Preview: The Andante of the Sixth Symphony -- the most beautiful movement Mahler ever composed?

If you think the climax of the slow movement of the Mahler Sixth needs to be made "exciting," I guess Valery Gergiev's your man -- here are the final four minutes (beginning at bar 138) of a November 2007 performance with the London Symphony. (Note that he's playing the Andante as the second movement -- i.e., before the Scherzo.)

by Ken

I can't prove to you that Mahler had the gorgeous Andante of the Brahms First Symphony (which we heard in last night's preview) in mind when he composed the Andante of his Sixth, but you'd have to go a long way to convince me that he didn't. Most composers, at least those with a modicum of sense, would shy away from such an exalted precedent; Mahler lived up to it.

The climactic section that we hear in the Gergiev clip above begins at 10:35 in this recording, Leonard Bernstein's first of the Mahler Sixth.

MAHLER: Symphony No. 6 in A minor:
iii. (or maybe ii.) Andante moderato


New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded May 1967


TO HEAR MORE OF THIS AMAZING MOVEMENT, READ ON


Here's the first part of Lenny B's 1976 Vienna Philharmonic video recording of the Andante sostenuto of the Mahler Sixth. You can hear the rest here -- or wait till tomorrow, when it will lead off the Sunday Classics post.

Leonard Bernstein was 48 when he made the recording of the Mahler Sixth from which we just heard the Andante moderato before the click-through. Later that same year, 1967, while the symphony was still infrequently heard in concert and was very sparsely represented on records, Sir John Barbirolli, at the age of 67 (less than three years before he died), made an extraordinary recording of it, from which we're going to hear more tomorrow when we take on the whole symphony. (That "climactic" section begins at 11:13.)

MAHLER: Symphony No. 6 in A minor:
iii. (or maybe ii.) Andante moderato


New Philharmonia Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli, cond. EMI, recorded August 1967

Another decade after Lenny B's 1976 video Mahler Sixth with the Vienna Philharmonic, the now-70-year-old conductor (two years before he died) made his final recording of the symphony, also with the Vienna Phil. I don't think either Vienna Sixth is among his happier Mahler outings, but I don't think he ever had any problems with the Andante. We've already heard the first part of the 1976 video recording (as noted above, we're going to have the second part in tomorrow's post); here's the 1988 Andante, with the "climactic" section beginning at 11:02.

MAHLER: Symphony No. 6 in A minor:
iii. (or maybe ii.) Andante moderato


Vienna Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG, recorded live, September 1988


IN TOMORROW'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST

In addition to hearing the rest of the 1977 Bernstein-Vienna video Andante, we take a jab at the troublesome question of the "correct" order of the middle movements of the Mahler Sixth, while listening to the whole symphony -- and incidentally pondering the question of just how "tragic" Mahler's Tragic Symphony really is.

#