Overblown great music?

[Alan Howe]

I hardly think it'd be possible or even desirable to demote Mahler's music; it's his unmerited hegemony that's the problem. As I said at the outset, it's what this situation does to the music of his contemporaries that really concerns me, one example being Wilhelm Berger.

Oh, and I'd say Mahler was pretty unsung 50 years ago. Certainly Symphony No.7 was. And I'd've thought that the meaning of 'overblown' was clear: dictionary definitions include 'excessively inflated', 'grandiose' or 'overelaborate' - all of which could justly be applied to that work.

[MartinH]

I was sitting in a rehearsal playing 1st bassoon on a work that is beloved, popular, over-recorded and what has to be the most overblown, hysterical thing ever written: Tchaikovsky's 5th. By page 8 you're thinking "will this ever end?" The over-the-top, grandiose, pomposity is almost embarrassing. And I know tomorrows audience is going to love it. A lot of Tchaikovsky is "overblown"; understatement was not his forte. But, it is a great symphony by any measure, there's no doubt about that in my mind.

[adriano]

I wish I could record Wilhelm Berger one day, but suppose the "traktor"-like  trajectory of cpo will take also this project for themselves one day. I have finished believing in doing more such repertoire, I have not enough connections - and they don't want me anyway because I worked for Klaus Heymann in the past.

[Gareth Vaughan]

And why aren't we hearing his great contemporaries, e.g. Wilhelm Berger?

Sadly, Alan, I think the answer to this question is probably the same as why we don't hear the work of many worthy unsungs - a combination of ignorance and prejudice: "I haven't heard of him; therefore, he can't be any good." It's not that Mahler is sung to the detriment of his contemporaries. It's that Mahler had some champions in the days when he was relatively unsung, so now he is popular: "I've heard of him, so he must be good." And also, in the same vein of prejudice, therefore everything he wrote must be good!

[Alan Howe]

What I was trying to get at is that Mahler is over-performed; we're surely way past saturation-point in both concert hall and recording studio. Enough already!

[Gareth Vaughan]

Well, up to a point, Lord Copper! Might not the same be said of Mendelssohn, Bruckner, Brahms, Beethoven... ? I do concede that Mahler appears frequently in the concert hall, but concert promoters might tell you that that is because he sells tickets.

[Alan Howe]

Oh, I'd give a lot for a cycle of Mendelssohn symphonies at the Proms! Three (1, 2 and 5) are pretty unfamiliar...

You're right, of course. But the Mahler thing's just gone too far. And I can't bear Rattle's smugness, playing the same old stuff time after time with his super-drilled BPO outfit. Try some Berger, or Draeseke, or Raff for once! Or Rufinatscha! Or even Marx!

[Gareth Vaughan]

I agree about Rattle. A good conductor, but not adventurous when it comes to repertoire (by and large) and, yes,  I would enjoy a Mendelssohn cycle. No. 1 is greatly underestimated IMHO. But you remind me that - was it last year? - the Lobgesang was done at the Proms and the performance much lauded, not least by the two BBC presenters, one of whom, however, was Petroc Trelawney who could not resist adding, after praising the performance: "... not sure about the music though." - a very Radio 3 sneer, for which I do not forgive him. His smug dismissal was nauseating. I have cordially disliked him ever since!

[Double-A]

So

I hardly think it'd be possible or even desirable to demote Mahler's music; it's his unmerited hegemony that's the problem. As I said at the outset, it's what this situation does to the music of his contemporaries that really concerns me, one example being Wilhelm Berger.

Oh, and I'd say Mahler was pretty unsung 50 years ago. Certainly Symphony No.7 was. And I'd've thought that the meaning of 'overblown' was clear: dictionary definitions include 'excessively inflated', 'grandiose' or 'overelaborate' - all of which could justly be applied to that work.

Sorry, I ought to have written "de-emphasized".

Under this definition it would be the composer who is doing the "overblowing".  However in many of the replies it seems to be the reception of the music that is seen as overblown.  Maybe we should come up with a list of "overblowing" composers?  Wagner as the prize winner in the discipline (in several dimensions, up to and including the founding of Bayreuth)?  Tschaikowsky has already been mentioned.  Any others?  More to the point in our context:  Any unsungs?  Is maybe "overblowing" a way onto the list of sung composers?

BTW 50 years ago I was a teenager who went to concerts a lot.  I don't think Mahler was unsung then, at least not in Zurich.  And then at the university I took musicology as a "Nebenfach" (not sure how this translates into the Anglo-Saxon college world) and Mahler was extremely popular with faculty and students there.  That was still more than 40 years ago.

[Alan Howe]

My starting-point was 'overblown great music', prompted by Rattle in Mahler 7. And I might agree that there are stretches of Wagner which are interminable (in Siegfried, for example). But the same applies to the unsungs: Rubinstein's 4th, for example, or Draeseke's Christus.

What I was getting at is that over-performing music which is already over-the-top in and of itself is stifling exploration of the repertoire - and doing so in a peculiarly self-indulgent manner, with smugness all round, from conductor to orchestra to (in all likelihood) the breed of BBC presenter that Gareth mentions, carried along by the current seemingly unstoppable wind of fashion. It's depressing and it's everywhere.

And I can't bear said presenter either.

[FBerwald]

The Shostakovich Symphony No. 7 is very "overblown" in my opinion. It's a great listen only in context to WW2, else ...

[sdtom]

Couldn't agree with Berwald more.

[FBerwald]

....
What I was getting at is that over-performing music which is already over-the-top in and of itself is stifling exploration of the repertoire - and doing so in a peculiarly self-indulgent manner, with smugness all round, from conductor to orchestra to (in all likelihood) the breed of BBC presenter that Gareth mentions, carried along by the current seemingly unstoppable wind of fashion. It's depressing and it's everywhere.

I completely agree with what you are saying. I would like to use Chopin and Satie as examples although I don't consider either composers over the top. The tendency to over-romanticize Chopin by means of wrong and overblown use of rubato [nothing puts me off like this!] as if the composer was in a permanent sate of purple haze, somehow reduces this great master's music to background Muzak. Another case is Satie - His satirical and extra-musically conceived pieces end up as relaxation music or even the use of Debussy in this context [I'm not saying that it's not relaxing]. 

[Alan Howe]

Again, the over-performing of these composers is all part of the problem.

[Double-A]

Going back to Mahler (isn't he the best example?):  Isn't there a dilemma because of the unwieldy nature--in a practical sense--of much of his music?  Either you overperform him or you don't perform him at all.

You have a concert series of say 12 evenings a season.  You use one evening for a Mahler orchestral work (most of them fill a whole evening).  This is about 8% of the total time you have to program.  So if there are more than a dozen worthy composers (I am sure everybody agrees that there are) you are already overperforming Mahler.

I think we ought to separate this particular problem from related issues like "Muzak" (meant as a generic term).  Satie in Muzak isn't any more appalling than the Kleine Nachtmusik--or indeed Mahler's adagietto--in Muzak.