tempo marking but the indication that it is a ‘small’ Adagio.
1. “Adagietto” is absolutely NOT a tempo marking. The Italian suffix ‘etto’ in this case means “small” or “miniature”. It is a “small Adagio.” That has nothing to do with the actual tempo markings, which are clear if you care to open the score and look at it. The tempo markings for the piece are Sehr Langsam (very slow) and Molto Adagio (again, very slow).
2. You’re right that it is in 4/4, not 8/8. But that’s an absurd argument. Please name another piece by Mahler that **is** in 8/8. This has nothing to do with the speed of the music, nor how one divides the music metrically on a moment to moment basis. Yes, it’s in 4. A very slow 4.
3. The unreliability of a piano roll performance from the beginning of the 20th century as to judging the composer’s intent regarding phrasing and pace is so obvious and self-explanatory as to be insulting to the intelligent listener. What we DO have is the evidence of the score. Adagietto means a “small Adagio.” It is not a tempo marking. The tempo marking(s) are Sehr Langsam and Molto Adagio. HOW slow is up to each conductor, of course. But to argue that the piece **necessarily** must be a priori approached as “not slow” is a statement born of ignorance, not taste.
Adagietto can mean EITHER a short Adagio OR a tempo marking meaning slightly faster than Adagio. Just the way Andantino is intended to mean quicker than Andante (although somewhere in the mid-20th Century people got confused and thought it might have meant slightly slower than Andante). Clearly there aren’t enough Italian speakers in here.
For the third, and hopefully final time, “Adagietto” in this case means “small Adagio”. It is the ***title of the movement***, plastered above the music at the top of the page. It is absolutely, unequivocally, inarguably, unambiguously, beyond any debate, ******NOT***** the tempo marking for this music. The tempo markings are exactly where any tempo markings are for any other piece of music: directly above the musical staffs, and they are SEHR LANGSAM and MOLTO ADAGIO. Don’t believe me? Here’s the score:
https://ks15.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/0/04/IMSLP13083-Mahler-Symphony_No.5_IV.pdf
That is quite correct.
Even Mengelberg (7 minutes)?
Sir Mark Elder did it very flowing, natural, and swift, like a song without words at his Halle farewell Prom a few weeks ago. At around 8 minutes, it was very close to Mengelberg´s and Walter´s early performances, both of whom knew Mahker personally. …Elder´s performance was all the more moving and tender, giving this much maltreated piece back its dignity, charm, and natural beauty
Yes, the music has to flow, and in the hands of a truly talended conductor that can also be in adagio.
It´s marked Adagietto, not Adagio.
It’s marked ‘Sehr langsam’ as far as I know. ‘Adagietto’ is the title of the movement.
Please look at the score, ‘professional musician’. Right at the very beginning, it says “molto adagio”, as well as “sehr langsam”.
The ‘flow’ is built into the movement by way of making the requested alteration of tempo for the second, more development like section of the movement. It’s there in the score. That doesn’t alter the fact that the beginning is marked “sehr langsam” and “molto adagio”. It’s called contrast, people. After the climax of that central section, Mahler again calls for the music to go very slowly. Look at the score – those are HIS markings. It’s not “whining”; it’s not elegiaque; it’s none of those things. It’s a moment of repose within a symphony that’s loaded with fast, noisy sections. It’s more like taking time to catch your breath. What’s the hurry! You still have an entire finale that’s loaded with busy sounding counterpoint (and yes, I love that finale) . . . . I find it interesting that the people who jump up and down about the Adagietto being “too slow”, are the very same people who NEVER voice a complaint when a conductor turns the Andante Moderato of the sixth symphony’s slow movement into a full blown adagio.
Maybe not all, but most performances after around 1960 certainly are too slow. For me, the ideal duration is between eight and nine minutes. Over ten is already too slow and over twelve is a caricature. Availability of recordings and improvements of their quality around the middle of the last century pushed many musicians into trying to “individualize” their interpretations by going to extremes which often meant playing fast music too fast and slow music too slow – which eventually brought us to Lang Lang as a prime example and to the Adagietto as one of the best known victims. The Fifth was completed in 1901 or 1902 when “sehr langsam” in music meant something much less extreme than it does for us now over 120 years later.
Here is Mahler’s assistant Bruno Walter conducting the work. His tempi is the most reliable to Mahler’s tempi, as he worked with him and heard Mahler conduct it a number of times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfsBEIvKDzE
Here is Willem Mengelberg conducting the movement a bit faster, but also still slow. Mengelberg rehearsed and performed with Mahler in the audience at the Concertgebouw.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HQpJdORX6w
To me it is very similar in thought and structure to Sam Barber’s Adagio for Strings. It should never be played quickly and some of the slower performances allow the conductor to emphasize and draw out some passages otherwise glossed over. It would lose performed quickly.
Who says anything about “quickly”? Of course this music is not fast, but the only argument is about the best interpretation of “sehr langsam”. And I agree that Bruno Walter’s tempi (just over eight minutes duration) are most appropriate and very effective.
You’re not the intended audience, Norman. She’s introducing his music to young people.
