Mahler - Symphony nr. 7

In the slipstream of the live Mahler 7 on Thursday I listened to some more of this symphony. The reacquaintance with the Maazel/Vienna version was a delight. I am aware that in some circles Maazel can do no good as a Mahler interpreter (in fact as interpreter of no matter what music). One prominent Amazon reviewer goes so far to laud the excellent playing of the Vienna Philarmonic without wanting to give the credits to Maazel. Others find his approach simply to cold and analytical. His Seventh is indeed to a rather plain and reserved, but that doesn't mean it is a banal rendition. I still have the old CBS versions of his Mahler Sixth, Seventh and Eighth and also love the beautiful artwork of these discs.

Browsing some of the critical and scholarly discussion across several books in my library it strikes me that there are basically two schools in approaching this controversial work. There are those that see in the Seventh a paragon of proto-postmodernist fragmentation. They tend to consider the Rondo finale also in a very critical light. Some think it is unsalvageable, an outright failure. Adorno is prototypical of this discourse. From what I can see this is still fashionable talk in the academic community. Then there is a minority that sees  the Seventh as basically 'joyful noise', cast in a beautifully balanced, five-moment arch form (fast-slow-fast-slow-fast). Populariser David Hurwitz ('Unlocking the Masters', Amadeus Press) represents this opinion.

I find both approaches persuasive to a certain degree. In fact, they are mirrored in the interpretative traditions that have emerged around the symphony. Martin Geck quotes Barenboim in the Mahler Handbuch, saying: "From the very start onwards we detect a distinct lack of direction. Conducting the Seventh is like engaging in an archeological excavation. As the first movement starts, one has the feeling of digging through layers, of peering into dark corners to bring the music to light and inspect it." That is, in my opinion, the route taken by the likes of Sinopoli, Abbado, Chailly, supported by sumptuous, resonant recordings. I think this also naturally reinforces the link with the Wunderhorn period, notably the labyrinthian first movement of the Third.  But is here also that the finale often appears as a difficult to classify anomaly. Then there are conductors who build their interpretation more on the classical credentials of the symphony: symmetry, brisk speeds, sonata structure (for the first movement), clear musical paragraphs, diatonic harmony (in the finale). An upbeat version of the Sixth as it were. Here we find Solti, Scherchen, Gielen, helped by very clear, analytic recordings. In these versions the finale seems to make sense much more naturally.

The above is only a crude approximation of a much more differentiated interpretative menu. Take Maazel, who seems to aim for the clear outlines of the classical approach but adopts the slower tempos of the romanticists. Or Scherchen - a version I relistened to this morning - who plays the symphony at breakneck speed and pushes it in the orbit of Schoenbergian expressionism.

The net result is that, despite this being such a complicated work, we have an exceptionally wide range of valid and engaging renditions to choose from. Which is not always the case in Mahler.