Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France

Dark and imposing, Mahler’s Symphony n° 6, conducted here by the  genial Mikko Franck, expresses more than the others the tormented soul of a composer pierced by the sense of fatum. Tragic? No nickname could be more appropriate, but to this we must also add: powerful, brooding, incomparable and radical.

Ironically, it was at a time of great personal serenity, between 1903 and 1905, that Mahler would compose this score that, along with his Kindertotenlieder written during the same period, is undoubtedly his darkest. His wife, Alma, reproached him for tempting fate, and indeed his Symphony n° 6 proved to be prophetic: soon after, in 1907, the composer would lose his eldest daughter, begin to suffer from heart troubles, and be fired from his post as director of the Vienna Opera. Imposing, profound, heartrending, the work opens with a dark and menacing march, symbolizing the path of a man heading towards his fate, saying his goodbyes to the world. Ponderous, full of acrimony, the Scherzo is a ghastly confusion, soon quieted by the remission proposed by the Andante: rural song and the beneficence of nature apply a soothing but temporary balm. Then comes the Finale, with the return of fatality, blacker and more implacable than ever. Thirty minutes of desperate struggle, punctuated by the striking hammers of fate. The hero, Mahler wrote, "receives three blows from destiny, the third of which cuts him down like a tree."

Musical director Mikko Franck
Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France

^{Photo © Christophe Abramowitz}

Gustav Mahler
Symphonie n° 6 « The Tragic »