Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A minor 'Tragic'

By the time of this BBC Henry Wood Proms performance in August 1967, Barbirolli’s grasp of the work was complete.

The result is a performance of electrifying insight and interpretative mastery, the New Philharmonia Orchestra at its very best.

The EMI recording of the work by this conductor and orchestra (made within a few days of this live performance) is not as consistently impressive.

On the original long-playing discs the record company changed the middle movement order to that of Ratz’s edition. Barbirolli was understandably disappointed by this, but not angry. For the latest CD edition, EMI have placed the middle movements in the correct Andante-Scherzo order.

What cannot be denied, however, is that this live performance is demonstrably superior in several respects to the studio version, living proof of Barbirolli’s greatness, his intensity and sensitivity, as a Mahler interpreter.

Mahler once remarked to Sibelius “a symphony must be like the world, it must embrace everything.” His Sixth Symphony is a salient and personal statement, containing musical depictions of his wife and children. It reaches a tragic conclusion in the Finale representing “the hero, on whom fall three blows of fate, the last of which fells him as a tree is felled.” Klaus Tennstedt’s interpretations of Mahler during his celebrated partnership with the London Philharmonic Orchestra bear testimony to the way Mahler composed his life. This is both an extrovert and expansive reading of Mahler 6, resulting in an engrossing recording. Extrovert from the perspective that it is a performance of extremes. In the first movement the slow tempi are particularly slow, but despite the exaggerated ritardandos the Orchestra sustains Tennstedt's wants beautifully, never allowing the tension to stall.

Press acclaim from Tennstedt conducting Mahler 6:

‘[The] BBC proms audience stood motionless through the ninety minutes of Tennstedt's 6th, petrified by its intensity.’ Norman Lebrecht in Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness on this 1983 performance.

‘The attraction in both cases was Mahler’s 6th Symphony, the most challenging and most problematic of the set, its champions the London Philharmonic Orchestra, its interpreter, Klaus Tennstedt…. Here was a performance to revere and to remember, historic even, and if it has not already been recorded, it ought to be.’ Evening Standard, November 1991 (RFH performance)

Having completed several cycles, among them the complete Beethoven symphonies (with over 1 million copies sold internationally), the orchestral works of R. Strauss and Schumann, in 2007 David Zinman & Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich embarked on this Mahler cycle. This is the sixth release, and the cycle will be completed in 2010.

These two recordings originally appeared as a 2LP set in 1968, just two years before Sir John Barbirolli’s untimely death.

As Michael Kennedy notes in his authoritative accompanying essay, Barbirolli’s first encounter with Mahler’s music was unpromising. In 1930 he heard the Fourth Symphony and found it ‘very thin’. But in the 1930s and 40s he took up the Kindertotenlieder and Das Lied von der Erde.

Yet it was not until 1954 that he began to explore the symphonies, beginning with the Ninth. Devoting months and sometimes years to the study of each one, he became the leading advocate in Britain of Mahler’s music.

From 1961 Barbirolli was a regular guest conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, with whom he made a celebrated recording of the Ninth for EMI in 1964. Three years later he took the Philharmonia Orchestra into Kingsway Hall for the Sixth Symphony (the Strauss was done a few days later at Abbey Road).

This CD release settles one point of controversy: that, despite the use of the 1963 Mahler Society edition and the running order of the first LPs, Barbirolli always intended (as Mahler finally did) that the Scherzo stand third, after the Andante.

Kennedy goes on to point out that ‘there is good reason to link Mahler with Strauss in relation to the Sixth Symphony. Although contrasted in approach, the symphony is as frankly autobiographical as Ein Heldenleben, depicting the triumphs and travails of a hero who is indisputably a projection of Mahler. Both composers even brought their wives into the scores. Pauline Strauss is depicted by a long and capricious violin solo, Alma Mahler as the F major second subject of the first movement.’

Both works are remastered to ART standard at Abbey Road Studios.

Awards: Diapason d’Or, 10 de Répertoire

Valery Gergiev's eagerly anticipated debut recording for LSO Live is also his first recording of Mahler's music and the first in a complete cycle of the composer's symphonies. Recorded in November 2007 as part of his sensational concert series of the symphonies, Gergiev delivers an intensely emotional account of this pivotal work.

Does Mahler’s Sixth Symphony foretell the tragedy of his later life, or does it have a more cerebral purpose? Whatever the composer’s motives for writing it, tragic it certainly is: driven, bitter and sweet by turns, and ending in devastation – utterly compelling.