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The New York performances are very well played. The Berlioz Romeo and Juliet music is given an account both beautiful and stirring. The Debussy La Mer is also given a fine if idiosyncratic performance, and this disc ends with Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils. I think the Berlioz shows Mitropoulos at his best here. However the sound in all these New York recordings is shrill and I found it difficult to return to them.
The Mahler is another matter altogether. By no means is the Cologne orchestra in the same league technically as the NYPO. But they are utterly committed, cleary inspired and driven by their conductor. I have heard very little Mitropoulos, who seems to be one of those great conductors mysteriously left aside by the marketing machine. Certainly I was shocked in the first movement of the Mahler to hear sudden, unmarked, changes in tempo. At one point I nearly stopped listening. And yet.... Mitropoulos is clearly feeling the music like all great Mahler interpreters, e.g. Bernstein, and the second and third movements carry you forward to that astonishing, concluding movement. The strange opening-which doesn't seem to know what key it's in, the ensuing battle with three enormous hammer blows of fate, are delivered with staggering intensity. The occasional orchestral slip is overlooked as you are carried on by the sheer momentum to the devastating end...
Yes this may sound melodramatic, but I believe this is one of the great Mahler Sixth's. It wouldn't be a first choice (my own favourite is Barbirolli on EMI), but at this price it should be snapped up. There is a fascinating sleeve note on the conductor which makes you want to learn, and hear, more...
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