Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Symphony no. 6 in A minor "Tragic"

With Jaap van Zweden on the podium, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra makes a memorable festival debut, offering a fresh take on a high-powered classic.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin presents the composer's "Tragic" Symphony without an ounce of fat on the bone, a relentless and exhilarating journey. 

A monster Mahler concert at Disney Hall, with guest conductor Earl Lee stealing the show in the Resurrection Symphony.

A “baptism by fire”... but not for Klaus Mäkelä, making his debut with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Musikverein in Mahler's Sixth Symphony. 

Fresh insights, bold choices and searing momentum from Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in their Barbican season opener. 

Stunning orchestral colour from the BRSO, with command and total coherency from Sir Simon Rattle in Mahler's “Tragic” Symphony.

After an eight-year absence, Rattle returned to deliver the kind of Mahler performance only he can offer: probingly intelligent and wonderfully idiosyncratic.

At the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Iván Fischer's Mahler with the Staatskapelle Berlin huffs and puffs, but doesn't fully convince. 

In the existential angst stakes, Sibelius steals Mahler's thunder in an intense performance with the Philharmonia and Lahav Shani. 

Dramatic, poignant and emotionally draining, this proves a benchmark performance of Mahler's Sixth Symphony.

The hottest ticket in town, as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra's new Artistic Partner takes his place on the podium to conduct Saariaho and Mahler.  

Hard driven and, at times, uncompromising ferocity for Mahler's Sixth Symphony, coupled with an engaging and sensitive account of Elgar's Sea Pictures.     

In a pandemic era of chamber reductions, the joy in this Mahler 6 was hearing an orchestra of 108 musicians let off the leash. 

The Berliner Philharmoniker's new chief takes on a Rattle party piece and delivers a thrillingly lucid and focused tour de force. 

An absence of theatricality from a conductor steeped in the operatic tradition: Sir Antonio Pappano and the Santa Cecilia Orchestra show restraint in a classical Mahler Sixth.

Søndergård’s all-consuming Mahler dwarfs some delightful Mozart in Edinburgh

Rattle digs deep for a stunning farewell concert at the Philharmonie, but his Mahler's still reluctant to get its hands dirty

A well crafted, elegant Mozart Piano Concerto no. 23 in the first half counters the passions and tragedy of Mahler’s Symphony no. 6 in the second. 

The Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia's second performance of the weekend at Carnegie Hall featured compelling Salvatore Sciarrino and a heavy-footed Mahler 6.

Conductor and virtuoso orchestra never lingered, and the audience was riveted by this taut performance.

The Vienna Philharmonic show themselves to be much more than a straight romantic band; individual musicianship shines through Mahler's tragic Sixth.

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts an emotionally exhausting evening of Mahler and Bartók

Jaap van Zweden to Alma Mahler: the Sixth Symphony couldn't be one of autobiographical clairvoyance – a triumph in artistic vision.

Is the very, very good the enemy of the great? It is hard to fault a performance as fine as this – except perhaps against a benchmark no longer recognised.

Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO delve deep in Mahler's sixth symphony and provide new perspectives in a thoughtful and impressive world première by Mark-Anthony Turnage.

Sir Simon Rattle guest conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra in Mahler's Sixth Symphony at Carnegie Hall.

Pappano and the LSO prove many good qualities in Mahler 6 but fail to elevate it from the competent to the sublime.

Jahja Ling and the SDS gave a luminous performance of Mahler's Sixth, clearly showing his deep love for the composer.

The devil was in the details for the Boston Symphony Orchestra's first Prom this year; even mastering the Albert Hall's acoustic, some unfortunate errors let the side down.

In a stellar programme at the KKL Luzern − one of Switzerland’s most prestigious concert venues − conductor Ingo Metzmacher infused works of Felix Mendelssohn and Gustav Mahler with vibrancy and pathos.

A whiff of sulphur shrouded the Barbican this evening as Liszt met Mahler beneath the Mephistophelean glare of Gianandrea Noseda. Sparks flew. 

In Jukka-Pekka Saraste's hands, Mahler's Sixth Symphony is an unrelenting work which left the audience gasping for air at its stunning conclusion.

The late withdrawal of a conductor could indeed be tragic, especially when the work in question is as open to individual interpretation as Mahler's Sixth Symphony. However, Daniel Harding does a superlative job with the Berlin Philharmonic.

The stuff of fairy tales: a true love match. Daniele Gatti has already successfully moved into Amsterdam's royal palace. 

Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts the Rotterdam Philharmonic in an upbeat rendition of Mahler's “Tragic” Sixth Symphony.

Valery Gergiev conducts the unique World Orchestra for Peace in a devastating perfomance of Mahler's Sixth Symphony at the BBC Proms. A Strauss rarity and a European premier were programmed alongside.

With ferocious military rhythms and relentless waves of sound, Mahler 6 is regarded a dark work. But La Verdi's treatment of the lighter material presented this symphony in an unexpected way.

An astonishing performance of Mahler's Sixth Symphony followed the world première of James MacMillan's Viola Concerto, a haunting mixture of the old and the new. Soloist Lawrence Power joined the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski.

Another fine season for the London Symphony Orchestra looks inevitable after the brilliantly played Mahler 6 they brought to the Barbican on Wednesday night. With the assured Thomas Dausgaard leading the way in this furious, huge march, the band amply showed its Mahler chops with some scintillating orchestral sounds.

“What makes Mahler’s music like opium,” I once got asked. If you enjoy listening to lush melodies and pompous brass calls in fine Wagnerian traditions, or get stimulated sonically by a large orchestra, you have got a foot in the door.

Two fine concerts from Riccardo Chailly’s Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra filled part of the space between end-of-season Proms from the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics. They brought Mendelssohn of refinement and poise to Prom 67 and dark, fateful thrust in Messiaen and Mahler for Prom 69.

The sheer scale of Mahler’s Symphony no. 6 in A minor and the questions of interpretation it poses to performers are such that I’m surprised it appears on the concert calendar as often as it does – no less than twice in the last 18 months alone by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Alan Gilbert.

The third hammer blow of fate has been struck by an enormous mallet on a wooden crate high in the orchestra. The music withers slowly away: after a final crashed chord and timpani roll, the conductor signals total hush from both orchestra and audience for a few moments before the ritual applause can begin.

“My Sixth seems to be yet another hard nut, one that our critics' feeble little teeth cannot crack”. It will “propound riddles the solution of which may be attempted only by a generation which has absorbed and truly digested my first five symphonies.”. So wrote Mahler in letters to the Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg and the Austrian writer and musicologist Richard Specht respectively.

Rattle inszeniert Mahlers Schicksalskampf als lebensbejahende Erforderlichkeit – doch ein Entrinnen gibt es am Ende dennoch nicht.

À la tête de l'Orchestre symphonique de la Radio bavaroise, le chef britannique a dirigé une interprétation singulière de la plus pessimiste des symphonies mahlériennes, la Sixième dite « Tragique ».

Iván Fischer ließ bei seinem Debüt am Pult der Staatskapelle Berlin die Modernität der Partitur hervortreten.

Thomas Dausgaard dirige una épica Sexta de Mahler impecable técnicamente y evocadora del mundo sonoro de su autor.

Après un Concerto pour clarinette de Mozart rendu hyper expressif par le jeu de Martin Fröst, l'Orchestre de Paris et Lahav Shani ont livré une Sixième de Mahler nuancée mais quelque peu ennuyeuse.

Le chef britannique a fait de cette Symphonie « Tragique » un véritable cheval de bataille. Pour la tournée inaugurale de son mandat à la tête de l'orchestre munichois, il en livre une interprétation sidérante.