Mahler - Symphony no.4
£14.49
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Label: Pentatone
Cat No: PTC5186972
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Release Date: 8th April 2022
Contents
Artists
Chen Reiss (soprano)Czech Philharmonic
Conductor
Semyon BychkovWorks
Symphony no.4 in G majorArtists
Chen Reiss (soprano)Czech Philharmonic
Conductor
Semyon BychkovAbout
The Czech Philharmonic is one of the world’s most acclaimed orchestras, with a rich tradition of performing Czech masters and music from Central Europe. Semyon Bychkov has led the greatest orchestras of the world, and is Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Czech Philharmonic as of the 2018/2019 season. Soprano Chen Reiss frequently appears on the biggest opera and concert stages throughout the world. Chen Reiss, Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic all make their PENTATONE debut.
Sound/Video
Paused
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11. Bedächtig, nicht eilen
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22. In gemächlicher Bewegung, ohne Hast
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33. Ruhevoll, poco adagio
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44. Sehr behaglich
Europadisc Review
At any rate, with plenty of fine recordings of the Fourth of varying vintage out there, any newcomers have to be very special. And the new release from Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic on the Pentatone, the first instalment of a new Mahler cycle which also launches a collaboration between this revered orchestra and the Dutch label, is just that. This is an orchestra with a long pedigree in Mahler’s music: best known to seasoned collectors will be the complete cycle under Václav Neumann on Supraphon, but they also made excellent Mahler discs under the great Karel Ančerl, while a 1950 recording of the Fourth under Karel Šejna is a splendidly earthy belt-and-braces affair, as you might expect of the former bass player turned conductor.
There’s something of that emotional honesty and integrity in Bychkov’s account, though the playing, as nurtured by him since he became chief conductor, and building on the legacy of the late Jiří Bělohlávek, is considerably more refined. It is captured in the (sometimes problematically boomy) Dvořák Hall of Prague’s Rudolfinum with an admirable combination of focus and warmth that plays to this orchestra’s many strengths: the golden-toned strings, the characteristically ‘woody’ wind, the incisive but never overpowering brass. One of the joys of this reading, which holds urgency, poise, detail and warmth in perfect tension, is the way in which Bychkov consistently allows the middle of the texture – bassoons and horns in particular – to colour the whole, without any sense of spotlighting, while taking enormous care over details of articulation, dynamics and phrasing.
In the first movement, for example, the string portamenti (sliding between two notes) sound natural rather than mannered, and Bychkov and his players are clearly comfortable enough with this period nuance that they introduce a few extra ones for good measure. The jester’s bells that are a recurring feature of the outer movements are clear without being too close-miked, the horn solo at the beginning of the development sounds deliciously forthright, while the string accompaniment to the high flute theme at figure 10 thrums away deliciously. The whole of the development section – which so baffled early audiences – is drawn with marvellous clarity and rhythmic control, details cutting through with just the right degree of emphasis and urgency. Even at the climax, there’s an underlying sense of classical balance which makes the shrug with which the recapitulation takes over from the development seem perfectly natural. (As elsewhere in the performance, Bychkov judges the pause before the continuation to absolute perfection.) The whole movement benefits from the rich glow of the Czech strings, something particularly evident in the recapitulation of the gloriously expansive gestures of the second subject. The coda’s dreamy final pages (fig. 24 to the end) are among the most magical and gently coaxed on disc.
That sense of enchantment continues, in a very different vein, in the macabre second movement scherzo, with its disconcerting cross-rhythms, spooky first horn and demonic, tuned-up (and unnamed) solo fiddle. The trio sections, by contrast, have just the right level of Gemütlichkeit, while retaining the same level of textural clarity. The sudden slip into that radiant passage at fig. 11 – where one might have expected a return to the scherzo proper – is another of those moments where the rich but uncloying tonal resources of the Czech players bring breathtaking results, and the eventual return of the scherzo proper is feels all the more hair-raising for it.
Although the whole symphony leads logically to the ‘child’s view of heaven’ presented in the finale, there is still a sense in which the Ruhevoll slow movement is the work’s heart. Here it starts with a gently luminous poise, rich woodwind details such as the bassoon thirds thrown into relief by the exquisite halo of string sound. At fig. 2, the oboe solo is both plaintive and expressive, exactly as requested by Mahler in the score, while the flutes before fig. 3 are wondrously limpid, and the sudden fortissimo outcry at bar 89 is anguished without being over-forced. The more relaxed episode at fig. 4 is so genial that it draws the listener, yet never at the expense of the overall momentum. Tensions ebb and flow, matchlessly shaped by Bychkov with both character and warmth, before the great fortississimo outburst at fig. 12 flings wide open the gates of heaven. Once again, it’s not one of those sonically gimmicky moments where you need to hold onto the china, but a moment of revelation that is all of a piece with the conception as a whole, ending in a coda of exquisite purity (with the descending line in the second violins brought out to aching effect).
The finale, with its setting for soprano solo of the Wunderhorn song that Mahler retitled ‘Das himmlische Leben’, starts with a gentle hint of the bucolic, rather than the more overt pictorialism of Jakub Hrůša’s recent Bamberg recording on Accentus, but soon loses any inhibition. Soloist Chen Reiss may be less obviously boyish than Anna Lucia Richter for Hrůša, but her enunciation of and engagement with the text are second to none. Her final stanza glissando through a tenth from d’’ to b on the ‘dazu lacht!’ (fig. 14), with a gentle tremolo evoking St Ursula’s laughter, comes across as both spellbinding and – like the rest of her singing here – totally unaffected. The fade-out at the end as the vision of heaven evaporates is one of the many strong-points in a performance which carries complete conviction and sureness of touch from start to finish.
It should be evident by now that this exceptionally vivid performance is a most auspicious start to something that, with the musicians’ collective experience and Bychkov’s expert guiding hands, promises to add up to considerably more than ‘yet another’ Mahler cycle. And as a performance of the Fourth Symphony, it comfortably ranks with the very best.
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