MUSIC AND DANCE : How Jascha Horenstein Solved Mahler’s Mighty Seventh

On Aug. 29, 1969, in London’s Royal Festival Hall, conductor Jascha Horenstein and the New Philharmonia Orchestra engaged the vast, amorphous lump of heroic agony that is Mahler’s Seventh Symphony with such fiery conviction and skill that the score’s very considerable failings were reduced to minor distractions. The occasion is documented on the Music & Arts label (CD 727).

Enjoying the best of Mahler’s Seventh has in a sense always been possible since the composer saved his worst for that garish finale, 17.5 to 24 minutes (depending on the conductor) of uninhibited jollity. By this time the listener has already been occupied for at least an hour.

The Russian-born, Vienna-educated Horenstein (1899-1973) wasn’t the first conductor to make the Seventh tolerable and then some. Leonard Bernstein achieved that feat with the New York Philharmonic with his scorching mid-1960s live performances and subsequent CBS (now Sony) recording--not to be confused with the later, more indulgent version by the same forces for Deutsche Grammophon. But Horenstein went even further in 1969 toward “solving” the Seventh.

Horenstein was seemingly created to achieve cult status, what with his mystical beliefs, his championing of unfashionable artistic causes, his battles with management and an immense but decidedly erratic talent--all of which gained him a fanatically devoted but never large following. Steady employment and a voluminous discography proved, not surprisingly, elusive as well.

After only sporadic appearances in the United States (of which he was a citizen) before and after World War II, he had a flurry of activity here in the late 1960s. But recurring ill health, which caused lapses in concentration, and the failure of impresarios to engage him for his core repertory, made many American listeners question what all the fuss was about.

*

Horenstein’s initial, daring decision regarding the Mahler Seventh in 1969 was to take it about 20% faster overall than prescribed by whatever faint tradition applied.

His doing so--and combining speed with an unprecedented clarity of texture and a strikingly subtle dynamic scheme--made the symphony’s first two movements, its most closely reasoned to start with, become downright shapely. And if the scherzo third movement still didn’t make much sense, it was over quickly, making way for a magically sensual reading of the “Nachtmusik” (a title shared with the second movement) fourth section.

As suggested, skipping movement five, the finale, is not an actionable offense. And with Horenstein it too passes quickly, relatively speaking.

The recorded sound--Music & Arts does not acknowledge the tape’s provenance--is both sharply focused and resonant. The very opening of the work is misblown by the alto-horn soloist, but he and his many colleagues proceed to cover themselves with glory, in terms of technique and expressivity, over the long, demanding haul. This is special-occasion playing, under a special-occasion conductor.

The Horenstein-New Philharmonia collaboration serves to remind us of an overlooked function of the conductor, any conductor: showing an audience, and an orchestra, what is best in a greatly flawed but just as greatly inspired work.

*

Interestingly, two additional versions of this by no means frequently recorded work arrived at the same time as Music & Arts’--one from another noted Mahlerian, Otto Klemperer, whose interpretation was studio recorded with the same orchestra, in the same year, as Horenstein’s marvel.

But in an attempt to make every measure meaningful, and adopting somnambulistically slow tempos to underline points, Klemperer succeeds only in producing further fragmentation.

The other arrival is a new job from Swedish conductor Leif Segerstam, whose direction of the Danish National Radio Symphony results in a profusion of pretty sounds, almost comically at odds with the music’s frenzied emotionalism.

Horenstein requires only a single disc, which could not have accommodated either of his present competitors’ more slowly paced interpretations. The Klemperer set (EMI Classics 64147, two mid-priced CDs) is fleshed out by two of Klemperer’s own, latter-years compositions: the brief, Mahler-inspired Second Symphony and his Seventh(!) String Quartet, which juggles the influences of Mahler and Brahms. Turgid, doggedly backward-looking stuff.

The Segerstam coupling (Chandos 9057-59, three CDs) is nothing less than Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in a blandly lovely performance, in lush, edgeless sonics.