On May 8-9, 2025, Dutch conductor Jaap van Zweden led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 in A Minor, 1903-05, known as Tragic, at Orchestra Hall in Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago. Van Zweden, lauded on 3 continents, has been conducting the CSO in Mahler’s symphonies for the past month, and will be leading them on an upcoming tour of Europe later in May. The confident, dynamic maestro has a firm grasp of the complex range of expression of this German master, the tonal shifts, the breadth and depths of emotion. The choices he made in transposing the second and third movements, in limiting the hammer strokes in the finale to 2, were effective and true to the overall feeling of this masterpiece; it sounded elegiac and triumphant, not dour or filled with doom.
Mahler was director of the Vienna Court Opera at the turn of the 20th century. His compositional work, however, was considered avante garde; it pushed the boundaries of tradition, even in a society that was a cultural hub. This is not to say that his work was unacceptable, simply that, in its premiere, at which he conducted, it was met with mixed reviews, and so it has ever since. While some critics praise its shift toward modernity, its “experimental” harmonic/formal motifs, some have found it “too” complex. Others have called it overwhelming in its macabre results (not underpinnings; these events happened after the completion of the 6th)- his daughter’s death, his own heart condition’s diagnosis, the loss of his conductorship, the paean to his wife Alma.
Among his 10 symphonies (the last unfinished), this is the one that has come in for the most criticism. Yet, van Zweden’s take was beautifully martial, tender in its transposed scherzo/andante, then rising inexorably toward a startling conclusion. In effect, listeners were given an interlude of thoughtful lyricism between the thunderous first movement, followed by an almost frantic Scherzo, by the restful nature of the lyrical Andante placed before the half-hour climax. Further, the recurring “Alma” theme, which enters from the first, is constantly transformed throughout the entire symphony, recognizable, masterfully intricate, changing- as do all relationships that endure travail- and marked by a subtle interplay of instruments, with a truly sensational use of multiple percussive sounds.
In fact, a special instrument was crafted known as the “Mahler Box and Hammer”; viewed from the lower balcony, it resembles a smallish organ, used to strike the “hammer blows of fate” in the finale. The array of superb CSO percussionists sent out unusual sounds throughout, dreamlike odd tinklings and the clarion call of these elusive strikes in the last movement- truly evocative. And then, as Mahler himself noted, “The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.” This reviewer, in the audience on May 2, 2025, observed how the silence that followed each hammer blow, created both by the striking of the instrument and the deliberate spacing by the exacting van Zweden, spoke intimate volumes, summoning the infinite, the unknowable and the unknown.
Although the overall mood of the 6th is dark, even anxiety provoking, the achingly luxuriant Andante notably excepted, it is a very rich creation, enormously interesting, and well worth listening to again and again, especially in the hands- and under the baton- of an Orchestra with this hair trigger responsiveness, and a conductor this talented. Especially impressive was the almost demonic playfulness of the zigzagging Scherzo as well as the grandiosity of the Finale, with its enormous detail, emotional woodwinds, dark brass and a violin solo that tugs at the heart- a memorable performance!
For information and tickets to all the great programming of The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, go to www.cso.org
All photos by Todd Rosenberg
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