Word: mahler
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...rolls of the snare-drum take over in the Allegro energico, ma non troppo. Mahler describes in a correspondence the hero of this last movement: "Oh him fall three blows of fate, the last of which fells him as a tree is felled." Once the seven sceptres at Armageddon come out of the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony, the scythes they raise deliver a cruel final stroke...
ABBADO HAS A WEAKNESS for airy tunes played on glockenspiel and celesta. The tunes come and go between martial rhythms. Young Gustav, fascinated by the military, could never quite part with his recollections of parading soldiers. The march was to Mahler what the Ring of the Nibelung was to Wagner...
...Mahler's death images in the finales bring to mind something Seneca once said--art collectors, sportsment and those preoccupied with music confront an untimely death. (Mahler's daughter died, incidentally, three years after he composed the "Tragic," and he got his three years later...
...life and love, and the impending doom he felt achieves palpability in the percussion's pulse, the woodwinds' C minor arias in the third movement, and the brass' blues. Abbado's interpretation, whether instinctive or well-planned, hits the mark just like Bernstein, who pioneered the performance of Mahler's symphonies for concert-goers...
Ineffable pianissimos anticipate the loud reveilles and marches. Even Georg Solti with the Chicago Symphony (on London) cannot make the airs as sweet as Abbado does. If Solti got high with the Chicago before the 1970 release of his recording, Abbado, hardened by years of vicissitudes from fighting Mahler's Sixth, conducts the same troops ten years later with discipline and clear command...