David Zinman's recording of
Mahler's Sixth Symphony, with the
Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, is magnificent: dramatic, dynamic, heroic, and tragic. In the wake of many versions that are excessively emotional and hyperactive,
Zinman's reading is refreshingly sane and lucid.
Zinman has turned in great
Beethoven and
Schumann cycles with the
Tonhalle Orchestra, and so far, his
Mahler cycle seems set on the same trajectory. His Sixth avoids the extremes of heaviness and lightness; the tempos do not drag, the textures are rich but they do not clot, and the colors are beguiling without delaying forward motion. There is plenty of power in its sonorities, force in its rhythms, irrefutable clarity in its rhetoric, and irresistible energy in its momentum.
Zinman and the orchestra are clearly committed to performing with polished professionalism and controlled passion rather than showing off, and their performance is in its way equal to the finest "sane" Sixths already in existence: those by
Abbado,
Haitink,
Boulez, and
de Waart.
Zinman, following current performance practice, has placed the inner movements in Andante -- Scherzo order. RCA, taking advantage of the latest breakthroughs in sonic technology, has recorded the performance using super audio digital sound, and the results are staggering.