This continues "Gustav Mahler — Symphony No.2 (Part 1)"
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The early performances of Mahler’s Second Symphony were always a success, which must have been relieve and comfort after his First—“it is and always will be my child of sorrow”—continued to be harangued as, for example, a “conglomeration of nervous impressions”. (That was after the 1899 Dresden performance and, although part of a thoroughly negative review in the Dresdner Nachrichten, the characterization actually rings true for the First and several subsequent Mahler symphonies.)
Around the same time, a Sylvain Dupuis championed the Second Symphony in Liége with his “mediocre and choppy” (Mahler) orchestra. When Mahler came to conduct a performance himself, he had to re-arrange the orchestration to accommodate the lack of bass tubas, contrabassoons, and five-stringed double basses. He didn’t like the experience, but he was hardly above making any host of changes to get his works performed at all. Following the performance, on critic (Gazette de Liége) called it the “most masterly work of its kind since Mendelssohn [sic!]”. Perhaps the writer was fresh under the impression of Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony, but surely this was the only time a Mahler symphony has been likened to one of Felix’. What follows are empty phrases of exaltation that mean nothing. Much more perceptive and articulate are two slightly more critical reviews. One points out that the symphony was audibly “the work of a sceptic [, a] vast poem of life [that] exalts fatality [and] a joy which is lacking abandonment or confidence… The work seems to be analyzing itself…”. The other finds it an “uneven work… very beautiful in parts, weak in others. One is to aware of effort, of its desire to be original…” Whether you love the Second Symphony or not, both statements ring true of Mahler in general and the work in particular.
After the Mahler-conducted Munich performance, another critical review—Henri-Louis de La Grange calls the author Rudolf Louis a convinced anti-Semite—gets the essence of the Symphony surprisingly right when he attests that Mahler’s dynamic and fiery temperament rendered the musical language captivating... and compelled the audience… to ‘surrender unconditionally to the composer’… and that the audience found itself ‘overwhelmed rather than convinced’. The difference is that today, audiences are both.
Mahler prepared that Munich performance of the Second Symphony in 1900, although not with the Mahler-championing Kaim Orchestra (the Munich Philharmonic-to-be, which at the time was lead by Felix Weingartner), but in this case by the “Munich Society for Modern Composition”, formerly the Hugo Wolf Fan Club. This time he had to deal with small string sections and added a clarinet to a section of the chorus, to support the shaky tenors. After the performance, concerned about sufficient contrast between movements, Mahler still toyed with the idea of placing the Scherzo second. He didn’t, because the Andante would have been too similar in mood with the following—Urlicht—movement. In the case of this symphony, that is not too important… but it is helpful in remembering that ‘finished’ symphonies are not works necessarily cast in stone the way we know them. More about that when we reach Sixth Symphony.
Also for the Munich performance, Mahler demanded for the contralto part a “voice and expression of a child, since I myself, when I heard the tinkling of a small bell, imagined the soul to be in heaven where it will have to start afresh… as a small child.” That sounds similar to his demands for