Coming to Davis’s Fourth after the bland anonymity of Boulez’s Seventh (reviewed last month) may have influenced my response, but I enjoyed this performance enormously. Davis’s Mahler is perhaps too restless, too blatantly ‘conducted’ for some tastes, but his occasionally heavy-handed manipulations of tempo are at least symptomatic of a desire to communicate a personal vision of and affection for Mahler’s score. Both playing and recording are of exceptional standard, even if the lack of ironic edge to the sound lends the music-making a somewhat old-fashioned air (strikingly at odds with RCA’s strident, pop-inspired packaging). Davis’s scherzo is warm and characterful in a rather cumbersome sort of way, but his slow movement is a marvel – elevated in feeling and blessedly free of the intrusive inflexions which mar an otherwise refreshing account of the opening movement. No more affecting account has appeared for a decade and only Maazel’s Vienna Philharmonic produce such glorious string tone. After this, the finale disappoints just a little. The ‘operatic’ soloist does not really point her words with sufficient poignancy – nor does she seem willing or able to sing quietly in her upper register – and Sir Colin again insists on playing up the composer’s expressive hesitations, adding one or two of his own. This may not be wholly idiomatic Mahler and yet, like so many recent discs from this source, it has abundant humanity and an extraordinary lack of artifice. The sympathetic acoustic of the Herkulessaal, well caught, is a great asset.
You might expect the boyish soprano of Barbara Hendricks to be Zubin Mehta’s trump card, and yet, as sometimes happens on disc, she sounds distinctly uncomfortable in places. Not that this should put bargain-hunters off acquiring what is generally a naturally paced Fourth, generously recoupled. The main drawback is the sound. No doubt attempts were made to ameliorate the unhelpfully dry acoustic of Tel Aviv’s Mann Auditorium, but the finale still seems rather brash, with Mehta pushing forward aggressively and his players unsure how (or whether) to keep up. I missed the disciplined refinement of Szell’s famous Cleveland version, not to mention the sonic distinction (and occasional somnambulism) of Maazel’s.
These days, Mehta’s Mahler is yet more expertly prepared, though still somewhat overbright to judge from his extrovert account of No. 2 (Teldec, 2/95) and this latest reading of No. 6. Anyone who finds Bernstein’s Allegro energico disagreeably pressed won’t much care for Mehta’s. His opening tempo is much the same but seems faster because he takes less note of significant details like the major/minor motto at 1'49''. While some of the string phrasing is crude (and the horns’ meaty vibrato must be something of an acquired taste), the Israel Philharmonic play better than ever and the production team get remarkable results from the orchestra’s once intractable hall. Having given us a swift, lithe first movement, Mehta rather spoils things with a coda unaccountably measured and vulgar in effect. More seriously, his finale is at once taut and shallow. Here, certainly, are sound and fury, but too much tension is allowed to dissipate after the first hammer-blow. The contrast with Bernstein is instructive: he knows just how to build towards the nodal points and how to sustain the tension in between. With Mehta you feel that things probably aren’t so bad after all. Incidentally, the Israel Philharmonic celesta sounds oddly like a marimba near the start of the finale; it may be appropriate that the booklet includes a caricature of Mahler as a man besotted with novel percussive effects.'