Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France – Mahler

Dark and imposing, Mahler's Symphony No. 6, conducted here by the brilliant Mikko Franck, expresses more than any other the tormented soul of a composer penetrated by a sense of fatum. Tragic? No nickname is more apt, but we should add: powerful, dark, incomparable and radical.

Paradoxically, it was during a period of great personal serenity, between 1903 and 1905, that Mahler composed this score which, along with his contemporary Kindertotenlieder, is undoubtedly his darkest work. His wife, Alma, reproached him for tempting fate, and indeed Symphony No. 6 proved prophetic: shortly afterwards, in 1907, the composer lost his eldest daughter, suffered heart trouble and was ousted from his post as director of the Vienna Opera. Imposing, profound and heart-rending, the work opens with a sombre, menacing march, symbolising the journey of a man who, on his way to his destiny, bids farewell to the world of men. The Scherzo, heavy and full of confused anger, is a page of horrible confusion, soon soothed by the remission offered by the Andante: rural voices, the feeling of a beneficent nature apply a temporary balm. But with the Finale, fate returns, darker and more implacable than ever: thirty minutes of desperate struggle, punctuated by fateful hammer blows. The hero, Mahler himself wrote, "receives three blows of fate, the third of which makes him fall like a tree".