•
Rating: "And the unease grows inside me like a cancer..."
Powerfully, Ivan Graziani's line makes its way every time I find myself thinking of Gustav Mahler composing his overwhelming, intensely powerful Sixth. Musically light-years apart, the talented rock artist from Abruzzo and the great Bohemian composer shared the unfortunate fate of dying at fifty, and also a sort of murky resignation to an adverse fate, naturally expressed in a much deeper and more complex form by Gustav Mahler. What force could torment the soul of a man so tenaciously and diabolically, a man who between 1904 and 1905 was finally allowing himself serene and well-deserved holidays, immersed in the magical landscape of the Carinthian mountains with his family?
The damned unease, the one that never leaves those who carry it within, wherever they try to flee. And in addition, a kind of mad but lucid foresight that often, in the most sensitive people, accompanies anxiety, in turn fueling it with terrifying, terrible "flashes" of their own future. All of this can be found in the Sixth Symphony in A minor, also known as the "Tragic," an adjective that mostly suits the enigmatic and prophetic final movement, because it is here that the darkest visions take shape, transforming into great music. The rest of the symphony would rather deserve the label "Agitated," including the sublime "Andante," only apparently serene and pastoral in character. Frenzy tyrannically dominates the first movement, "Allegro energico, ma non troppo," one of those musical pieces that seem made to disprove the silly cliché that classical music is for relaxation. Here there is rhythm, and what rhythm! An unrelenting and obtuse 4/4 march like modern "techno," but unlike the latter, rich in melodic nuances, mostly dark and sinister tones. Not a funeral march like that of the Fifth, but a decisive, peremptory march of man towards his destiny, whatever it may be. Timpani and percussion only occasionally cease their grinding, making room for a beautiful cantabile theme by the strings, which seem to be drawn to their limits in a supreme effort. It's not an exaggeration to say that the end of this movement leaves us breathless, but let's not delude ourselves that the following "Scherzo. Wuchtig" might offer some respite. Here the parallel with the Fifth is more evident: even in this "scherzo" a label like "Agitated stormy, with great vehemence" wouldn't be out of place. The rhythm is more uneven but almost equally furious, and the reflective pauses, where ghostly scraps of waltz resound, immediately cut short by the satanic grin now of the winds now of the strings, certainly do not help regain the serenity the listener lost a while ago.
When the haunting "Andante" begins, for a few minutes there is the impression of being with Mahler and his family on the sweet Austrian mountains, in a finally serene and pastoral climate, where the Glockenspiel mimics the cowbells and the horns speak the language of the green Alpine valleys. But it lasts little: gradually the theme evolves to show the other side of the coin: a desperate sensation that everything we are observing is precarious and that we are about to leave it forever, so much so that at the end the Andante has already transformed into the strong and desperate cry of the entire orchestra, with the strings wailing inconsolably, and the listener now sobbing unrestrainedly, already prepared to face the colossal final movement, "Finale: Allegro moderato." Never as in this case does the word "Allegro" turn out to be just a typical saying in classical music, used to distinguish a brisk piece from a slow one. The joy is elsewhere, on another planet. In its almost 28 minutes, this tormented finale presents a continuous battle of man (of Mahler himself) against the blows dealt by fate, which with chilling realism correspond to the hammer blows of the two false endings and the real, definitive one. From the first two, we recover, after sinking into the liquid sound of two harps, resurfacing and patiently beginning to stitch our armor against fate, which at the end will punctually shatter it. The last blow cannot be recovered from, as it represents death.
And here speculations were born about the paranormal value of this Symphony, in which according to some, Mahler would have predicted some years in advance the hardest blows that fate had reserved for him: first the discovery of the heart disease that would affect his last years, then the death of his eldest daughter, and finally (the fateful third blow) death. Such superstitions also affected Mahler himself, who a few years later tried unsuccessfully to quell the terrible anxiety listening to this movement aroused in him by deleting the final blow, then reinserted by many conductors who tackled this monument to unease. Among them stands out Sir Georg Solti, who with his Chicago Symphony Orchestra offered what I consider the best interpretation I've ever heard of this Symphony, but the numerous versions by Claudio Abbado, with various orchestras, are also remarkable. Clear, sharp, and relatively concise, the Sixth of the Hungarian conductor naturalized English (hence the Sir) also has the practical advantage of fitting on a single CD, which is not always possible, given that the Symphony's duration hovers around 80 minutes. On the other hand, poor Mahler, as slightly prophetic as he was, how could he imagine that 75 years later someone would invent the CD?
Loading comments slowly
