Few conductors can have led Gustav Mahler’s Sixth Symphony as often as Benjamin Zander has over the past 45 years. Mahler’s Second, Sixth, and Ninth Symphonies are, I would guess, the works Zander has programmed the most often, but it’s his Sixth that boasts four recordings: with his Boston Philharmonic Orchestra in the 1980s (BPO home-label cassette), with the BPO again in 1994 (IMP), with the Philharmonia of London in 2001 (Telarc), and live with the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra in 2017 (Brattle Media). Sunday afternoon at Symphony Hall, he was back leading the BPYO in his first Sixth since 2017. He hasn’t lost his Mahler touch, and the kids, all new since 2017, are as good as ever, maybe better.     

What is this symphony about? Most classical pieces that begin in A minor are hoping to finish in A major or C major. The Sixth achieves A major at the conclusion of the first movement, but by the end of the Finale, we’re back in A minor. Reason enough, it would seem, for the conventional view of this work. The Sixth is Mahler’s “Tragic” symphony. The three hammer blows in the Finale are the three hammer blows of fate that fall upon the hero; the third and last is his death blow. And they foretell the three blows that fell upon Mahler in 1907, the year following the Sixth’s premiere in Essen: his resignation from the directorship of the Vienna Staatsoper; the death of his elder daughter, Maria Anna, from diphtheria and scarlet fever; and the diagnosis of the heart defect that would lead to his own death in 1911. 

But the truth of the Sixth isn’t quite that simple. The “Tragic” nickname first appeared on the cover of the program for the symphony’s 1907 Vienna premiere. Mahler himself never used the word in connection with the work, and it doesn’t appear on any of the published scores. As for the Finale’s hammer blows, he started with five, reduced that to three, and eventually deleted the last one, perhaps as early as the 1906 premiere. It’s not certain the number three had any special significance for him, or that he associated the hammer blows with the workings of fate.

It’s not even certain that Mahler saw the Sixth as being about a hero. What distinguishes this symphony is the activity of the second subject in the outer movements. Alma Mahler tells us that the F-major second subject in the opening Allegro energico was her husband’s attempt to represent her in music. This soaring and to some ears sentimental theme struggles for motivic independence and then struggles to resolve in the recapitulation. Mediating the first and second subjects is a theme Mahler borrowed (consciously?) from Franz Liszt’s First Piano Concerto. In the coda, it’s this Liszt theme that propels the second subject, Alma’s music, into the exuberant A-major conclusion. In the Finale, the first subject group impinges on the second (which also suggests Alma); the second fails to resolve in both exposition and recapitulation, and in the development its two attempts to shift the music into a major key are brutally cut off by the two hammer blows. Perhaps the real subject of the symphony is not a hero but rather Gustav and Alma’s marriage.

Two points of controversy concerning the Sixth persist: the order of the two inner movements, and that third and final hammer blow. Mahler’s original concept had the Scherzo preceding the Andante moderato, but during rehearsals at Essen he decided the Andante should come first, and that’s how he conducted the symphony during his lifetime. In 1963, Internationale Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft editor Erwin Ratz published a Critical Edition with the Scherzo second and the Andante third, stating that Mahler had at some subsequent point reverted to his original order. There’s no evidence that Mahler ever did. The most recent Critical Edition from the IGMG places the Andante before the Scherzo, but conductors had got used to Scherzo-Andante, and many continue to perform the symphony that way. In Zander’s 1980s recording, the Andante preceded the Scherzo, though in his liner note he confessed he wasn’t entirely comfortable with Mahler’s revised order. Since then he’s reverted to Scherzo-Andante.

Sunday’s program book, however, listed the Andante as preceding the Scherzo. I was intrigued by the prospect of hearing Zander perform the symphony that way again after 40 years, but in his pre-concert talk, he stated that, despite the program listing, the Scherzo was going to come second and the Andante third. Zander’s rationale for not following the new Critical Edition is his belief that Mahler “panicked” during the Essen rehearsals, that he “lost his nerve because he thought the audience would be irritated at hearing those two movements [Allegro and Scherzo] together.”

I find it hard to think of Mahler as someone who panics or loses his nerve. He never did explain his decision to change the movement order. Perhaps his reasoning was sound and the thinking behind it has simply escaped us over the past 120 years. We do know that he anguished over the movement order at Essen and made the switch only at the last minute. One could argue that it is not a good idea to undo a symphonic structure three years in the making in the heat of rehearsal. Zander is certainly entitled to say of Mahler’s decision, as he did Sunday, “I think he was wrong.”

As for the hammer blows, Zander has consistently restored the third one. The idea that Mahler foretold three blows that were to fall on him in 1907 seems dubious. We don’t know whether he really thought of the third one as a death blow, or whether he deleted it out of superstitious fear. As with the revised movement order, he didn’t explain his reasoning; we can only observe that the two hammer blows he left in serve a different function from the one he took out. In any event, Zander is scarcely the only conductor who includes the third one. Mahler had great difficulty getting the sound he wanted from the hammer blows; Zander’s execution of them has always been so spot-on, it’s hard not to want to hear all three.

