Fifteen years were destined to separate Georg Solti’s debut as a guest leader of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra - at summer concerts of the Ravinia Festival - and his first Orchestra hall appearance, downtown, as music director in the autumn of 1969 The first encounter, however, in 1954, was instantaneously productive of a mutual respect and rapport that deepened with each subsequent interim meeting. No matter who was resident conductor in Chicago, or what traditions variously prevailed whenever Solti would return as a guest, the orchestra each time became his ally-as such the mirror of a singular aesthetic temperament in our time. The precision that Solti has always demanded in musical performance (as an essential for musical expression) has been his to command in whatever capacity, under whatever circumstances, at whatever time.

Respect and rapport are the rudiments of Georg Solti’s astounding achievement to date in Chicago, as documented on these discs for the first (but surely not for the last) time. To some persons, as the years lengthened into a decade, and beyond, it may have seemed that the eventual union of Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was not meant to be. But to others of us, the long wait served instead to whet the appetite further for what promised, on each visit, to be an artistic inevitability - and has indeed proved to be, altogether beyond expectations.

Mahler conducted the première of his Sixth Symphony at the German Music Festival held in Essen in 1906, where it proved to be the most talked-of new work, together with that very different masterpiece, Delius’s Sea-Drift. It made a great impression on Schoenberg, who praised its subtle melodic structure and bold harmonic style, and a greater one on Berg, who called it ‘the only Sixth, despite Beethoven’s Pastoral’.
There is indeed something uniquely overwhelming about this particular symphony of Mahler, which may be due to its extremely personal inspiration. His wife, Alma, writing of the ‘composing holidays’ they spent with their two little daughters in the summers of 1904 and 1905, said:

After he had drafted the first movement, he came down from the wood to tell me he had tried to express me in a theme. ‘Whether I’ve succeeded, I don’t know; but you’ll have to put up with it’.
This is the great soaring theme of the first movement of the Sixth Symphony. In the third movement [now the second-see below] he represented the unrhythmical games of the two little children, tottering in zigzags over the sand. Ominously, the childish voices became more and more tragic, and at the end died out in a whimper. In the last movement he described himself and his downfall or, as he later said, his hero: ‘It is the hero, on whom fall three blows of fate, the last of which fells him as a tree is felled’. Those were his words.
Not one of his works came as directly from his inmost heart as this. We both wept that day. The music and what it foretold touched us so deeply...

Again, when Mahler first heard the music, while preparing the Essen première, he was quite overcome. The experience, moreover, was heightened by one of those curious coincidences that cropped up throughout his life:

None of his works moved him so deeply at its first hearing as this. [In fact, he never heard The Song of the Earth, the Ninth, or of course the Tenth.] We came to the last rehearsals, the dress-rehearsal-to the last movement with its three blows of fate. When it was over, Mahler walked up and down in the artists’ room, sobbing, wringing his hands, unable to control himself. Fried, Gabrilovitch, Buths and I stood transfixed, not daring to look at one another. Suddenly Strauss came noisily in, noticing nothing. ‘I say, Mahler, you’ve got to conduct some dead march or other tomorrow, before the Sixth-their mayor has died on them. So vulgar, that sort of thing-But what’s the matter? What’s up with you? But -’ and he went out as noisily as he had come in, quite unmoved, leaving us petrified...

Today we do not believe that composers ‘foretell’ their own fate in their music. Nevertheless, a year later, three blows did fall on Mahler, and the last one ‘felled’ him. In the spring his resignation was demanded at the Vienna Upera; in July, his daughter Anna died, at the age of four; and a few days later, a doctor diagnosed Mahler’s own fatal heart disease. Mahler was of course - like Webster in T. S. Eliot’s poem - ‘much possessed by death’, and he was superstitious about it: he later went so far as to delete the ‘prophetic’ final hammer-blow in the symphony’s finale.
All this explains why Mahler called the Sixth his Tragic Symphony. It might seem strange for him to give this title to one particular work, when he is so widely regarded as altogether a ‘tragic’ composer. Yet after all, six of his eleven symphonic works - Nos. I, 2, 3, 5, 7 and 8 - culminate in a blaze of triumph in the major; another - No. 4 - dies away in blissful serenity, also in the major; and three others - The Song of the Earth, No. 9 and No. 10 - fade out in resigned reconciliation, once more in the major. The Sixth alone offers no escape, ending starkly in the minor mode - that essential tragic symbol of the nineteenth-century composer.
The work was, in fact, the first genuine ‘tragic symphony’ to be written. The romantic concept of the heroic human struggle against fate, derived from Beethoven’s Fifth, is its basis - but Beethoven’s struggle has a triumphant outcome, as have those in several of Mahler’s own symphonies. The purely tragic concept was first hinted at in Brahms’s Fourth, which ends sternly in the minor; but the fierce vitality of the conclusion precludes any idea of a tragic catastrophe. Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique certainly ends in utter darkness ; but its mood of breast-beating despair is far removed from the objective universality of tragedy. In Mahler’s Sixth, however, a truly tragic catastrophe, akin to those in Greek and Shakespearean drama, is presented with stark objectivity. And woven into it is a Hardy-like backcloth of nature, of mountain heights, far above human turmoil. This acts as a refuge in the slow movement, but in the first movement and finale as a purely elemental world, indifferent to human suffering.
The work’s unique character has been briefly and powerfully summed up by Bruno Walter:

