Gustav Mahler - Titan (François-Xavier Roth)

Information

Composer: Gustav Mahler

• Titan, Tone poem in the form of a symphony in two parts and five movements for a big orchestra

Les Siècles
François-Xavier Roth, conductor

Date: 2019
Label: Harmonia Mundi
http://www.harmoniamundi.com/#!/albums/2518

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Review

For once the title does not deceive. Presented here is a version of the two-part, five-movement symphonic poem which Mahler wrote within a few weeks early in 1888, then five years later named after the 1803 novel of Jean Paul and serially revised until its publication in 1899 as his First Symphony. As such it bears no comparison with François-Xavier Roth’s 2011 recording of the symphony’s final version (Hänssler, 6/12), tightened, reorchestrated and shorn of Titan’s ‘Blumine’ movement.

A version, nonetheless, it remains. With Mahler’s original autograph apparently lost for ever, Roth conducts a new edition of Titan as revived by the composer in Hamburg in 1893 and Weimar a year later, the editorial state of the Budapest premiere score from 1889 being deemed intractable for performance.

In truth the revisions were not nearly so radical as those visited by the elderly Bruckner upon his first three numbered symphonies. The elision of tone poem and symphony belongs to the project of Mahler’s work considered as a whole. Indeed, Roth’s Titan may lead us to understand why the composer remained so attached to the First, conducting it more often than any of his others, despite what he claimed were its difficulties for an audience, exceeding the Fifth or even the Sixth. It’s a tipping point for the symphony as a genre – a point underlined by Roth in concert (and available on YouTube) when he paired Titan with Franck’s Symphony, composed the same year.

The recording also sticks a feather in the cap of Les Siècles, among the most adaptable and engaging of today’s historically informed ensembles formed in the image of their director. I like the unapologetic weight of their tutti sonority in the outer movements (captured at performances in Paris, Nîmes and Soissons, though the joins and audiences don’t show); the aviary of solo winds, the tinny clink of ‘period’ tam-tam, the sly and winning string portamentos.

I applaud, too, Roth’s unabashed commitment to those passages of the finale where Mahler himself later had second thoughts – deft and ingenious ones, to be sure, but thinning out its red blood cells in the process. Much of the nature-writing here is closer to the Weber of Der Freischütz than the Berlioz who would come to exercise so potent an influence on the mature composer. Just as any self-respecting Sibelian knows the original Fifth in the BIS recording, this new Titan is a required supplement to any decent-size Mahler library.

-- Peter Quantrill, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2019/Jun/Mahler_Titan_HMM905299.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/may/09/mahler-titan-review-les-siecles-francois-xavier-roth-harmonia-mundi
https://www.audaud.com/mahler-titan-les-siecles-roth-harmonia-mundi/
https://www.allmusic.com/album/gustav-mahler-titan-eine-tondichtung-in-symphonieform-mw0003264318

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Gustav Mahler (7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austrian composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. In his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, but his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of neglect. After 1945, Mahler became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers. Most of his works are very large-scaled, designed for large orchestral forces, symphonic choruses and operatic soloists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Mahler

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François-Xavier Roth (born 6 November 1971 in Paris) is a French conductor. Roth graduated from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, where his teachers included Alain Marion for flute and János Fürst for conducting. In 2003, he founded Les Siècles, an orchestra which performs on instruments appropriate to the period of composition of each piece, from late Baroque and Classical to 20th century music. Roth was chief conductor of the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg (2011-2016), and is currently Gürzenich-Kapellmeister of the Gürzenich Orchester Köln (since 2014).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois-Xavier_Roth
https://www.francoisxavierroth.com/

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