In celebration of the 150th anniversary of Mahler’s birth and his 45-year collaboration with the Cleveland Orchestra, composer-conductor Pierre Boulez directed a Mahler-only concert at Ohio’s Severance Hall. The DVD was released this summer, today classical music writer Sebastian Spreng offers his thoughts on the work…

By Sebastian Spreng, Visual Artist and Classical Music Writer

It was a special concert celebrating several milestones. A concert that gathered up threads and served as a model of musical programming to be reckoned with. How could it have been otherwise when a master conductor is at the helm? Pierre Boulez celebrated his 85^th birthday, Mahler Year 2010-2011 (the composer’s 150^th birthday and 100^th anniversary of his death) and Boulez’s 45^th year with the Cleveland Orchestra, all at the same time and under the same roof, the splendid Cleveland’s Severance Hall.

It doesn’t surprise at all the clever selection conformed by Mahler’s early works and his last – unfinished – symphony. Played in reverse order, it works as an evocative journey from maturity to youth. The concert begins with an ideal vehicle for Boulez, the Adagio from the 10^th Symphony. In his glorious maturity, the French conductor adds to his celebrated clinical precision, a welcomed lyricism, intensity and autumnal glow to his conducting style, so appropriate to the composer’s farewell to the world. The Cleveland Orchestra’s forces rise magnificently to the challenge, especially the strings, with unrivaled silkiness and an entrancing transparency that contrasts with the powerful brass, which shine at the dramatic peaks and crescendos of this ominous work, an ultimate adagio by a “Master of adagios”.

The second part is devoted to 12 Lieder (art songs) from the collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn) that Mahler called Songs, Humoresques and Ballads to convey a cynical, tender, macabre, hopeless and in the end, lovingly view of the human condition. For these, Boulez called upon two of the best singers of our day: Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená and German baritone Christian Gerhaher. Though somewhat vocally detached (perhaps a Boulez requisite), both combine musicality, sweetness, humor and good taste. Kožená excels in the competition between cuckoo, nightingale and donkey in Lob des hohen Verstanden (In Praise of High Intellect), and Gerhaher sings the military songs with just the right mix of sadness and virility. The 12 songs are delivered in the original orchestration, not as duets, the format used in such famous recordings like the one with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau under George Szell. As it should be, Der Tambourgs’sell (The Little Drummer Boy) concludes the concert on a prophetic, nocturnal note, with a never more suitable Gute Nacht (Good Night).

Previously available on CD (DG 477 9060), the DVD version was directed by William Cosel and recorded live at Cleveland’s orchestral home. This excellent DVD serves as an introduction for beginners and a treat for experts in Mahler and should also appeal to audiences in Miami, the orchestra’s winter residency.

As bonuses, it features a fascinating interview with Boulez in which questions and answers are delivered by the maestro himself in three languages (instead of the standard one language with subtitles), and a clip of the end of that night with a Happy Birthday to the maestro by orchestra and audience. (ACCENTUS MUSIC  ACC20231).

Click here to purchase the DVD.