...the Sixth is bleakly pessimistic: it reeks of the bitter cup of life. In contrast with the Fifth, it says ‘No’, above all in its last movement, where something resembling the inexorable strife of ‘all against all’ is translated into music. ‘Existence is a burden; death is desirable and life hateful’ might be its motto ... The mounting tension and climaxes of the last movement resemble, in their grim power, the mountainous waves of a sea that will overwhelm and destroy the ship; the work ends in hopelessness and the dark night of the soul. ‘Non placet’ is his verdict on this world; the ‘other world’ is not glimpsed for a moment.

Walter views the Symphony as a personal statement, and, as we have seen, its inspiration was extremely personal; moreover, the music, as always with Mahler, is as personal as music can be. How then can the work possess the objective universality of tragedy? Simply in that here, as nowhere else in Mahler’s symphonies, his personal expression of dread and doom and disaster is subjected to an iron classical control, in two separate ways. First, although Mahler’s formal command is always greater than is generally realised, only in the Sixth did he follow the traditional classical layout. Despite its characteristically vast time-scale and enormous orchestra, the Symphony has neither vocal elements, nor direct quotations from songs, nor bird-calls, nor bugle-signals, nor passages in the popular style, nor any explicit programme. And not only does it consist of the traditional four movements, but three of them - the opening sonata-movement with repeated exposition, the scherzo with trio, and the finale - are all in the same key of A minor.
But all this in itself could not have guaranteed classical control. The second, complementary means to this end was the objectifying of the thematic material itself, most of which (as so often with Bruckner) looks back beyond romantic lyricism to the motivic methods of the classical symphony: not to the actual classical style - the themes are far too emotionally charged - but to the classical clarity and concision. These elements are of course partly present in Mahler’s other symphonies; and there are still exceptions here, such as the opening movement’s expansive lyrical second subject (the ‘Alma’ theme - Ex. 6 - supposed to portray his wife), the song-like main melody of the Andante moderato, and certain almost impressionistic passages in the finale’s introduction. Nevertheless, the classical side of Mahler’s complex musical personality is concentrated into this work far more potently than into any of his others, and this notwithstanding the length at which the material is developed, especially in the finale, which is practically a symphony in itself.
Before turning to the music, one should mention the problem of the order of the two inner movements. The symphony was first published with the scherzo second and the slow movement third; but Mahler switched them round for a second publication. The symphony came down in this latter form after his death, and the rare performances of it always followed this order. But it has since transpired that, shortly before his death, he reverted to the original order, as well as revising the orchestration (this was when he removed the finale’s third hammer-blow, as mentioned above). This final version was published by the International Mahler Society of Vienna in 1963, and has been used by Georg Solti for the present recording.
In keeping with its classical character, the Sixth is the only Mahler symphony which does not rely on cyclic form - the Lisztian method of transferring themes from one movement to another, and especially from one or more movements to the finale - though it does have a brief ‘tragic motto’ of two chords (Ex. 4), which occurs in the opening movement, scherzo, and finale. In consequence, the work is closely unified by motivic and rhythmic interrelationships between the themes of each movement, and between the movements themselves.
The opening Allegro energico, ma non troppo, a heavy march-movement, has a brief introduction (Ex. 1), which begins with a tramping repetition of the note A (marked X), then sets the basic rhythm of the whole work (marked Y), and at the same time introduces a motive (marked A) which is to be pervasive.
The introduction leads straight into the first subject (Ex. 2): this is shot through with the rhythm Y, and itself begins with two further phrases which will pervade the movement (B and C), either in their actual melodic shapes, or as rhythms.
The first subject continues with a whole group ofideas, three of which are also to permeate the movement. The first (Ex. 3a) derives from the original motive A; the second (Ex. 3b) is new, but centres like everything else on the rhythm Y; and the third (Ex. 3c) derives from the opening phrase B of the first subject.
