Customer Reviews

Mahler: Symphony No. 6

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Gustav Mahler's "middle" symphonies, the 5th through the 7th, are said to be full of "structural problems" and to be "tough nuts to crack." Of these three, the 6th is likely the most difficult for the newcomer to Mahler, largely because of its "Tragic" subtext and its almost manic shifts from sublime beauty to bleak sadness to shocking, ringing tragedy and back again. More than any other Mahler symphony, this is the one which most requires conductorial and performance expertise almost without equal if it is to be properly realized.

For well over a decade, Leonard Bernstein's DGG recording, with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, had been my preferred version, by a very comfortable margin, over several other Mahler 6th's in my library. But, beginning about a year or so ago, word started to filter out regarding this Zander performance as being "the one to get." It was largely in the form of "street talk" in various music journals and magazines, with a sentence dropped here, a paragraph there. When I received Zander's recording of the Mahler 9th, on Telarc, and reviewed it elsewhere at Amazon.com, I became aware that he is a Mahlerian of potentially unlimited insight and abilities. Then, barely a week ago, we had the pleasure of seeing Zander conduct his Boston Philharmonic Orchestra in a well-thought-out program of Beethoven, Mahler and Schoenberg, and this album was on sale at the concert. I jumped at the opportunity.

This is an incredible, absolutely stunning and shattering, performance, in my humble opinion leagues ahead of Bernstein's (which I tend to refer to as "Bernstein II." since he had also recorded it earlier in his career, with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra on Columbia, now Sony). Zander's Boston Philharmonic, thoroughly professional in its capabilities, is nonetheless an interesting mix of young professionals, students (largely from the New England Conservatory), and advanced amateurs. They perform within an inch of their lives here, and the results show it. Recorded at a live performance at Jordan Hall in Boston, the sound is spectacular, and the audience reaction at the conclusion of the performance was much like it was at the live recorded performance by Zander of Mahler's 9th: Totally emotionally drained, with nearly a full minute of silence after the final dying-out ppp tuba note that ends the work before they could recover their equilibrium and summon their energies for the applause.

Written during one of the happiest periods of Mahler's life, this symphony is nonetheless "Tragic" in all its implications. As performed by Zander, it is not at all a "tough nut to crack" and no structural problems whatsoever are in evidence. Clearly, it was Mahler's intent, prophetic as it turned out to be, to compose a work which in every way was the intentional antithesis of Richard Strauss's "Ein Heldenleben," and he succeeded beyond measure, writing music of great and melting beauty mixed with incredible tragedy, at a skill level not evident in his earlier work, truly a symphonic watershed in his career. Mahler's Hero, unlike Strauss's, is mortally felled in the final movement of this work, with the cumulative effect of three hammer blows, which Zander renders with shock and intensity beyond measure, and the final brass chord, which had earlier been a "major-minor seal" which fell from major to minor throughout the work, failing to do so, being the minor alone, again with an intensity I've never experienced. The prophecy of the three hammer blows, to Mahler, was realized later, with the death of his older daughter, the diagnosis of his heart disease, and with the loss of his directorship of the Vienna Opera. His wife and helpmeet, Alma, was to later state that he should never have tempted fate so determinedly, in what did in fact turn out to be a series of tragic self-fulfilling prophesies unseeable and unknowable at the time of the symphony's composition.

Let me make this quite plain: If you call yourself a Mahlerite, this performance belongs in your library.

Bob Zeidler

On this 2-CD set the Boston Phil. sounds extremely responsive to Zander's ideas from the podium, and there are many delicate touches, especially in the tender Andante, which is taken in a refreshingly unaffected way that accumulates real feeling. A mixture of professionals and amateurs, the orchestra plays amazingly well for a live concret, better in fact than the WDR Sym. of Cologne does for Mitropoulos on his much-acclaimed concert performance from 1959 (now on EMI's Great Conductors series). But the reviewer below is right to say that the playing here is sometimes cautious, and one is aware that the various soloists aren't of the highest caliber.

Although I find it immaterial, Zander takes the Scherzo before the Andante. I trust him to remain faithful to Mahler's innumerable markings in the score, but that doesn't matter unless the performers are inspired. Somehow I don't feel Zander gives them quite enough to work with. The prevailing energy is high, but the Sixth can be quite overwhelming, as with Bernstein and the recent live Abbado account from Berlin. Having heard them, it's hard to return to an honorable, very musical version like this one, albeit it offers many pleasures.

Benjamin Zander has a lot to tell us about Mahler, but frequently he's said it better in the "illustrated lecture" bonus CDs that accompany his Telarc releases than in the actual performances. Here (unlike in the upcoming Telarc remake with the Philharmonia), the music is all there is, and Zander's conception is magnificent. Like Thomas Sanderling and few others, he presents the Sixth as a stark, universal tragedy without getting all histrionic. We're simultaneously aware that this is not only Mahler's grimmest work (by nature of its uncompromising conclusion), but also the most classically formal of his symphonies.

Zander's work on the podium here is so persuasive that I generally focus on the music, not the music-making--but every now and then, I'm forcibly reminded that the orchestra he led at the 1994 concert which yielded this CD was semi-professional. The musicians play with conviction, but also with a degree of caution (when you're not the Vienna Philharmonic, you don't belt it out as though you are) and a thinness of tone that undermine the power of this score. They're matched sonically by a close-up recording which manages to be quite clear except when it is quite dim (although the hammer-blows--all three of them!--are the most effective I've heard on CD or LP). I'm reminded of the Jascha Horenstein set with the Stockholm Philharmonic (available long ago on Unicorn-Kanchana) in which another stellar performance, not to mention Mahler's music, was similarly blunted by technical (i.e., instrumental and sonic) shortcomings. Actually, the Horenstein set may have an advantage here--as many flubs as they made, the Stockholm orchestra at least had some meat on their bones, tonally speaking.

Here's hoping that Zander's new Telarc recording corrects the technical flaws while giving us a performance that's every bit as special as what we get here.

This recording is of a live performance in Joshua Hall in 1994, at the New England Conservatory in Boston.

For a live performance, is remarkably clear and precise, without unwanted extraneous noise. The percussion instruments in particular have "shining moment" performances throughout the symphony. The moments of silence between notes accentuate the music so that it seems to jump out at you. Already in the third movement there are plenty of the expected "cowbell sounds" coming through.

The finale, the fourth movement, is one gigantic march rushing forth to confront and deal with the world. Then, a third of the way into the 4th movement, we are cut down by the first hammer blow. About five minutes later the second hammer blow and its reverberations crash everything into oblivion. Somehow, out of the desolation following that second hammer blow, we find ourselves in a pastoral setting, later soaring towards a final triumph. But the timpani warn us with their "Fate" motif, and we suddenly find ourselves in a wild headlong rush downhill. Just when it sounds like we're surprisingly going to triumph and reach our destination after all, the final hammer blow crushes the life out of us. There are still about two minutes of mournful reflection on what has transpired. Then, a final orchestral crash ends it all--No more to build on there!

For those who are familiar with Mahler's Sixth, it is perfectly natural to hear the question, "What do the hammer blows sound like--are they loud enough?
Let me say that a friend had this very Zander performance on in his car while driving along.
At the sound of the first hammer blow, another person in the car shouted, "Was that a gunshot?!"

Just so I won't leave you hanging, wondering about the sound, Ben Zander reports that he achieved this dramatic hammer blow sound by whacking an old timpani crate with a length of plumber's lead pipe. I think Mahler would appreciate the effect.