Vienna Philharmonic/Pierre Boulez - Mahler: Symphonie No. 6 (Deutsche Grammophon)

Pierre Boulez has just finished his Mahler symphony cycle with an account of the Symphony of a Thousand, and it seemed a good time to give the survey another listen. While it will never replace the contributions of Rattle, Gielen, Horenstein, Mengelberg and other top-drawer Mahlerians, the Boulez readings are consistent in an approach to detail that is somehow simultaneously cool-headed and satisfying.

His rendering of the multifariously tragic sixth, with which the whole cycle began in mid 1995, sums up the fairly complex approach. I was surprised, at the time, with just how successful the emotive qualities were brought off without being overdramatized. The opening march, or rather the march’s opening, maintains excitement with some hairpin dynamic and timbral shifts and juxtapositions, but the dense counterpoint belies a beautiful sense of long-form development rather than the modernist approach I had been expecting from Boulez. The more chamber-like sections of the huge and immensely varied finale are treated similarly, tuba, harp and strings interacting so that timbre never displaces line, as happens in the seminal Barbirolli studio recording.

Even more surprising, on re-assessment, is how beautiful the sweepingly majestic slow movement becomes in Boulez’s hands. Placed third in his reading, it is a streamlined and busily detailed but never overactive performance where the Andante somewhat overrides the Moderato. That said, a certain elasticity keeps any sense of hurry at bay; as happens so often through Boulez’s Mahler survey, slow movements are presented without drag or rush, a credit to the Maestro’s admirable sense of large gesture.

I have never understood how critics could praise this sixth, as they did upon release, and dismiss many of Boulez’s other Mahler renderings. His vision is strikingly unified, maybe a bit too unified. There is a certain clinicality in his interpretations that can be fascinating but might distract those in search of a more visceral experience. I love them, all nine, and he has a fine Das Lied von der Erde as well. Looking back, the sixth commenced a remarkable achievement from a conductor whose musical aesthetic has remained uncompromisingly his own.

~ Marc Medwin