Leonard Bernstein's unique qualities as a Mahlerian shine through his work as composer and conductor. His death cut short what would have been a second great Mahler cycle on disc, but DG have solved the problem by obtaining a mid-fi Austrian radio recording of No. 8 taped live at the 1975 Salzburg Festival. Since Bernstein favoured live recording in his later years, with the mixed results evident elsewhere in this box, the tactic is not indefensible. That said, the total package is not exactly economical, spreading the cycle over 13 ill-filled discs. Available alternatives from Solti (Decca—to be reviewed) and Kubelik (DG) take ten and, moreover, are offered at bargain price. Generally speaking, Kubelik is affectionate and natural, while Solti exhausts you with his peculiar brand of extrovert intensity. Neither sets out to be emotionally draining in the way we have come to expect from Bernstein.
It was Bernstein's CBS cycle, the first integral recorded edition of Mahler's nine (completed) symphonies, which laid to rest the old notion that Mahler was a bad composer whose sound and fury had deceived a few gullible foreigners into mistaking his symphonies for great music. Despite the committed advocacy of Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, Dmitri Mitropoulos and the rest, it was Bernstein who transformed perceptions. His excessive moulding of detail was criticized at times—Mahler interpretation has since become less discreet—but there was no denying the importance of the undertaking. With his landmark recordings of Symphonies Nos.3, 6, 7 and 8, none of them taped commercially by Walter, Bernstein took over as keeper of the seal. There were fewer doubters now, though some felt Mahler was being granted more than his fair share of recognition as a consequence of past neglect.
When, 20 vears later, Bernstein re-recorded the symphonies for DG, Mahler was standard repertoire all over the world, even more popular than the resurgent Bruckner. The younger Bernstein had tended to thrust aside potential opposition by lacing the scores with so much manic energy that it was impossible to resist the physical assault. The older man pulls another trick, making them sound as if they were written expressly for Bernstein to conduct. Eschewing the magnificent, studied caution exemplified in this repertoire by Simon Rattle and the CBSO, Bernstein stamps his outsize personality on every bar and regularly has you convinced it is Mahler's own.
Although the glorious subjectivity of such music-making can preclude the formation of a critical consensus, Bernstein's 1980s readings of Symphonies Nos. 1 and 5 are generally recognized as the finest available. Along with No. 4, these were the weak spots in his 1960s cycle, so perhaps Bernstein was more than usually conscious of the need to go one better. The famous Adagietto is well-nigh perfect this time, less heavily expressive, with the VPO strings at their most luminous. What you make of No. 4 will depend on your response to Bernstein's use of a boy treble to evoke the final child's vision of heaven. Young Helmut Wittek is arguably less miscast than such worldly-wise participants as Elisabeth Schwarzkopf for Klemperer (EMI, 4/89) and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa for Solti (Decca, 8/84). He is brought uncomfortably close however—the engineers favour forward balances throughout the set—and you may be less tolerant than RO.
For ES, Bernstein's VPO Sixth, taped as recently as September 1988, was ''at least as fine as any Mahler he has yet given us'', though he had doubts about the unremitting vigour of the first movement, taut and fast like his famous CBS account (1967). DG's recording may not be completely natural as sound, but it is technically outstanding, combining analytical clarity with unusual depth of sonority. Every climax is accommodated without strain—and there are plenty of them in this most intractable of Mahler scores. The Scherzo, very sharply characterized, is more forbidding now, the Andante, outwardly serene, is auite unlike Karajan's (also DG)—a strange deadened intermezo. Above all, the finale is beyond praise, combining the desperate emotional commitment of Klaus Tennstedt with a rigorous structural control not always associated with either conductor. Rarely has the VPO played with such a seemingly contradictory blend of weight, intensity, richness and clarity. The trumpet and horn glissandos from 2'34'' boost the chill factor to an unprecedented degree. This is musicmaking of awesome power and control. And if there is some sign of strain towards the end, so much the better: we are eavesdropping on what is basically a concert event (notwithstanding a swingeing edit at 1'20'').
