Mahler: Symphony No 6

SACD - compatible with all CD players

"If you're looking for a quick-fire, single-disc Sixth with a difference, Gergiev has more gravitas than previous Soviet-trained conductors, even when he's racing. LSO Live backs him up with an impactful, immediate, rather airless sound encoded as a hybrid SACD. The bright-edged, multi-linear treatment favoured by exponents as ostensibly dissimilar as Bernstein and Boulez simply isn't on Gergiev's agenda. Instead, a trail is blazed for a visceral, even thuggish brand of music-making. Yes, these sounds thrilled many in the hall but would you want to revisit them at home? At bargain price you can afford to find out."
Editor's Choice Gramophone Magazine June 2008

Valery Gergiev's eagerly anticipated debut recording for LSO Live is also his first recording of Mahler's music and the first in a complete cycle of the composer's symphonies. Recorded in November 2007 as part of his sensational concert series of the symphonies, Gergiev delivers an intensely emotional account of this pivotal work.

Does Mahler's Sixth Symphony foretell the tragedy of his later life, or does it have a more cerebral purpose? Whatever the composer's motives for writing it, tragic it certainly is: driven, bitter and sweet by turns, and ending in devastation - utterly compelling.

Concert Reviews
'This isn't what we're used to in performances of this piece. But it felt very true to Mahler. It made the neurosis and anxiety of the symphony seem uncomfortably vivid. If this is an indication of how the cycle will unfold, we're in for something wonderful'
Daily Telegraph (UK)

'orchestra and conductor sounded not only well prepared but also totally in harmony. Every detail, every phrase had an irrefutable sweep and logic. That's something to be prized ... the music oozed tension'
Financial Times (UK)

'Gergiev's tempo for the first movement was at the cutting edge of impetuous ... the sinew and defiance pinned you to the seat ... Gergiev's neurotic manner was entirely at one with Mahler's. The playing was mighty and valiant with the LSO brass covering themselves in glory'
The Independent (UK)