In memoriam: Michael Gielen

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[2013 performance] This isn’t a slow march to nowhere. Once you adjust, you find yourself hearing Mahler’s music as Celibidache might
have conducted it. An extreme treatment matches extreme... — Fanfare, January/February 2020 More…

Release Date: 9th Aug 2019
Catalogue No: SWR19080CD
Label: SWR Music
Length: 2 hours 52 minutes

International Classical Music Awards

2019

Nominee - Symphonic Music
The New York Times

Recordings of the Year 2019

Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A minor 'Tragic'

Work length1:14:05

Album only

rec. 1971
SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg
Michael Gielen

I. Allegro energico, ma non troppo. Heftig, aber markig

Track length21:07

Album only

II. Scherzo. Wuchtig

Track length12:06

$3.00

$3.85

III. Andante moderato

Track length13:16

$3.00

$3.85

IV. Finale. Allegro moderato

Track length27:36

Album only

Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A minor 'Tragic'

Work length1:37:11

Album only

rec. 2013
SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg
Michael Gielen

I. Allegro energico, ma non troppo. Heftig, aber markig (Live)

Track length27:56

Album only

II. Andante moderato (Live)

Track length15:37

$4.00

$5.15

III. Scherzo. Wuchtig (Live)

Track length16:09

$4.00

$5.15

IV. Finale. Allegro moderato (Live)

Track length37:29

Album only

Interview Excerpt: Was Mahler Religious?

Work length1:43

$1.00

$1.30

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Recorded 42 years apart, these two performances of Mahlers Sixth Symphony are highly contrasted in terms of tempo, sense of structure and interpretation. It is certainly appropriate to commemorate Michael Gielen with these two recordings of the work he performed most often recordings that represent the opposite poles of Gielens Mahler interpretations. For the first time ever on disc, this edition includes the 1971 recording of Mahlers Symphony No. 6 in its original sound quality.

Reviews

January/February 2020

[2013 performance] This isn’t a slow march to nowhere. Once you adjust, you find yourself hearing Mahler’s music as Celibidache might
have conducted it. An extreme treatment matches extreme music. I was fascinated, frankly, and the excellent playing from the SWR Symphony, along with impeccable studio-quality sound, adds to the spell. Not only the final crack of doom but many passages along the way are shattering.

November 2019

There is no shortage of poise or brilliance about the playing [in the 1986 performance], over and above the expected level of dedication which lends the performance a palpable sense of occasion...The 2013 concert is something else…Gielen holds the finale together with the kind of unfolding logic we might more readily associate with the Unfinished Symphony.

July 2019

How fascinating to compare readings from the start of Gielen’s Mahlerian odyssey to its completion 42 years later.

The New York Times 12th December 2019

The first, from 1971, is shimmering, vigorous and pretty good — but the second, from 2013, is the real deal: so slow, dark and heavy that it feels, by the end, truly like horror in sound.

In memoriam: Michael Gielen

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