For Symphonies Nos. 2, 3 and 7, Bernstein returned to New York with mixed results. The main drawback is the dull-edged, shoe-box sound of Avery Fisher Hall, though Bernstein's grip on the Resurrection does seem to have loosened over the years. Here, the balance engineers manage to fabricate a degree of resonance, with off-stage brass self-consciously 'placed'. The problems lie elsewhere. Always impulsive and hedonistic, the reading has unspooled into transcendental kitsch, Bernstein reflecting (or initiating?) the tendency for conductors to get slower and slower in this piece. Comparative timings can be misleading. Not so here, however, when Klemperer (EMI) takes 79'21'', Walter (CBS) 79'44'', and even Bernstein's phenomenal 89'26'' LSO-at-Ely marathon (CBS) is outlasted. The 1987 account, his third, clocks in at 93'28''. What matters of course is that a sense of forward impetus be maintained throughout—and Bernstein doesn't quite manage it. That incorrigible veteran Christa Ludwig is merely firm and secure in her ''Urlicht'' where Janet Baker in the 1973 CBS account was positively breathtaking; and there seems to be an uncorrected error in the cello parts of the fifth movement (track 10, 0'47''). The otherwise resplendent apotheosis is rather spoilt by shallow-sounding, tea-tray percussion.
The Third Symphony suffers from one dimensional sonics—hard, dry and muffled, which has led many commentators to undervalue a performance which differs comparatively little from the classic 1961 CBS version. The finale is scarcely less rapt and, as ES pointed out, Bernstein comes to within five seconds of his previous timing over a duration of 25 minutes. The Seventh too is basically unchanged. A cynically indulgent, contrapuntally undisciplined ego trip in less practised hands, it has always suited Bernstein's volatile temperament. As in 1965, his galvanic account of the Rondo finale banishes all doubts. Unfortunately the sound is mostly rather blunted and lifeless: the DG recording team did a far better job for Abbado in Chicago.
Michael Kennedy was rather hard on the 1985 Concertgebouw remake of the Ninth. This symphony lies at the very heart of Bernstein's musical life (DG will be releasing a 1979 Berlin performance shortly) and he must have thought long and hard about so radical a reinterpretation. Whenever Bernstein expounded his own philosophical explanation for the Mahler boom, his belief that modern man had at last caught up with the message encoded in the Ninth was crucial. ''The mark of our maturity is that we accept our mortality; and yet we persist in our search for immortality.'' Mahler too is obsessed by death, and yet his music reanimates. The concluding Adagio ''takes the form of a prayer, Mahler's last chorale, his closing hymn, so to speak; and it prays for the restoration of life, of tonality, of faith''. This is very much Bernstein's own world-view, the source of that peculiar generosity of spirit which pervades so much of his music-making. Had he really lost that sense of balance by the time of this DG reworking? There's certainly more than a clue here to his reluctance to tackle Deryck Cooke's performing version of the Tenth. Only the Adagio (textually corrupt) is included in the present set—a 'borrowed' Unitel recording, uncharacteristically sleek, distantly miked and pervaded by coughs and creaks. It's almost as if Bernstein wants to show us just what an irrelevant appendix this is to his Mahler. What worries me in this Ninth is not the extravagant tempos—of which much has been made—but the overlit recording which highlights some imperfect orchestral playing. When Bernstein and the Concertgebouw performed this music in London's Barbican Hall, the execution was just that bit tighter in the Rondo-Burleske, the operatic first trumpet that much more reliably integrated into a softer-grained opening movement. On that occasion, the audience sat in numbed silence at the end of the long-drawn Adagio. It would be unwise to do so here if you have an old-fashioned CD player: within 24 seconds, the ''Veni, creator spiritus'' of the Eighth comes crashing (tinkling?) in—that lilliputian organ sound is a foretaste of variable balances to come. I do urge you at least to sample this set. You may conclude that these are performances of improper incandescence and unseemly fervour. But I doubt it. Relentless communication is what Mahler is all about.'