The Cleveland Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst

»Why all this noise?« one reviewer wanted to know after the first performance of Gustav Mahler’s Sixth Symphony in 1906. Mahler’s orchestration was unprecedented in scale, and Richard Strauss even called the symphony »over-instrumented«. Nonetheless, there can be no talk of noise here. Mahler’s »Tragic« Symphony is generally regarded as his most personal work.

The hammer blows in the finale have gone down in music history: they seem to anticipate fateful events. The work is permeated by moments of utterly raw violence with which the composer mirrors the brutality of the new century as well as personal strokes of fate that lay ahead of him. His widow Alma Mahler later wrote in her memoirs: »The Sixth is his most personal work, and a prophetic one to boot. With both the Kindertotenlieder and the Sixth Symphony he translated his life into music ›anticipando‹. He too suffered three strokes of fate, and the third one cut him down«.

Mahler’s Sixth makes the utmost demands on conductor and orchestra alike: how fitting, then, that the legendary Cleveland Orchestra should perform it in the Elbphilharmonie Grand Hall under the baton of Franz Welser-Möst. The Cleveland Orchestra has a reputation for being the most European of the so-called »big five« symphony orchestras in the US.