It's impossible to tell how much Pierre Boulez influenced the angle of Henri-Louis de la Grange's liner note for this CD of Mahler's Eighth Symphony. I wonder if he'd either been at the concert performances this recording was based on or had a sneak preview of the disc. Whatever the case, the great Mahler scholar does a bit of clever reassessment of the work to help it fit in with Boulez's interpretative vision.
De la Grange writes of it being 'a symphony for (rather than with) soloists, chorus and orchestra, a symphony, moreover, in which the voices, treated in an entirely instrumental way, expound and develop the whole of the thematic material. It is also an "objective" piece, as opposed to a "subjective" one.' He might well be right in pointing to the contrapuntal virtuosity of the opening Veni creator spiritus, yet I think that calling the second movement 'objective' is more contentious. It is true, no doubt, that 'it is the first of his works not to contain any quotations or distant and stylized echoes of any fanfare, march or Ländler', but surely this is also the closest Mahler came to writing an opera, his music a reaction to Goethe's text (the final scene from Faust II).
A cynic might say that this musicological sleight of hand has been produced as a defence against those who, perhaps justifiably, might wonder how suited Pierre Boulez, the archetypal musical modernist, is to this Mahler symphony. De la Grange even invokes the authority of Adorno to justify his interpretation ('Mahler's real triumphs here are strictly compositional, and find expression in the systematic use of the "deviation" or "variant", which Adorno so astutely held up in opposition to the classical variation'). He doesn't, however, mention any of Adorno's other comments on the work - for example, he famously described it as 'the magnum opus [which] is the aborted, objectively impossible resuscitation of the cultic.'
Anyway, this is all by the by and what counts is the content of this well-presented double CD. I think it's fair to say that Boulez produces a performance that fits in well with De la Grange's description. It's meticulously prepared, extremely detailed, recorded in excellently clear sound and all played with absolute technical command by the Staatskapelle Berlin. I would say that the first movement is more successful than the second. Here the 'objective' approach seems much better suited to the music itself. There is a tautness about the way Boulez brings out the various contrapuntal lines, particularly in the brass's many dotted rhythms, which strikes me as particularly effective. I don't think I've ever heard so many of the details of Mahler's orchestration either. (For a good example, listen to the instrumental interlude (marked 'Tempo I') at track four.)
The soloists sing as De la Grange prescribes: their lines blend into the texture as just another instrumental strand, none of them introducing much in the way of characterisation. The massed choruses (the Chor der deutschen Staatsoper Berlin and the Rundfunkchor Berlin) are properly imposing yet also agile. The final double fugue is a marvel of clarity.
For me, the second part is distinctly less successful. There's the same level of detail in the instrumental introduction, which works well, but as soon as the drama unfolds – because despite the unusual character of the final part of Goethe's Faust, that is surely what it is – this objective approach shows its deficiencies. This is exemplified for me by the passage starting at Pater ecstaticus' 'Ewiger Wonnebrand'. Baritone Hanno Müller-Brachman is here distinctly unecstatic. How can an interpretation ignore his words - 'eternal passion of delight / love's glowing bond, seething agony of the breast, etc.' – when Mahler, in his impassioned setting, most blatantly draws attention to it?
The same has to be said for tenor Johan Botha as Doctor Marianus. His voice has never been the most sensuous so Boulez should really do more to try and make his 'Höchste Herrscherrin der Welt!' sound 'entzückt' ('enraptured' as Goethe himself marks the speech). At 'Jungfrau, rein im schönsten Sinne' the chorus is too quiet and Botha just seems unstintingly loud.
Of the other soloists, soprano Twyla Robinson (Magna paccatrix) sounds good up top but a little squally and unidiomatic elsewhere, and Michelle de Young (Mulier Samaritana) through vocal allure alone at least injects a bit of red-bloodedness into proceedings. Robert Holl (Pater profundis) is authoritative but balanced quite far back. At the final chorus, Boulez seems to let himself go a little and the female soloists excel themselves in their various soaring lines. Yet the final bars still seem strangely underplayed and this, I'm afraid, is the lasting impression of the performance. Mahler's Eighth is a work which should transport and move a listener but under Boulez's analytical gaze this recording fails to do that, despite its undoubted success in technical terms.
By Hugo Shirley