Dusting down the Resurrection
SO OVERWHELMING is Mahler's Resurrection Symphony in performance that it is difficult for us to believe we have been listening to a corrupt edition for all these decades. But the truth is that in bar after bar, Mahler's real intentions have not been enshrined in the printed editions used for performances.
That situation has finally been rectified. Last night at the Albert Hall the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Gilbert Kaplan gave the first concert performance of the revised critical edition instigated five years ago by Kaplan.
The new edition, prepared by the Viennese musicologist Renate Stark-Volt and Kaplan himself, corrects more than 500 errors in the text - including missing accents, misplaced dynamics, incorrect tempo indications, even wrong notes.
It is true that the changes involved are minutiae - most people would be hard-put to identify a single one without the benefit of a score - but their cumulative importance should not be underestimated.
Universal Edition's authoritative new score, with the changes enumerated in the critical apparatus, allows us to hear what the composer actually intended for the first time in the history of the work.
It would be satisfying to report that this performance was as exemplary as the text on which it was based. Sadly, however, it was accident-prone, with numerous split notes and a prominent false entry on a trombone - ironic in view of the care taken to get the notes on the page right.
But in spite of Kaplan's precision with accents and dynamics, it was also a fatally earthbound Resurrection. Kaplan could never be accused of rushing his fences, but he could afford to let the music have its head more often.
Still, the vocal finale, with the combined forces of four choruses, and sopranos Sally Matthews and Karen Cargill as the excellent soloists, was suitably apocalyptic.
The knowledge that the experience was authentic added an extra frisson.
