This is a very beautiful Mahler Sixth - with all the strengths and weaknesses that implies. Rarely have the refinement and richness of Mahler's orchestral palette been so lovingly demonstrated.

After Gergiev, this might seem staid - but is builds into a remarkable reading… Haitink's finale belies the slowness of its pacing, its accumulation of inner tensions the fruit of a lifetime's experience with this score. There are more splenetic, precise accounts available, few which convey its burden of care in quite such magisterial fashion.

If the performance didn't quite move me in the way that Gergiev did, or before him Jansons (LSO Live), Abbado (DG) and Tilson Thomas (San Francisco Symphony), it may be the fault of the recording, which is perhaps better at capturing detail (the harps and celesta sound particularly well focused) than impressing with its sonic impact.

A powerful sense of drama pervades Haitink's draining account of Mahler's Tragic Symphony, the Sixth, a stunning testament to the Dutchman's reign as principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
His Chicago musicians take on new character with each increasingly vivid episode, from the hungry chomp-chomp of the opening to the golden serenity of the Andante. The Scherzo grunts, cackles and laughs through the blasé horn, although the cod-baroque strings could have more comic lightness. The massive finale is dominated by the mental image of the solemn, executioner-like percussionist with his huge mallet moving slowly towards the wooden box of fate.

Mahler's massive Symphony No. 6 is played by Haitink and the CSO with a transparency, even a delicacy, that seems to stop time.