Pleasures and Pitfalls With Mahler : Two conductors associated with the composer show the right and wrong ways of tackling his lengthy works in concert

To ears exhausted from being pummelled by late-Romantic complexities and agonies--particularly by the recent siege of “Ring” mania--the most satisfying and durable of the nine Mahler symphonies remains the benign, shapely and relatively brief Fourth. It comes to us via two live-performance historical recordings, led by conductors personally associated with the composer.

Willem Mengelberg, the one conductor who made a serious effort at popularizing the entire Mahler oeuvre after the composer’s death in 1911, leads the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra in a 1939 performance of the Fourth Symphony (Philips 426 108, mid-price).

Since Mahler particularly admired Mengelberg’s work, this is considered by many observers to be an indication of how Mahler wanted the work to sound. Forget that Mahler had been long dead by the time this performance took place.

If Mengelberg circa 1939 is indeed the right way, then the infinite varieties of wrong are preferable. Mahler talked much about interpretive freedom of expression, and there are accounts of how he--one of the most respected conductors of the century’s first decade--disobeyed instructions regarding tempos and dynamics in his own scores. He had a right.

But Mengelberg’s freedom involves playing no more than a few measures--above all in the opening movement--at the same tempo, and with sufficiently exaggerated portamentos and Luftpausen to give one vertigo, with intimations of nausea.

Jo Vincent, the soprano soloist in the finale, presents a convincing picture of a child’s paradise with her clear, unforced singing, despite Mengelberg’s vagaries.

Bruno Walter, an assistant to Mahler during the composer’s last years, proved a less self-serving advocate of the Fourth Symphony in his 1950 Salzburg Festival performance, superbly executed by the Vienna Philharmonic and handsomely remastered for CD (MCA Classics 42237, mid-price). Whatever its momentary lapses, the performance radiates warmth and conviction, with Walter employing sufficient portamento to link us to an earlier era, but not enough to alienate.

Irmgard Seefried is, however, too mature sounding--and she has pitch problems--in the finale. Remember, what is preserved here is a one-shot event, not one of today’s cut-and-paste from three or four performances jobs, with later touching-up in the studio that are shamelessly advertised as live recordings.

In contrast to these deeply involved, if erratic interpretations, that by Christoph von Dohnanyi and his Cleveland Orchestra of the First Symphony is a brisk, workaday outing by skilled mechanics (London 425 718).

This repetitious, overreaching, brilliant exercise in youthful chutzpah requires more coddling than the conductor supplies. And no matter how patchy the composer’s inspiration in the finale, one wants more brashness and noise than these well-mannered artists offer.

If the playing of the New York Philharmonic on its new, resplendently recorded Mahler Fifth Symphony (Teldec 46152) reflects the depths to which the orchestra has reportedly sunk under Zubin Mehta’s stewardship, a similar fate should befall a number of consistently (over)praised ensembles. The precise attacks of the juicy strings, the snarl and clarity of the brass, the lush clarinet and oboe solos that inhabit this reading are impressive indeed.

Whether Mehta extracts much more than surface brilliance from the score is another, less happily resolved matter. The opening movement, which should invoke fear and trembling, sounds like conducting by the numbers: everything in place, hands neatly folded--no soaring, no wailing, little gut-thumping, which is what the music is about. The sublime Adagietto emerges rather stiffly--surprising from a conductor with Mehta’s proven affinity for such music.

The late Hermann Scherchen was an original, as witness his 1965 live performance of the Fifth Symphony with the Paris ORTF Orchestra (Harmonia Mundi 195179, mid-price).

Scherchen had markedly personal notions of dealing with accusations against Mahler of long-windedness. He does not, as one might expect, resort to speed, but to the ax, principally in the scherzo, which he reduces from a normal 17-18 minutes playing time to just under six. How? By the simple expedient of excising much of the midsection and hacking off the lower limbs in their entirety.

The patient is somewhat disfigured by the surgery. The ecstatic audience, whose ovation is ear-shatteringly reproduced, seems not to have noticed; then again, they may be expressing relief at being dismissed at a relatively early hour.

Amid this butchery, one is likely to lose sight of an Adagietto that, as delivered by Scherchen and his scrumptiously throbbing strings, is among the most profoundly affecting on recordings.

The rumor circulated that this Fifth was only the pre-intermission portion of a program, with another Mahler symphony on the second half, can be dismissed as the basest of canards.

Additional News from the Mahler Front:

--The fine Eugene Ormandy-Philadelphia Orchestra Mahler 10th Symphony, in Deryck Cooke’s performing edition, is soon to reappear in CBS’s low-priced “Masterworks Portrait” series.

--Among other upcoming releases are a First Symphony from Edo de Waart and the Minnesota Orchestra and, separately, tenor Siegfried Jerusalem performing the Ruckert songs and selections from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn,” both on the Virgin Classics label.

--Finally, the celebrated 1960s recording of the “Resurrection” Symphony, all 80 minutes of it, with Otto Klemperer conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra, has been reissued on a single, mid-priced EMI/Angel CD (69662).