In particular, there is one superlative advocate of this work that I have in mind: Pierre Boulez. This recording of the Five Pieces, has always been a desert island performance for me, and I have no hesitancy in recommending it.
I still remember the first time I heard this recording of Boulez conducting the Five Pieces. Prior to this, I had heard the work many times before, but the voltage of the electricity here was something that came as a complete shock to me. From the first note to last, this white hot Five Pieces is totally devastating. Just listen to the way Boulez builds up the climax at the start of the first piece. This is a performance that makes Schoenberg's Mahlerian heritage absolutely clear, only Schoenberg is so much intensely concentrated and focused in his delivery than Mahler, that the results for me are just shattering.
The unique rapport that Boulez enjoyed with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at this time is something I have always marvelled at, but this cracking performance takes it to another level. Of course, the inner movements are also allowed moments of hushed poetic repose, as a counterbalance to the explosively expressionist Angst of the outer movements. The tortured expressionistic intensity of the outer movements really do remind me of what Robert Craft said of the final pages of the last of the Five Pieces — that it was the greatest thing written in the twentieth century. That statement really surprised me, and I generally tend to explain it aways as perhaps being a spur of the moment outburst from Craft, but Boulez does a greater job than anybody of convincing me of its deep truth. You may notice a close spiritual kinship between the sheer darkness of the last of the Five Pieces and the last of the Three Piano Pieces.
If you do find post-Mahlerian expressionistic darkness, chaos, and gaunt introspection of the Five Pieces does speak to you, then you may want to try two other works. The first of these related works is the Alban Berg Three Orchestral Pieces, Opus 6 (1913-15), where you even hear direct echoes of Mahler's Hammer-Blows of Fate from his Sixth Symphony in the final March. You wonder if the coincidence of the number "6" is more than an accident, especially since the equivalent work by Schoenberg is Opus 16.
Berg's style of orchestration is much more Brahmsian than Mahler with lots of deliberate doubling of parts. He also uses extremely Viennese sounding lyrical themes interspersed as a ironic contrast to the sheer tormented anguish of the overall mood, just as Mahler does.
The other related work is the Webern Six Orchestral Pieces, Opus 6 (1909 –1910) – again, a deeply tortured expression of the trauma from the death of his mother. Once again, note the coincidence of the number "6".
Listen for the apocalyptic climax of Webern's funeral march, once again echoing Mahlerian Hammer-Blows of Fate. It is an expressionistic cry of anguish that sounds like a musical version of the Munch Scream.
Webern also takes the tendency to distill the emotional expression of a Mahler symphony into haiku-like ultra compact expressionistic utterances to ever greater extremes. Rather than having less impact than Mahler, I find that the emotional impact is actually infinitely intensified. Someone once said of Webern – sagt wenig, sagt alles (speaks little, says everything). I have chosen the Rattle over the Boulez, because I prefer the revised, more minimalistic 1928 re-orchestration over the denser earlier version used by Boulez. However, the other works in Rattle's boxed set should, by now, be becoming increasingly enticing new musical territory. The older recording by Karajan, also using the later re-orchestration, is arguably an even better performance, but the more recent EMI recording for Rattle is preferable from a sound-engineering point of view.
In our age obsessed with everything Mahler, I can see these three works by the Second Viennese School, that share more than the number "6" in common with the Mahler Sixth, eventually growing extremely popular. It took decades for Mahler to be embraced by the wider musical public, and the same fate will be shared by the Second Viennese School. And when Mahler pulled up an audience member hissing a premier of a work by Schoenberg, the offender in question turned around and exclaimed "but I hiss your symphonies too!" Alma Mahler records that in his dying days Mahler thought about his friend, Schoenberg:
His thoughts often went anxiously to Schoenberg. 'If I go, he will have nobody left'. I promised him to do everything in my power.Mahler will himself be anxious that Schoenberg, too, will one day enjoy the success with the public his music has now universally won.
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