Iván Fischer’s recent recording of Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony with the Budapest Festival Orchestra fully deserves the praise it has earned since its release in 2015. Co-founder of the BFO and music director of the Konzerthaus in Berlin since 2012, Fischer is known for his commitment to musical education and his innovative approach to music making. His series of Mahler recordings began with the Sixth Symphony in 2005, followed by the Second, Fourth, First, Fifth and finally the Ninth, recorded in 2013 at the Palace of Arts in Budapest. A student of the Austro-Hungarian conductor Hans Swarowsky in Vienna (as were Claudio Abbado and Giuseppe Sinopoli), Fischer has an affinity for Mahler expressed not just through his recordings, but also in his platforms for performance and discussion, such as the Budapest Mahlerfest and the Hungarian Mahler Society.

Several characteristics of Fischer’s interpretation immediately emerge from the very beginning of the first movement. The forward momentum of these opening bars does not stop until the final dissolution of the symphony’s last sounds (‘dying away’). No matter what pain or sadness may be encountered along the way, we seem to be told, the march of time will lead us onward to the end. The differentiation of individual voices is another key feature of Fischer’s reading: each instrument is allowed to find its own place in the whole without having to make too many compromises for the collective. In Mahler’s Ninth, instruments pass melodic lines to each other, momentarily keeping the pieces together and delaying the ineluctable fragmentation of the musical voices. The first two bars of the symphony immediately demonstrate that a motivic unit needs more than one musician to be uttered: the initial syncopated rhythm is played collaboratively by cellos and a horn, and the dialogue between these instruments is particularly entangled in this recording. Overall, Fischer highlights the work’s chamber-music quality and, at times, its minimalist orchestration. The numerous contrasts between tempi are respected with great care, as are dynamics and articulations. The quiet atmosphere established through the balance of forces, recalling the beginning of Claude Debussy’s La Mer (1905), is often shaken by outbursts of darkness. The return of the serene Andante in the development section (Tempo I, 24 bars after Figure 13) leads to a climax that collapses when the brass instruments and percussion enter fortississimo ‘with greatest violence’ on a syncopated rhythm (at 16′ 47″, two bars before Figure 15).Footnote ¹ The timpani then brutally strike the opening harp motive (ascending minor third followed by a descending second), showing how slow oceanic waves can quickly turn into a terrifying warning. The following march passage, marked ‘like a solemn funeral procession’ (‘wie ein schwerer Kondukt’) is here interpreted as stage music, highlighting its kinship with Wagner’s Verwandlungsmusik from Parsifal – and the three low-pitched bells entering a few bars later (21 bars after Figure 15) only reinforce this association. Even if the threat of stormier waters keeps intruding, Fischer offers a mostly peaceful vision of Mahler’s opening movement, which seems to evoke the image of a boat on the sea. The palette of orchestral colours conjured by the BFO, Fischer’s sober and straightforward approach to the score, and above all the forward momentum towards the final bar, recall Karel Ančerl’s recording with the Czech Philarmonic Orchestra (1966). Both versions are more angular, less heavy than Leonard Bernstein’s iconic live recording with the Berlin Philarmonic (1979), which conveys the idea of death in a more tragic way.

The Scherzo plays on the alternation of three tempi – the first qualified by Mahler as a quiet (‘gemächlich’) Ländler, the second as a faster waltz and the third as a slow Ländler. Here, too, Fischer emphasizes the differences of character and tempo between each section, clearly distinguishing the dynamics and articulation of each instrument. Fischer also highlights Mahler’s recurring motive of a descending second, already heard in the opening measures (harp, bar 3) and appearing in various guises throughout the entire symphony. In the Scherzo, it belongs to all three sections: the first Ländler, the first waltz theme and the second Ländler, which alludes to the first movement’s opening theme (31 bars after Figure 21). In all these cases, the first note of the descending second is accented, in order to exaggerate its expressive quality. The acid sound of the horns, entering fortissimo just before the beginning of Tempo III (at 4′ 40″) in the second Ländler, recalls the entrance of the brass in the first movement, played ‘with greatest violence’. (The second Ländler is often played more slowly than it is here, but this choice may be justified by the connection to the first movement, which Fischer takes with great drive.) Throughout his oeuvre, Mahler colours this descending second in different hues – in turn sighing, as in the ‘ewig, ewig’ coda of Das Lied von der Erde (much like Amfortas’s lament in Parsifal); threatening; or dancing with heavy steps, as in the Scherzo. The quality of ‘sighing’ dominates in the Ninth, since its appearance under this form in the first and last movements frames the work. And, at the end of the first and last movements, it is precisely above this descending second that Mahler wrote the words ‘Leb’ wohl!’ (‘Farewell’) on the full score draft.

