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| EMI (Full price) (CD) CDC7 54178-2 (59 minutes: DDD). Text and translation included |
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| Capriccio (Full price) (CD) 10 358 (53 minutes: DDD). |
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| Symphony No. 4—selected comparisons: |
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| Battle, VPO, Maazel (1/86) CD39072 |
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| Lott, LPO, Welser-Most (12/88) CD-EMX2139 |
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Bertini is by far the more persuasive of these new arrivals: his buoyant and open-faced Mahler Fourth exudes bright-eyed innocence and a childlike excitability. This is Mahler in excellent health—it moves and it sings and never dwells long enough to cloy. It is, in a phrase, resolutely unsentimental. Which is laudable, of course—to a point. But Bertini could yield more: he could make more of the quixotic interplay between activity and repose. I crave the Welser-Most generosity (EMI Eminence), the incomparable Maazel/Vienna Philharmonic gemutlich (CBS). Bertini is just a touch shy of Mahler's wellintentioned, old-world schmalz—he could be a little less mean-spirited with the portamento. On the other hand, his freshness is engaging: his first movement is busy and impulsive without ever sounding breathless: an edgy 'dark fiddler' and rudely bucolic winds properly characterize the second (I like the coarse barrack-room trumpet heralding the first trio and dark, inelegant clarinets chortling over the radiant melody of the second); while his slow movement (too loud to begin with—the viola and cello lines should really float) is heartfelt and intense. Lucia Popp has to work harder on her delivery these days: the beguiling top of the voice is no longer quite so effortlessly produced. But it's still there—and, as ever, she knows how to make the text work for us.
Paradoxically, Marriner's Mitsuko Shirai sounds older. It's the plummy vibrato and studied enunciation that give the voice an almost matronly quality. It didn't work for me—not in this particular context. But then, nor did Mar- riner's reading. Nothing could be further removed from Mahler's concept of 'leisurely' than this somewhat breathless canter through the first movement (you may think the opening is fast, but wait for the recapitulation). It isn't merely a question of speed, though, so much as a reluctance to register the full import of Mahler's playful contrasts. For all his self-evident affection, Marriner fails to display a full and grateful understanding of the Mahlerian styles: he denies the first movement its natural grace and relaxation; he barely pauses to draw breath at Mahler's halting 'commas', ploughing blithely on at fig. 21 (11'47"), for instance, diminishing rather than heightening the abrupt changes of heart. And in the slow movement the yearning string exhortations cry out for more of a tug, a hint of tenuto (implied in Mahler's accenting) at each climatic release. Maazel still provides the best of all possible Fourths, with Welser-Most a more individual (the slowest of all possible adagios) but no less committed alternative.
ES