After a powerful climax, the ‘tragic motto’ of the Symphony strikes in (Ex. 4) - a brilliant A major triad for trumpets, fading to a weak A minor one on oboes, over a heavy military rhythm (including Y), plus a snare-drum roll.
The ‘transition’ follows immediately (Ex. 5) - a quiet chorale-like theme for woodwind, supported by quiet memories of phrase B from the first subject.
The theme does not modulate to a new key, but prepares to close in A minor - whereupon the second subject bursts in, in F major (Ex. 6) - the passionate ‘Alma’ theme, supposed to be Mahler’s musical portrait of his wife. It too is shot through with the rhythm Y, and also incorporates the rhythm of the second phrase (C) of the first subject.
After an extended double-statement of this theme (interrupted by march-like references to Ex. 3c from the first subject), the tautly unified exposition ends, and is repeated in the classical manner.
The development section returns to the march-music, even more grimly, varying and transforming all the foregoing material, with a strikingly macabre version of Ex. 3b, emphasised by xylophone (this is the only symphony in which Mahler used the instrument). At one point, there is a sudden pianissimo visionary episode - in which cowbells are heard, together with ghostly references to the chorale-theme, Ex. 5 - suggesting the rarified atmosphere of mountain heights, far above the turmoil. But the music eventually resumes marching, with a new confident version of Ex. 3c, and soon leads to the shortened recapitulation. This opens deceptively, with the first subject resplendent in A major, only to plunge back immediately into A minor. When it is over, the long coda reverses the process: beginning darkly in the minor, with pianissimo trombones referring back ominously to phrase B of the first subject, it eventually culminates in a joyful, brassy A major apotheosis of the ‘Alma’ theme.
The close motivic unity continues in the gruesome comedy of the scherzo: its three sections are widely contrasted, but the last two stem straight from motives in the first. This first section is a ferocious stamping dance (Ex. 7). It begins like the first movement with heavy repetitions of the note A in the bass (marked X - cf. Ex. 1); it also looks back to the opening movement’s first subject, revolving around the notes A and C (cf. figure B in Ex. 2); and it is saturated with the rhythmic figure Y.
Of the two motives in this section which are to generate the two contrasting sections, the first (Ex. 8) is a little upward arpeggio (marked Z), which here introduces a variant of the macabre version of the first movement’s Ex. eb, with xylophone, from the first movement.
This will be the starting point of the third section, an eerie, puppet-like, Hoffmannesque episode (woodwind, muted trumpets, strings struck with the wood of the bow). The other motive (Ex. 9) is a forceful alternation of bars of 3/8 and 4/8 (producing an effect of 7/8), which stems from the basic repeated-note figure, X.
This will become the basis of the second section, fragile childlike music beginning on woodwind only (the ‘unrhythmical games of the little children’ mentioned by Mrs. Mahler).
The first section ends with the symphony’s ‘tragic motto’ (Ex. 4); the second follows immediately; and then the repeated A in the bass (X) leads to the third, which in turn leads back to the first again, for a varied repeat of the whole three-section process. There is a manifest sense of the first and third sections ‘menacing’ the second one, and after the third has come back for the second time, the character of the coda seems inevitable: a forlorn return and pathetic disintegration of the second section. Mrs. Mahler’s phrase, ‘the childish voices become more and more tragic, and at the end die out in a whimper’, is entirely apposite.
The Andante moderato is an idyllic interlude which, reintroducing the cowbells, suggests the peace of mountain heights and valleys (tinged with regret and melancholy); not surprisingly then, its key is the remotest possible - E flat major. It is built from an expansive development of two main ideas, which alternate and intermingle. The first is the serene string melody of the opening (Ex. 10a) ; from the figure marked D a rocking motive is generated (Ex. 10b), which will permeate the movement; and from a murmuring of this motive on flutes, the second idea emerges, a haunting cor anglais melody (Ex. 10c). Although this movement contains no motivitic reference to the first two, and no use of the ‘tragic motto’, it is itself closely unified by the rhythmic identity between the opening phrases of the two themes (marked Q).
