Not one, but two live accounts of Mahler’s Rubik’s Cube of a symphony was released this week, one on the LSO Live label featuring Valery Gergiev making his Mahler recording debut, the other was released on the LSO Live copycat label CSO Resound under the baton of the seasoned Mahler veteran Bernard Haitink. At a cursory glance one can immediately identify two big differences. First off, Gergiev has the middle movements in the more controversial Andante/Scherzo order while Haitink goes the for the more traditional order of Scherzo/Andante (Wikipedia has a very easy to follow list of conductors who have conducted the 6th and the order in which they performed the middle movements in case anyone is curious). The otherobvious trait is that the Gergiev performance only takes up one disc while Haitink takes up two.
The 6th is ideal for Gergiev, with its strong rhythmic marches (the type that Shostakovitch would later steal) and vast arrays of colors seen so often in the Russian music that made him. Although he didn’t exactly wow the critics who came to see his performances of the Mahler cycle he and the LSO put on, the disc has been receiving nothing but glowing reviews from critics and fans alike.
Haitink, on the other hand, I’m not so sure about. Recent Mahler recordings by Haitink include a version of Mahler’s 3rd on CSO Resound that was (forgive me) less than resounding. But of course his version of the 4th on RCO Live was to die for, an absolute accomplishment. Given that the 6th comes from Mahler’s 2nd period of creativity it’s hard to judge where this one will fall (please note I have not heard either of these discs as they are both exceedingly expensive and that I’m not made of gold).
The LSO Live is exclusively an SACD Hybrid while the CSO Resound is available both as a Hybrid and as a standard CD for less.
