Here are the liner notes from Ivan Fischer's recording of M6 on Channel Classics label. The notes were posted originally by Andy Fuller on the Mahler-list, and are posted here with his permission.
'It is after more than ten years of painstaking preparations, many rehearsals, concerts and tours playing and rethinking Mahler's works that I finally gave up all inhibitions and decided to present the first Mahler recording with the Budapest Festival Orchestra. Coming from an assimilated Jewish Austro-Hungarian family, like Mahler himself, I feel a special responsibility for him, but my love for this music is probably more than a geographical or ethnic sense of identity.
There is a famous discussion about the order of the middle movements. Putting the scientific arguments aside I have been fascinated by the question what Mahler's doubts felt like when he suddenly abandoned his beautifully constructed original symphonic plan. To relive this experience we took the sixth symphony on a long European tour and changed the order of the middle movements every single concert. In the Scherzo-Andante performances the transitions from one movement to the next felt wonderful, the whole architecture made sense but I felt a clear unease about the size and weight of the Scherzo after the first movement. In the Andante-Scherzo concerts there was a fantastic balance and variety. I became convinced that Mahler's abrupt decision was a stroke of genius.
And the third hammer blow? Even if Alma was right and it was Mahler's superstition that made him erase the fatal deathblow from the final version I feel that there must have been another reason, too. Mahler was a master of dramaturgy, his dosage of effects and climaxes is infallible. I am convinced that the muted climax near the end is better. It is less theatrical and with its modest sound it balances beautifully with the final desperate outburst. This great finale is better with two hammer blows.'
Ivan Fischer
(movement times: All. 22.23; And. 13.43; Sch. 12.52; Fin. 29.23)