The far-flung form of the tremendous finale is perhaps best described as a triple ‘introduction and allegro’; the cavernous introduction is all-important, presenting practically all the main ideas. First, out of a misty swirling in C minor, a lonely, aspiring violin theme soars (Ex. 11); its initial rising octave hopefully contradicts the fierce falling octave of the first movement (Ex. 2) but its third bar brings back the basic rhythm Y again.
The theme immediately switches to A minor and repeats itself; grinding against the ‘tragic motto’; after which the tuba gives out a lugubrious phrase (Ex. 12), stemming from the rising octave of Ex. 11. It also incorporates the rhythm Y, and is in fact a free transformation of the first movement’s first subject (Ex. 2), via the main theme of the first section of the scherzo (Ex. 7).
This phrase is answered by the arpeggio figure from the scherzo (figure Z in Ex. 8). Then, out of further mists (the cowbells appear again) emerges a questing horn-theme (Ex. 13), which is already in mid-course before its presence is felt; and this too incorporates the rhythm Y.
An extraordinary fantasia-like passage follows, bringing premonitions of Schoenberg and Stravinsky: it leads to a dark C minor chorale-theme for woodwind, in the depths (Ex. 14).
This culminates in the ‘tragic motto’; but then the bass woodwind introduce a more vital idea (Ex. 15), also incorporating the rhythm Y.
After a reference to the horn-theme (Ex. 13) and a resumption of the chorale (Ex. 14), which again culminates in the ‘tragic motto’, a march begins in the bass, still in C minor, Allegro moderato. Beginning with the rhythm Y, in the melodic shape it takes in Ex. 12, it continues with the scherzo’s arpeggio figure (Z in Ex. 8); then, quickening slightly, it sweeps into the main A minor Allegro energico.
The first subject is a driving march-theme compounded of Exs. 12 and 15, which goes on to incorporate most of the ideas from the introduction. At its first strong cadence, it continues with the last main idea - a ‘fate’ theme given out by six horns in unison (Ex. 16) ; this, as can be seen, begins by reconverting the rising octave of Exs. 11 and 12 back to the falling octave of the first movement (Ex. 2), and also picks up the rhythm of the introduction’s dark chorale (Ex. 14).
After raging fiercely, the music eventually quietens down for the second subject, based firmly on Ex. 13. The general outline of the gigantic movement, which is all that can be given here, is that the aspiring Allegro energico is halted three times by the return of the dark introduction. After the first halt, it resumes at length, rising to two mighty climaxes, each marked by one of the hammer-blows, followed by a blasting-out of the ‘fate’ theme on trombones against a blazing trumpet unison. After the second halt, the Allegro again resumes at length, but its exultant climax runs straight into the third return of the introduction, and its impetus is halted for good: it was at this point that Mahler placed the third hammer-blow, which he later removed. The black coda follows: a slow and quiet, but grindingly dissonant fugato on the ‘fate’ theme for trombones and tuba, followed by the lugubrious Ex. 12 on low woodwind, and finally the ‘tragic motto’, reduced now to a fortissimo minor triad only, fading into silence.


By the time that Mahler wrote the Sixth, he had stopped using his songs as the basis of movements in his symphonies - though the (unquoted) continuation of Ex. 13 above has a close kinship with the main thematic phrase of the last of the Kindertotenlieder, written about the same time. The Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfaring Lad) take us back some twenty years, to the time when he was just beginning to be a ‘song-symphonist’, as the misleading phrase goes. He was twenty-four when he completed the cycle, in 1884, and during the next four years he composed his First Symphony, drawing on two of the songs for the purpose. The second song, in which the jilted lover, having sung of his sorrows in the first, sets out across the countryside on a bright sunny morning, provided much of the thematic material of the symphony’s pastoral first movement, the third song, in which he sings of the ‘burning knife within his bosom’, found no place in the symphony, but the last, in which he symbolically embraces death by falling asleep under a linden-tree, provided the consolatory trio-section of the Symphony’s bitter Funeral March. The point, in any case, is that the songs are embryonically symphonic: Mahler was no ‘song-symphonist’, in fact, but a symphonist and a symphonic song-writer.