Search - Tennstedt, London Philharmonic Orchestra :: Mahler: Symphony No. 6 [Remastered] [Japan]

A Great Performance.

Laurance Maney | Vermont, USA | 03/07/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"To begin with, this is NOT the Mahler 6th contained in Tennstedt's complete LPO cycle. The performance here was recorded live in 1991 in Royal Festival Hall by Keith Wilson and remastered for Toshiba-EMI by Yoshio Okazaki. Although 91 minutes long the performance has a sweep and urgency not often heard in even in Mahler. An absolute must."

Tennstedt live in 1991 - his best Mahler Sixth

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 02/01/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"First, a consumer warning: The reviewer above identitifes this as Tennstedt's 1991 live Maahler Sixth as remastered in Japan, but when I ordered it from Amazon Marketplace, I received the 1983 studio recording instead, which is readily available, and much cheaper, in EMI's box set of the Mahler symphonies. It turns out that Japan EMI uses the same cover art, so it's easy to get the two confused. Be sure to check with your vendor.



As for the performance, this Sixth is more daring and extreme in its tempo shifts than what Tennstedt did in the studio. Hair-pin curves appear throughout the journey, so if you are a Mahler literalist, favoring Szell and Chailly, for example, Tennstedt's wild and woolly ways are likely to irritate you. He's particularly willful in the Scherzo, which is here placed as the second movement, creating a meancing world implied by Mahler's score yet not explicitly called for. The elegaic Andante is given a startling degree of visceral impact.



I like so-called interventionist conducting and found a great deal if imaginaiton and excitement in what Tennstedt does. After all, Mahler himself was such a conductor, as was his early advocate Mengelberg. Yet as always with extremists, the effect was probably more powerful and convincing in the concert hall than it is on CD -- will repeated hearings wear out the novelty? Only time will tell. The remastered sound is clear but bottom-heavy. The London Phil. plays considerably better than they did in the studio, where I found their execution lackluster.



In all, of the three Mahler Sixths that I've heard from Tennstedt (the other one being a muzzy live recording on the Memories pirate label), this is the most individual and therefore the best."