Back in 2015, during one of the worst Boston winters in decades, Benjamin Zander and the Boston Philharmonic warmed us all up with a mid-February program of Johann Strauss’s Frühlingsstimmen (“Voices of Spring”), Richard Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder (“Four Last Songs”), and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4. Sunday at Symphony Hall, Zander and the BPO, with English soprano Claire Booth, reprised that program, minus the Strauss waltz. The weather was no better than it had been in 2015, but the musicmaking was every bit as good.
Both the songs and the symphony embrace life, death, and resurrection; both call for a soprano, the symphony in the final movement, which itself started out as a lied. The two pieces might seem a natural pair, but Vier letzte Lieder requires an opulent voice and the symphony an innocent one, and not all sopranos can manage both. The BSO has coupled these works just twice, both times in 2010, first with Renée Fleming and James Levine and then, at Tanglewood, with Hei-Kyung Hong and Juanjo Mena.
Strauss wrote Vier letzte Lieder in 1948, at age 84, in tribute to his wife of more than 50 years, operatic soprano Pauline de Ahna. The cycle opens with “Frühling” (“Spring”), continues with “September” and “Beim Schlafengehen” (“Going to Sleep”), and concludes with “Im Abendrot” (“At Sunset”), which begins with a couple — Richard and Pauline — walking hand in hand and at its end quotes the “Transfiguration” theme from the composer’s 1889 tone poem Tod und Verklärung. Even “Frühling” seems to contemplate death, as if Strauss thought the next spring might be his last. It was; he died in September 1949. The title Vier letzte Lieder was supplied by his friend Emil Roth, chief editor of Boosey & Hawkes; Roth also established the sequence, which most performers now follow.
I wouldn’t describe Booth’s soprano as lush, but it’s bright and glittering and she uses it intelligently. Sunday she sang the Strauss without a score, pointing every syllable with her hands as well as her voice. Zander’s dark, overripe accompaniment, at tempos very close to what’s suggested in the score, supplied the opulence without overwhelming her. “Vogelsang” (“Birdsong”) warbled; “Sommer lächelt” smiled wryly; toward the end of “September,” Booth let summer slowly closes its tired eyes, to the accompaniment of a superb horn solo from Kevin Owen. (Strauss’s father, Franz, was principal horn of the Bavarian Court opera for more than 40 years.)
“Beim Schlafengehen” got the proper weary start; Booth held “gestirnte Nacht” (“starry Night”) just long enough to let the piccolos and celesta register; concertmaster Gregory Vitale’s solo in the break was searing in both tone and phrasing; and Booth sailed through the last stanza, where the soul, left unguarded, flies free into the magic circle of night. “Im Abendrot” opened with resonant timpani strokes from Robert Schulz and continued with ascending larks from the flutes (Lisa Hennessy and Kathleen Boyd); Booth underlined “Einsamkeit” (“solitude”) and “Friede” (“peace”) and was sublime at “So tief im Abendrot.” Trilling piccolos (Rachel Braude and Dianne Spoto) marked the soul’s escape.
Mahler’s Fourth Symphony premiered in November 1901. He had at one point called it his “Humoresque” symphony, but the Munich audience had expected something on the model of the monumental “Resurrection” Second (the Third had not yet premiered) and was not amused. The Fourth ran well short of an hour, and what were serious music lovers to make of a Haydn-esque symphony that opens with sleigh bells and concludes with a hungry child’s vision of Heaven? As the 20th century wore on, of course, the Fourth became arguably Mahler’s most popular symphony. No ear-splitting percussion, no trombones or tuba, no heavy philosophy, and best of all, it fit on a single LP, a distinction only the First could match. The closest thing to easy-listening Mahler.
But what did Mahler mean us to hear? Theodor Adorno argued that the sleigh bells actually represent “the tinkling of a jester’s bells, which, without saying it, says, ‘What you are now hearing is completely untrue.’ ” Perhaps. Mahler’s original concept for the Fourth comprised six movements, the second of which was to be his Des Knaben Wunderhorn song “Das irdische Leben” (“Life on Earth”), in which a child dies of hunger before its mother can get the bread out of the oven. The closing “Das himmlische Leben” (“Life in Heaven”) was to offer that child a Heaven in which hare and deer plop themselves onto the roasting spit and fish leap into your net. Such a Heaven would be a cruel joke if it were a mere illusion. “Das irdische Leben” isn’t part of the four-movement version of the Fourth that eventually took shape (it’s alluded to in the “Purgatorio” of the unfinished Tenth), but “Das himmlische Leben,” which Mahler had composed back in 1892, did become the final movement. The rest of the symphony builds from it and points toward it.
