The first movement of Mahler's Sixth Symphony is usually thought of as one of the most structurally conventional he ever wrote. But in Benjamin Zander's performance with the Philharmonia Orchestra, the movement glittered with strange colours and burned with diabolical drama. Zander's dynamic direction suffused every pore of the orchestra, from the bottomless pit of double-bass sonority to the piercing shrieks of the piccolos and E flat clarinets.
The paradox of the clarity of Mahler's architecture is that the movement contains some of his most adventurous scoring. After a tortuous central section, the music slides into a realm of pastoral bliss. Zander created an image of alpine purity in the midst of the movement's momentous passion. But his performance was as alert to the vivid detail of Mahler's orchestration as it was to the grand sweep of the symphony's structure. He made the return of a chorale-like passage, originally scored for clarinets, sound alienated by its ghoulish garb of celeste, flute and syncopated strings.
The first movement careered into its coda with the death-rattle of strings playing with the wood of their bows, alongside the hollow triumphalism of brass fanfares. But even after the terrifying contrasts of this allegro, the scherzo (which Zander played as the symphony's second movement) was full of grotesquerie. There is nothing playful about the warped waltzes and grinding ostinatos of Mahler's music, and Zander turned the Philharmonia into an ensemble of nightmarish sounds and disturbing emotions.
The slow movement provided the only repose, with Zander's flowing tempo and the orchestra's seamless phrasing. But it was Zander's account of the finale that revealed the sensitivity of his performance. Mahler's sprawling design is notoriously problematic for conductors, but Zander steered a fascinating course through the movement's complexities. He made the extremes of the finale's expressive world - from its searing intensity to its three chilling hammerblows - lead inevitably to the devastating emptiness of the symphony's final chord.
