Mahler Symphony No.6
August 2007 Reviewed by: Wes Marshall Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Gustav Mahler seems to have been a boiling cauldron of conflicting emotions. A quick run through his nine full symphonies and half of a tenth reveals everything from storming anger to gemütliche pastoralism to heavenly salvation. In some of his best symphonies, he covers all three!

While no one would pick Symphony No.6 as his greatest utterance, conductor Claudio Abbado has been the work’s best friend in recent years. His 1979 recording [Deutsche Grammophon 423 928] still stands at the top of a crowded field, and his newer recording with the Berlin Philharmonic [Deutsche Grammophon 477 5573, 2005] comes mighty close to matching his first.

The DVD under review features Abbado’s own hand-picked band, the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, an amalgamation of musicians from the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Over the last few years, Abbado has honed his conducting skills to a level that places him among a handful of post-WWII greats. His skill with the overall architecture, rubato and symmetry of Mahler’s symphonies makes him my pick for the best single director of the composer’s works. Others will carp and pick Karajan or Bernstein or Tilson Thomas, but I will argue that none of them has recorded consistently great performances of every symphony. Abbado has.

So having the opportunity to see his live performances of Mahler is vital. If you know Abbado’s work, you might be shocked to see him on this DVD. He looks thin, haggard, and far older than his 74 years. This comes from a bout with stomach cancer, a disease that nearly killed him. After doctors removed his stomach, he has been given a clean bill of health, but as you can imagine, eating is a chore and he has lost a lot of weight. The brush with death was a terrible blow, but his art has prospered, taking his work from incendiary youth to revelatory maturity, a fact brilliantly played out on this EuroArts DVD.

Sonically, you are in for a treat. Though there are spotlight mics on nearly every music stand, engineer Tione Mertens delivers a sumptuous sound with plenty of atmosphere. All three soundtracks have great weight and thrilling string sound. The quality of the photography is strictly low-fi, a surprise given its recent date. But the direction is top notch, especially the very ending moment when Abbado holds the orchestra and audience dead still for a moment of reflection.

As usual with classical music on DVD, we get zero worthwhile extras. Nonetheless, this is a recording to treasure.

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