Mahler originally called the G-major opening movement “Die Welt als ewige Jetztzeit” (“The World as Eternal Now”). Right in the third bar, he mimics a rehearsal blooper, instructing the flutes and sleigh bells to keep playing in time while giving the first violins and clarinets a poco ritardando. Instruments talk over one another, the cellos shadow-stalk the first violins, and multiple themes (or the same theme in different snowsuits) tumble about in this rollicking sleigh ride full of overexcited children. Toward the end of the development, however, the trumpets keep pushing against high G, and when they push into A-flat, it’s as if the kids had discovered that what’s beyond “Now” is death. The trumpets break into the funeral-march fanfare that will open Mahler’s Fifth Symphony even as the sleigh bells return to wake us from this nightmare. The winds, perhaps disoriented, start the recapitulation five bars early and the first violins scamper to catch up, as if the sleigh had whooshed on without them — another of Mahler’s little jokes.
The C-minor scherzo originally bore the subtitle “Freund Hein spielt zum Tanz auf; der Tod streicht recht absonderlich die Feidel and geigt uns in die Himmel hinauf” (“Friend Hein strikes up the dance; Death strokes the fiddle quite strangely and plays us up to Heaven”). Here the concertmaster plays a scordatura violin that’s tuned up a whole step to suggest a crude fiddle. Death stalks the children, but you can’t tell whether he’s there for business or pleasure. He sits out the two Ländler trios, the second of which moves Heavenward, and when the scherzo proper resumes for the final time, we hear a solo violin that’s not tuned up. Has Death stolen away? No, he’s back before the end, promising to have the last word.
In the “Ruhevoll (Poco Adagio)” double-variation third movement, the child seems to have fallen asleep, with good dreams (G major) and bad (E minor). A suite that accelerates from ländler to minuet to todtentanz polka is brought up short, perhaps by an angel, and then the gates of Heaven open. The finale offers cameos by Saints Peter, Luke, Martha, Ursula, and Cecilia, not to mention Herod the butcher. It’s hard to know what to make of a movement in which the ox keeps lowing well after it’s been slaughtered. Even as the soprano sings of Heavenly music that has everyone awaking for joy, the music falls asleep, as if the entire symphony had been a child’s lullaby.
Mahler didn’t supply the Fourth with metronome marks. Bruno Walter’s 1945 recording with the New York Philharmonic clocks in at just over 49 minutes; Wyn Morris and the London Symphony Orchestra take 65. Most recorded performances run between 53 and 58, not a huge range. Mahler’s “Bedächtig. Nicht eilen” (“Deliberate. Don’t hurry”) and “Recht gemächlich” (“Right comfortable”) for the first movement, “In gemächlicher Bewegung. Ohne Hast” (“Moving comfortably. Without haste”) for the second, and “Sehr behäglich” (“Very easy”) for the finale have encouraged conductors to take their time. Mahler does, however, mark the first movement’s second and third themes “Breit gesungen” (“Broadly sung”) and “Plötzlich langsam und bedächtig” (“Suddenly slow and deliberate”), so perhaps the initial pace shouldn’t be too comfortable. Similarly, his “Viel langsamer” (“Much slower”) for the first E-minor section of the Poco Adagio warns against starting the movement at a Largo. When Mahler rehearsed the Fourth in Amsterdam in 1904, Willem Mengelberg wrote down movement timings of 20 minutes (slower than any recording I know of), 8 (slightly fast by modern standards), 19 (definitely on the fast side), and 9-1/2 to 10 (about average).
One continuing puzzle has been the relationship between the introductory three bars of the first movement and the ensuing main theme. Is “Bedächtig. Nicht eilen” faster or slower than “Recht gemächlich”? Most conductors take it faster (Simon Rattle is a notable holdout), and Zander seemed to be in that camp, the idea perhaps being that the sleigh arrives in a rush and then pauses to let everyone on. The “Recht gemächlich” itself went at a sensible Andante, and Zander’s timings for all four movements hewed close to those on his 2001 Philharmonia Telarc recording, roughly 17 minutes, 9:30, 20:30, and 9, all reasonable.