This is a MAJOR problem in classical music today. Audiences need to understand that there is a difference between those with real knowledge/experience and those with presentation/videography skills.
A big figure in classical music on social media in Japan is a former “OL” (office lady). She knows NOTHING, but presents herself as if she’s an expert. The manipulators are having a field day with social media.
Nahre Sol is not only an excellent presenter, she is extremely knowledgeable, and a good musician. That is why the Elbphilharmonie employed her.
with all due respect, the MAJOR problem in classical music today is that younger people aren’t going to concerts. so, whatever works to get them interested is a good start, eh? social media is NOT going away, and many savvy (and brilliant) musicians such as VÃkingur Ólafsson have learned to embrace it, and prosper from it.
The major problem is that not enough people aged about 35-55 are going, not just the kids.
Nahre is an exceptionally knowledgeable ambassador for classical music — the best in the business. She is also an extremely talented performer with a world-class educational background.
You need to get a grip on your jealousy. It’s embarassing.
All true, and its an engaging video.
Smart move by Elbphilharmonie. Nahre Sol is special!
Currently, a major issue with classical music is the lack of exposure. If someone hasn’t been exposed to musical instruments at home from an early age or hasn’t participated in a school orchestra, they are often completely unaware of the existence of symphony halls in the city. Therefore, any medium that can introduce people to classical music—whether through the influence of celebrities, the prominence of a well-known classical musician from a particular ethnicity, or through various classical music-related content that increases exposure and awareness of this art form—is extremely valuable.
In the 6th grade in L.A. all the 6th grade students who were interested were bused to the Shrine Auditorium to see/hear Madame Butterfly. The auditorium was full and the performance stunning. It made me a lifetime opera listener. Alas, that was in 1952 and now those opportunities no longer exist.
I wonder who took 18 minutes over the Adagietto. Bernstein must be amongst the contenders.
Not so. Bernstein never reached 12 minutes in any of his recordings of it. The longest “Adagietto” that I know of was from a live performance Hermann Scherchen did with the Philadelphia Orchestra. It went well over 15 minutes. Some recordings of the slow movement to the 6th symphony have almost reached 18 minutes. Yet that slow movement is marked “Andante Moderato”, and the word “langsam” doesn’t appear even once in it (in contrast to that, “langsam” is plastered all over the Adagietto).
I was in a choir which sang Bach under Bernstein. He tried to make it sound like Bruckner.
Fair enough, if he only took just under 12 minutes for the Adagietto.
I never heard him do Mahler, but I have seen a notorious recording of him conducting Nimrod. Excruciatingly and ridiculously slow. Hence my guess that he might have been a prime suspect here.
Bach can often sound great when it sounds like Bruckner. “Stylistic fidelity” is so often a cover for interpretive laziness/lack of imagination/lack of balls.
Yes, compare Glenn Gould’s first and last recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The difference is astonishing, and revealing.
For the record, Bernstein’s Tristan act 1 prelude is the sloooooowest in the history of gramophone, Then he justified the slow speed by lying about Karl Bohm approving it.
Abbado managed 11:55 in his Chicago recording!
@B. Guerrero Yup, Scherchen holds the record. He said something along the lines of the Philadelphia strings sounding so beautiful, he couldn’t help but stretch it out. And for me, it works. And yes, a popular misconception is that Bernstein was unusually slow in the Adagietto. Plenty have been slower, and by a lot.
In St Petersburg in 1910 the then locally-famous conductor Ilya Fedor Preskillwitz took the Adagietto so slowly than he got stuck in a fermata and fell from the rostrum, unconcious. The orchestra however stayed on their chord till the man had recovered and continued with the rest. In the review in the Petersburg Gazette that moment was highlighted as a specially expressive one in the whole symphony.
Drunk, no doubt, but as drunk as Glazunov?
At the Proms in 1987 with the Vienna Philharmonic, Bernstein took 11 minutes 12 seconds …
As Rudolph Kolisch once commented, referring to the second movement of the Beethoven Violin concerto:
“They concentrate on the Largo and forget about the ‘ghetto’.”
Yes, but in contrast to that ‘Adagietto’ is NOT a tempo marking. It means little Adagio. Look at the score – the very beginning says “molto adagio” AND “sehr langsam”. Yes, there are tempo modifications along the way in the score, but it comes back to ‘very slow’ again after the middle section climax.
She’s gotten too wordy.
Not enough graphics my Lord?
The Adagietto needs no introduction. Full stop.
Bruno Walter manages it in 7’35” on his 1947 NY Phil recording, which I have on Sony CD SMK 64 451…his total time is 61’04”.
Nicely done, for audience members without much knowledge. But this kind of interpretation is exactly the reason that so many composers in the last century wanted to leave ‘all that romanticising’ behind to focus on the music itself instead of its ‘illustration of emotion’.
But classical music has always been an art form to convey emotion, of whatever kind. Only, it is ordered. Hence audiences want to hear the same eloquent pieces again and again, to get their emotions ordered. It is a matter of resonance.
If the adagietto is a ‘love letter’ to Mrs Mahler, then the double message is clear: yes I do love you but I’m pained to find that the woman I love is not really there. The music reaches-out to something that is out of reach, hence its use in the movie ‘Death in Venice’, and the built-in hesitations. She represented something but did not fit the bill, in spite of her symphonic hats.
