Another Mahler 6 at the Proms!!!

Posted on 10/09/2024 by StephenJones.blog

Yet another post in my Mahler series!

At last season’s Proms S-Simon Rattle conducted a moving Mahler 9 for his final concert as Musical Director of the LSO. Since leaving the UK for Germany, he has become chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Last week in the first of two visits to this year’s Proms they played Bruckner 4 and a UK premiere by Thomas Adès. The next evening I went to hear them in Mahler 6 (listen on BBC Radio 3).

Rattle Mahler 6 CD I wrote about the symphony here, after a performance at the 2017 Proms, and featuring recordings by Mitropoulos, Barbirolli, Bernstein, Tennstedt, and Abbado.

The Bavarian orchestra is just as deeply immersed in Mahler as S-Simon, having regularly performed the symphonies over many decades (from the cycle with Kubelik, here‘s the 6th, from 1966) and in recent years with Mariss Jansons and Daniel Harding. S-Simon has been touring it with the Bavarians this year (on You Tube, their recent live recording starts here—finding the other movements there is more of a challenge).

After the first movement, with its juxtaposition of prophetic jackboots (cf. Mahler 10), “yearning” Alma theme, and Elysian cowbells, for the two central movements S-Simon (like most conductors) favours Mahler’s revised movement order, with the wonderful Andante second; but I still feel there are sound musical reasons for placing it third, as explained in my original post. And then the immense, tragic finale, with its extraordinary hallucinogenic opening. In his revision Mahler removed the controversial third hammer-blow:

Mahler 6 MS Source (cf. here).

I always feel that S-Simon’s rapport with his players—and audiences—is much enhanced by his conducting from memory. The Bavarian players sound wonderful, like every orchestra he conducts.

Rattle Prom 1