Tempo in the Fourth, however, matters less than transparency; Mahler scored the symphony as if for a chamber orchestra, with innumerable brief solos for winds, horn, and trumpet. As early as bar 9, solo horn takes up the theme and initiates a conversation. Zander made room for every voice. The first movement alone gave us a playful Peggy Pearson (oboe) and Ronald Haroutunian (bassoon) at the initial “Plötzlich langsam,” Haroutunian and Gary Gorczyca (bass clarinet) underpinning the new theme in the development, Stephen Banzaert and the rest of the trumpet section militant in the development’s climax, Rane Moore (clarinet) cheeky in the “Plötzlich langsam” of the recapitulation, and Owen conjuring a boy’s magical Wunderhorn in his coda solo.
My subjective reaction to this Fourth, as it was to Zander’s 2001 recording and the 2015 BPO edition, is that it could have used just a touch more humor, a touch more relaxation. I didn’t hear as much tempo contrast as Mahler seems to call for. The development of the first movement could have built to a greater degree of panic; the return of the sleigh could have had more drama. The Ländlers of the scherzo could have been a tad lazier, a tad more exaggerated. The basic tempo of the Poco Adagio, roughly 58 bpm, didn’t become “Viel langsamer” when the music shifted into E minor.
Yet as Andris Nelsons demonstrated when he did the Fourth with the BSO in 2017, you don’t have to be literal to be effective. Zander mightn’t have slowed the tempo much for the cellos’ “Breit gesungen,” but the result sounded broad all the same. He delivered the first movement’s false recapitulation (before the development has even started!) with a straight face before easing into the actual end of the exposition; he had the orchestra scurrying mischievously when Mahler follows the recapitulation with an unexpected bit of development.
Tempos aside, the scherzo’s ländlers had the right swing and sway, Vitale’s spooky scordatura violin mostly held its own against Owen’s counterpointing horn, you could make out the contrabassoon (Stephanie Busby) accompanying the basses at the end of the second trio, and then when the scherzo proper returned, Yumi Okada’s sweet violin solo seemed to mark Death’s departure, only to have Vitale show up and prove otherwise.
As for the Poco Adagio, Zander is hardly the only conductor who doesn’t make a sharp distinction between the G-major first-theme group and the E-minor second. I’ve wondered whether the E-minor sections shouldn’t actually go faster, on the model of the double-variation Adagio/Andante of Beethoven’s Ninth. In any case, the G-major group sounded peaceful and consoling and the E-minor sections grew increasingly anguished — which is Mahler’s point. The return of that second section opened with a poignant trio for Pearson, Owen, and Alessandro Cirafici (cor anglais). Heroic horns then heralded the opening of Heaven’s gates, after which Franziska Huhn brought to life that otherworldly moment where the harp plays triplets against the orchestra’s four.
Zander dove into the finale almost at once, with Moore’s exuberant clarinet frolicking and no soloist in sight. The soprano does get 11 bars’ grace, and Booth, entering quietly by the stage-right door, took her place in ample time. She brought a score; Zander had remarked in his preconcert talk that this was her first time with the piece. (I suspect she’d sung the Strauss previously.) At the head of this movement, Mahler writes, “It is of the utmost importance that the soloist be accompanied with extreme discretion.” Much easier said than done, and if Booth didn’t always register, Nelsons didn’t have much better success when he accompanied Kristine Opolais in 2017. Despite glancing at her score from time to time, Booth kept eye contact with the audience, and as in the Strauss, she phrased intelligently and pointed the text, turning pages with her right hand and gesturing with her left. Artless rather than operatic, she soared on “Sankt Peter im Himmel sieht zu!” and the subsequent refrains, Zander joining her in observing the fermata where Saint Ursula pauses to laugh at the 11,000 dancing virgins. Hennessy’s flute served up a taste of music in Heaven; the lullaby powered down to the cooing of Cirafici’s cor anglais and Gorczyca’s bass clarinet.
PS: Sunday’s concert, including Zander’s preconcert talk, was live-streamed for free, with the opportunity for listeners to make a donation to the orchestra. The video is available HERE, where I gather it will remain for another day or two. The sound and the camerawork are excellent. If you missed the concert, I recommend the video.
Jeffrey Gantz has been writing about music, dance, theater, art, film, and books for the past 45 years, first for the Boston Phoenix and currently for the Boston Globe.