‘…the woman I love is not really there’. When writing this, he had only just impregnated and married her. He was the one who was not really there – during the summer he was busy cloistered in his private composing shack and for the rest of the year he was busy rehearsing and conducting. Alma hadn’t taken to freelance humping among the middle-European intelligentsia until much later.
Just before he started the fifth symphony, Mahler had suffered a near-fatal intestinal haemorrhage, which may have been a portent of his mortality. He met Alma just over eight months later. The Adagietto is said to portray his love for her, but the heightened intensity might also depict his anxiety that his time on this earth with Alma, and as conductor of the Vienna Court Opera, was limited. That was confirmed seven years later, when he was diagnosed with a potentially fatal cardiac disorder which was, at that time, inoperable and which contributed to his untimely death aged 50.
When you read Mahler’s letters (‘Gustav Mahler; Letters to his Wife’, ed. de la Grange / Weiss / Martner, complete edition, Faber & Faber 1995) then you see that he wrote to her almost daily, sometimes more than once, when he was not at home with her. Leaving Vienna for conducting engagements elsewhere he sent her postcards from every station in a row. When she was going to land on a holiday hotel with the children while he was still underway from another place, he would write reams of instructions about all details of train tickets, compartments, clothing, food, as fanatically as the finales of his 1st and 5th and 7th. Mentally he was always very close to Alma and he complained to her that she did not write as abundantly as he, while he was very busy and she had only her household and children to look after, supported by nannies and housekeepers and visiting family members. If there had been a whatsapp service at the time he would text her any minute he was free.
His so-called heart problem appears to have been not that serious after all: after initial panicking and a kind of stopwatch to ‘count his steps’, nothing is heard about that later-on in any correspondence. He died because of a blood infection due to a neglected throat infection, continuing conducting while in a fever etc. It could have been cured simply by antibiotics or penicillin, but that did not exist in those much more risky times.
It’s the soundtrack for “Death in Bognor” (1975).
Genius is the ability to explain complex concepts in simple terms. Too many are afraid of classical music because they don’t understand it. Some others have limited understanding but go to concerts because they think it makes them look cultured or smart. The brilliant descriptions and explanations by Nahre Sol provide a connection to the music for both groups.
Nahre Sol is one of the more important voices on social media imparting knowledge of classical music and theory to lay people.
I guess she never heard Bernstein conduct it at Bobby Kennedy’s funeral.
Reminded of something Nietzsche wrote:
“Another century of readers–and spirit itself will stink. Every one being allowed to learn to read, ruineth in the long run not only writing but also thinking.”
If classical music is “elitist” then it should remain elitist. Keep the unwashed masses away. All these cringeworthy attempts to reach out to the proles are an abomination.
One of the problems with holding your nose in the air is that all the mucus runs back down your throat and chokes you.
Yes I would be the first to abstain from all that stuff. But I do wash abundantly, every day!
Sally
I love Nahre Sol. My friend with a Ph.D. in piano from the University of Washington introduced me to her videos. She is wonderful at explaining things for people who don’t have a Ph.D. in music!
Besides educating today’s young (i.e. Gen Z) concertgoers about the music, they must also be educated on the concertgoing etiquette: no applause in between movements, muffle coughs and sneezes, do not drop your smartphones,…and not every performance deserves a standing ovation.
A leaflet inside the program book should do the trick.
I have to wonder if Americans know what an outstanding performance is. They stand for everything, accompanied by whistling and war whoops. It’s almost as if Andrew Jackson is still in the White House.
To be clear, I love this piece (as well as a large number of the other Mahler symphonies) and am a classical musician myself. Classical music has a clear problem with public image. It’s widely seen as inaccessible and outdated music for the upper (often white) class.
Nahre Sol’s video is a small step towards mitigating this issue. If this video convinced even 10 people to go to an orchestral concert, that’s a good thing for the art form as a whole. It funds the dedicated and skilled musicians in professional orchestras, as well as the orchestral institutions.
She is a highly competent communicator, videographer, and editor. Norman Lebrecht should take a moment to reconsider his envious and perhaps prejudiced view of those contributing to the ongoing relevance of this beautiful musical tradition. This seems like a pattern of insidious and self-serving gossip and judgement.
Wtf is that meant to mean
I find the cloying sentimentality hard to stomach these days.
Do try this, it will make you feel much better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3mHXaO88Pw
She’s Canadian, not American. But sure: young, female, Asian, big social media following… imperative that SD take her down as fast as possible!
Clearly, it’s not a video for experienced musicians, but it’s a perfectly fine way of introducing lay people to classical music. People who are worried about the dumbing down of classical music have much better targets than this video.
Wouldn’t what she calls an appoggiatura more accurately be described as a (restruck) suspension given that it was prepared?
Entirely agreed. It is a fine video for its purpose and such things should be done more often.
While we’re on the subject of slow speed records, I wanted to mention the slowest “Cavalleria Rusticana” prelude and intermezzo in the history of gramophone are by none other than Mascagni himself.