GRAMOPHONE Review: Mahler Symphony No. 4 – Carolyn Sampson, Minnesota Orchestra/Vänskä
Let me say straight away that Vanska is temperamentally far better suited to the pristine, child-like world of the Fourth Symphony than he was to the epic Second. There are many aspects of this excellent performance (and recording) that remind me of George Szell’s famous version with the Cleveland Orchestra – a crystalline quality, super-transparent and immaculately detailed and mindful always of the work’s classical precedents, not least Haydn with his wit and charm.
In short, this Fourth is fresh and bright-eyed, the first movement’s pointedly ‘Viennese’, rubatos deftly turned but in such a way as never to impede the momentum, the eagerness and playfulness of it all. But there is weight, too, when at the vivid climax the trumpet sounds a chilling premonition of the fanfare which opens the Fifth Symphony. And there is ‘theatre’ in the hushed return of the first subject where, like Szell, Vanska stretches the moment to create an extraordinary moment of stasis.
The second movement doesn’t for me quite convey the parodistic sourness (Death, the fiddler) of Mahlerians like Jurowski or the Fischers, Adam and Ivan – but there is a glowing vision of earthly paradise in the portamento-wreathed trio section which has an air of old fashioned sentimentality about it.
Adam Fischer’s recent account alerted me to the benefits of not lingering over the opening paragraph of the slow movement but rather through-phrasing in ways more in keeping with the free-spirit of what has gone before. Vanska, like so many, is more self-consciously rapt and offers an account of the movement that is writ larger and more traditionally expansive and emotive. It is impressive, though, and I especially love the way in which the BIS engineers have captured those deep unfathomable plunges of string basses.
Carolyn Sampson tenders some gorgeous singing in the finale’s Das himmlische Leben. It exudes maturity in its engagement and perceptive use of words and reminds us that there is nothing childish (or vocally child-like) about the highly ironic text (pace Lenny Bernstein on this one and his aberration of using a Vienna choirboy for his second recording). A photo in the booklet suggests that Sampson delivered her solo from an elevated podium by the trumpets. More theatre. Heavenly indeed. Though I do think Mahler would have approved of the increasingly familiar custom now to have the soprano enter through the orchestra during the finale seraphic pages of the slow movement. That’s the floating image that I will always have in my mind’s eye.
