Sometimes brazen insensitivity can be instructive. Turn to track 2 of I went out this morning and listen to Mahler’s ‘Sie sind nur ausgegangen’ from Kindertotenlieder, reworked here by Uri Caine as sleazy klezmer muzak, gut-wrenchingly banal and complete with bossa nova drums and bass. A dangerous cocktail, especially for the hardened Mahler addict, as memories of Dame Janet at her most plaintive become infected with the more casual charms of light entertainment music. It is as if Uri Caine is saying: this song used to be important to someone, but now we’ve heard it all before.
Track 3 and the medley has moved on to ‘Nun wird die Sonn’ so hell’. This time the plangent instrumental opening is played relatively straight and when the amplified violin takes over the mezzo line, there is more than a whiff of palm court. But now DJ Olive, the turntable whiz-kid, who has been skulking in the background since the opening track, makes his unforgettable entrance; and you begin to realize for the first time that ‘DJ’ does not simply stand for ‘dinner jacket’. ‘Nun wird die Sonn’ so hell’ continues ‘straight’ to the background of wailing and gurgling babies, sometimes brutally cut off with an adroit flick of DJ Olive’s turntable. This is inappropriate behaviour to say the least. The effect is as grizzly and violent as if, in the pause between two songs from Kindertotenlieder, a well-loved mezzo-soprano had been discovered gnawing on an infant’s leg.
The official line on I went out this morning over the countryside is that Uri Caine has used the sound of klezmer to bring out the authentically Yiddish flavour of Gustav Mahler’s music, but you could imagine this exercise being carried out in a much more reverent way than this and you get the feeling, too, that critics who were surprised by Caine’s Primal Light have not been listening carefully enough to their Bernstein CDs. The truth of the matter is that Caine is not at all concerned with uncovering the roots of Mahler’s inspiration. Rather, he is making music at Gustav Mahler’s expense, to the point of even defiling some of his greatest works. And it is precisely this that makes at times for such undeniably gripping listening.
This new two-CD set introduces a further level of irony in that it was recorded live at the 1998 Gustav Mahler Festival in Toblach. Toblach was the summer residence where Mahler composed the Ninth Symphony and the thought of Caine’s transcriptions soaring live in an outdoors performance over the Tyrolean mountains is particularly enticing. I went out this morning over the countryside may contain a number of pieces from Uri Caine’s first foray into Mahler. Primal Light (Winter & Winter, A/97), but I much prefer the live ambience of this new recording to the more taut atmosphere of the New York sessions.
OK, so the decision to invite the Armenian singer Aaron Bensoussan to ululate all through the ‘Ewig, Ewig’ coda of ‘Der Abschied’ is a little wrong-headed. Yet details such as the sound of Uri Caine mis-striking piano chords in the introduction of Mahler’s Adagietto, the continuing search of the saxophonist David Blancy for a rounded tone, the delightful scrunch of original Mahler lines being played together instead of apart, not forgetting the interludes in which DJ Olive really goes to town – yes, all these details somehow have their own validity. Klezmer on Acid.'