The Rondo-Burleske remains in a dark realm, announced by an incisive gesture by the strings. (Here Ančerl is even more incisive than Fischer, having the basses playing staccato – in Bernstein’s recording, much less articulated.) The diabolical fugato, however, leaves space for a pastoral episode (18 bars after Figure 36), a lyrical moment foreshadowing the atmosphere of the last movement, particularly the Parsifal-like melodic turn within it.

The last movement could be heard as a long variation on the melodic turn, turning an ornament – a decorative element – into the Adagio’s very foundation. Even if the introductory gesture of the Adagio is not as fully satisfying in this recording as in others (the bowing changes on the upper A♭s are too audible and the turn is played too quickly), Fischer offers a beautiful reading of the final movement, emphasizing each nuance in a large register of articulations.Footnote ² Passages marked molto espressivo quickly alternate with others marked ‘without expression’ (‘ohne Ausdruck’). In Fischer’s interpretation, the occasional exaggeration of tone is not sentimental but theatrical: an idea can be expressed in different tones (quiet, insistent, sober, demonstrative or reserved) yet retain the same content. This recording of Mahler’s Ninth is distinguished by the clarity of musical gestures, the precision of dynamics and articulations, the differentiation of timbre and the highlighting of individual voices. Despite the rich and full orchestral sound, Fischer also cultivates the intimacy of chamber music.

This leads us to the central question at stake in the reception of this work: is Mahler’s Ninth a symphony about death and departure? Is it a musical testament, written by a dying composer who wished to record premonitions of his own demise? In this regard, it is interesting to compare what Fischer has said about the work with his musical interpretation. According to Fischer, Mahler’s Ninth is a ‘heartbreaking symphony’, ‘leading to the most tragic and beautiful ending Mahler ever composed: what he shares with us is his fading awareness of our beloved world’ (liner notes, p. 5). The conductor uses Leonard Bernstein’s metaphor of the arhythmical heartbeat for the beginning of the work, suggesting a biographical link to the composer’s own body.Footnote ³ From its first performance in 1912, the Ninth has been associated with death and farewell for a number of reasons, including the fact that it was premiered in Vienna, a year after the composer’s death, by his friend and former assistant Bruno Walter. Mahler’s own markings in the full score draft (‘Oh Youth! Vanished! O love! Scattered! Farewell!’) and in the published score (‘dying away’), as well as the kinship of the Adagio’s melodic descent (bar 3) with the beginning (marked ‘Lebe wohl’) of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 26 in E-flat major (Les Adieux), all participated in suggesting this elegiac program. The early reception of the work emphasized this context, and later, Bernstein championed a reading of the Ninth as Mahler’s swan song.Footnote ⁴ Since then, this interpretation has been challenged, as scholars have become more circumspect in conflating biography and sketch studies with musical analysis. But there is a difference between making the Ninth an autobiographical work (Mahler’s own farewell to the world) and acknowledging that ideas of departure and death are, on many levels, crucial interpretive insights. And this is what Fischer does, musically translating his verbal interpretation of Mahler’s Ninth as a ‘fading awareness’ of the world, without falling into the trappings of a biographical reading. Fischer’s recording with the BFO is indispensable, not only because it offers a new vision of Mahler’s last completed work, but also because of the highly distinctive sound of the Budapest Festival Orchestra under Fischer’s baton.