Mahler: Das Klagende Lied

Day 258

Mahler: Das Klagende Lied

Soloists

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus

Simon Rattle

I’ve never been an out-and-out Mahler enthusiast. I have played several of the symphonies and it is always a fascinating experience being in the middle of those fascinating textures. But I don’t buy into the whole ethos and I do often feel frustration that the music is over extended and that Mahler simply couldn’t stop himself pouring everything he had into the music.  After all he did say that a symphony must be ‘like the world’.

Das Klagende Lied is the only major piece of Mahler that I have not heard. It is an early work (1879-80) which went through many revisions and perhaps never reached a final form. It was originally in 3 movements but Mahler dropped the first movement early on and it was only rediscovered and performed years after his death.  I listened to the full 3 movement version. 

This was an astonishingly mature work for a composer barely out of his teens. What struck me most was how early Mahler had achieved his characteristic orchestral sound - the score was instantly recognisable at Mahler and couldn’t have been by anybody else. It terms of the musical material there is clearly some Wagnerian influence and touches of Bruckner and even Brahms, but I don’t think that anybody else was writing music quite like this at the time. There is a huge amount of secular German choral music by major composer that is almost completely unknown and perhaps if we knew that better we might understand the roots of this piece a bit more, but it does strike me as wholly original.

That’s not to say that everything works. There are moments of bombast which seems rather gauche and some of the solo vocal writing is rather awkward. But there is also music of real quality here - particularly in the more reflective moments. The end is very haunting, though I think that it was a mistake to end with a sudden loud chord after the music died away to almost nothing. 

The young Mahler clearly had enormous self confidence to write such a big work. Originally he required 6 harps, 11 soloists and and a children’s choir. Even after revision the piece still required large forces, including an offstage band of 15 wind instruments and percussion which plays for no more than 2 or 3 minutes. 

It is interesting to speculate that had he called the piece a symphony it might well have become part of the accepted cycle - if the choral 8th symphony is accepted as a symphony surely this could have been as well. It might have become much more of a repertory piece rather than the rarity that it now is.