Gustav Mahler - Symphonie Nr.6 (SWR-Sinfonieorchester, Baden-Baden - Kirill Kondrashin) - 2011

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Gustav Mahler - Symphonie Nr.6 (SWR-Sinfonieorchester, Baden-Baden - Kirill Kondrashin) - 2011

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Gustav Mahler - Symphonie Nr.6 (SWR-Sinfonieorchester, Baden-Baden - Kirill Kondrashin) - 2011
Classical | EAC | FLAC, IMG+CUE, LOG | Covers | 1CD, 354 MB
Label: Hanssler | Catalog Number: CD 94.217 | TT: 68'22''

I'm a bit taken aback that Haenssler should label excellent stereo from 1981 as a historical recording. Kondrashin died that year at the age of 67 - the day after his birthday, as it happens. His Mahler recordings took place with his own Moscow Phil., but the present orchestra of Southwest Radio in Baden-Baden and Freiburg was under Michael Gielen, an experienced and exciting Mahler conductor in his own right, so the chemistry must have been good - better, I suspect, than with any Soviet orchestra at the time. Mahler wasn't a regular part of the orchestral tradition there.

In any event, this Mahler Sixth actually sounds a good deal like Gielen's, in that it features a brisk tempo in the first movement with almost no underlining of the score's tragic import. You are mostly aware of momentum and orchestral coloring. I hear a good deal of inner detail as well, but it would have helped if the miking had been closer. Kondrashin's Shostakovich was similarly fast and intense. The effect is gripping in the short run, yet the tremendous range of Mahler's emotional world is given rather short shrift. Partly that's the result of fairly ordinary wind and brass solos - this music works best if you have the greatest orchestra in the world at your disposal. But most of the blame lays, I think, with Kondrashin's one-dimensional interpretation. Even David Zinman, not exactly a philosopher of the podium finds more depth with an orchestra of similar rank in Zurich.

The Scherzo, taken second, is also quite fast and sacrifices satire and bite for propulsion. At 12:10 it sets a speed record, I think; Tennstedt on EMI stops to make points along the way and takes 14 min. However, Kondrashin does relax the pace for secondary themes and trios. The real problem is that he finds so little to say, delivering what sounds like an expert sight reading. The Andante con moto is taken as basically an Allegro, which doesn't feel right at all. Where Kondrashin gets to the end in 12:26, Karajan takes 17 min. and Tennstedt almost 18 min. Wrong-headed as that feels to me, the reading is tender and poignant, with some lovely phrasing.

I realize that the metronome isn't a good critic, so I will simply report that at 25 min., Kondrashin's finale cuts five minutes off the usual time. Even the clear-eyed George Szell takes 29 min. The effect is to emphasize that the finale is a march first and last. Kondrashin's decision to allow no pausing along the way is, one can say, a conscious viewpoint. He puts a good deal of this music in a new light; one cannot simply say that he doesn't known Mahler very well. The musicians are forced to double-time it, and as a result not much weight or articulation can be given when you're spending most of your effort simply keeping up.

In the end, I enjoyed this Mahler sixth mainly because I know so many others form top to bottom, and it was refreshing to get on the express, one time at least.

Santa Fe Listener