Mahler : Symphony No. 6 in A Minor

Album review

What utter happiness to find probably one of the greatest performances (ranking alongside Barbirolli, Bernstein, Tennstedt) of the complex Sixth by Mahler, which came out a few years ago on Hännsler: the performance by Kirill Kondrashin at the head of the Baden-Baden Südwestfunk. In 1981, Kirill Kondrashin had been regularly directing the Amsterdam Concertgebouw for several years, tackling material from the most varied repertoires, and several times performed the works of Gustav Mahler, of which he was one of the USSR's most ardent partisans, having made the first-ever complete recording of the symphonies with the Moscow Symphonic Orchestra (Melodiya). Benefiting from some of the most captivating orchestras of the West, he never gave up on his fluid, rapid visions, his strident polyphonies, or his implacable rhythms. For Kirill Kondrashin, Mahler wasn't the post-romantic composer that he is often taken for: he didn't look for song at any cost, or even any particular lyrical virtues. The formal balances accompany a drive for minute precision in the most up-to-date sonic alloys. As a vision, it is sometimes abstract: it fits into the more experimental branch of Haydn's descendants. And it gives us cause to regret not having a "Western" version of a 9th Symphony conducted by Kondrashin! © Pierre-Yves Lascar