One thing Mahler did leave us is his desired tempos for the Sixth, since he wrote down timings on the cover of the conductor’s score he used at Essen: 23 minutes for the Allegro, 12 for the Scherzo, 15 for the Andante, and 31 for the Finale. As was the case in 2017, Zander hewed close to Mahler’s mark, with timings of 23:10, 12:16, 14:18, and 28:56. There’s room to expand on these, as Andris Nelsons proved in his 90-minute traversal with the BSO in 2022. At a shade under 79 minutes, Zander was just slightly faster than average.

Even so, I missed in this interpretation what I missed in 2017: greater contrast, more pointed paragraphing, a more pronounced sense of tension and release, ebb and flow. The “Alma” theme of the Allegro didn’t differ much in tempo from the opening theme; the pastoral “Naturlaut” section of the development didn’t conjure an otherworld paradise. The Scherzo’s “Altväterish” (“Old-fashioned”) second theme is marked “poco meno mosso”; Zander hardly slowed there, though he did observe the F-minor third theme’s “Noch etwas langsamer.” The two subject groups of the Andante didn’t get the differentiation they seem to call for (granted, Mahler doesn’t indicate any major tempo changes in this movement); the anguished climax didn’t feel anguished enough. The quickish opening of the Finale offered drama but not mystery, and here again, Zander had the “Alma” second subject group on a tight rein. The codas of the Scherzo and the Finale remained in sharp focus.

Zander has always tended to favor unified movement tempos; that’s a conductor’s prerogative. It didn’t seem a good idea, however, to follow the 112 bpm Allegro with a 120 bpm Scherzo. One possible explanation for Mahler’s decision to reverse the inner-movement order is that he thought his tempos for the Allegro and the Scherzo were sounding too similar. His assistant Klaus Pringsheim (Thomas Mann’s brother-in-law) recalled that at Essen, Mahler struggled to find the right tempo for the Scherzo, perhaps meaning one that was distinct from the Allegro. Zander’s tempos Sunday didn’t quite solve that difficulty.

But there was a lot this Mahler Sixth did solve. The 132 musicians ages 13–21 Zander put on the Symphony Hall stage played with discipline, perception, and passion. Instruments whose sound is essential to this symphony — snare drum, cymbals, xylophone, triangle, celesta, cowbells, and, in the Finale, rute — got room to shine. Balance was exemplary, articulation crisp; where the symphony had to roar, it roared. The Allegro’s exposition featured a superb trumpet solo from Sebastián Haros that ushered in an afternoon of solo treats. In the “Naturlaut” development section alone: oboe (Abby Hope-Hull, substituting on short notice), bass clarinet (Maxwell Reed), celesta (Julian Dürr), bassoon (Andrew Salaru), and the duet of French horn (Mauricio Martinez) and violin (Michael Fisher). Tuba (Hayden Silvester) in the Scherzo, and then clarinet (Cole Turkel) and contrabassoon (Alex Weber) in the coda. Cor anglais (Christian Paniagua) in the second subject of the Andante; flute (Anna Ridenour) in the coda. All three hammer blows in the Finale, and the coda’s parade of trombones (Devin Drinan, Allie Klaire Ledbetter, Collin Good, and Cole MacEwen). And more where all that came from.

Besides which, it’s not as if Zander, on his own terms, didn’t deliver a cogent, persuasive interpretation. Bruno Walter is reported to have said that he never conducted the Sixth because he found the Allegro’s “Alma” theme too weak. Zander made the “Alma” music here and in the Finale sound as engaging and complex as Alma herself was. The Allegro’s Liszt theme stalked both first and second subjects; the coda surged without clotting. The Scherzo was ferocious one moment, all spooky shadows and mirrors the next; the Andante’s restlessness might be considered appropriate for a movement where Mahler makes E-flat major sound almost like a minor key. And the Finale, which can be hard to hold together, benefitted from Zander’s coiled energy. He also justified the third hammer blow. At the end of the recapitulation, when the music fails to land in A major, the symphony seems doomed to conclude in A minor. Zander, underplaying that moment, held out hope for 10 measures before the hammer quashed all resistance.

As was the case with the BPYO’s 2017 Mahler Sixth, Symphony Hall was far from full Sunday. This may not be one of the “riddles” Mahler predicted his symphony would propound, but it’s a riddle all the same. First-rate piece of music that we haven’t heard in three years. First-rate hall, first-class orchestra, first-class conductor, and attractive ticket prices. Sunday’s livestream, at least, is still up HERE. The camerawork does well by the solo playing; the hammer blows don’t register with their full force, but otherwise the sound is a pretty good match to what I heard in the hall.   

Jeffrey Gantz has been writing about music, dance, theater, art, film, and books for the past 45 years, first for the Boston Phoenix and currently for the Boston Globe.

Hilary Scott Pictures Above and Below