Mahler – Symphony No.6
Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks; Daniel Harding
BR Klassik 900132
Daniel Harding makes all the right moves in this new recording of Mahler’s mighty Sixth Symphony, scrupulously following the letter of the score and observing every indicated tempo fluctuation with considerable élan, but what really caught my attention was the magnificent, totally committed playing of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. It more than compensates for the missed opportunities (particularly in the first movement) for Harding to set his stamp on this work as decisively as a Bernstein or Kubelik. My only frustration is that this recording uses the New Critical Edition of the score, which swaps places between the Andante and Scherzo of the middle movements. Though there are good historical arguments for doing so, musically I prefer Mahler’s original conception. Perhaps in his own performances of the work Mahler found it less taxing for the musicians of the day to perform the slow movement second; or possibly he was keen to stress the traditional symphonic order as a purely musical structure, though it is far more than that. Nonetheless thematically the scherzo serves as a relentless expansion of the previous movement in a relationship consistent with that of the first two movements of his Fifth Symphony.
The four movements have been shoehorned into a single disc for this release and the applause excised from the live performances recorded in Munich in March of 2014. The mixing is superb and finely detailed. The booklet oddly features electrocardiac diagrams of the response of the percussion section and the conductor at the second cataclysmic hammer blow of the finale. Big spike from the musicians, flat line from the conductor. That sums it up nicely. As a member of the Vienna Philharmonic once remarked of a certain music director, “We like him. He doesn’t get in the way.”
