Erich Leinsdorf’s one and only studio recording of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony was made for RCA in Boston in 1965 (10/66 – nla). It was the first stereo recording of the Symphony and the first to use Erwin Ratz’s Critical Edition (Vienna‚ 1963) which reversed the order of the inner movements and sanctioned the omission of the finale’s third and final hammerblow. In terms of sonic excellence and orchestral expertise‚ it far outshone Charles Adler’s pioneering 1952 Vienna performance (Conifer‚ 2/98) but it came nowhere near the Adler in terms of what Gramophone’s Deryck Cooke chose to call the work’s ‘inner meaning and feeling’. This live 1983 Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra performance is a good deal less extrovert than the Boston version. Had Leinsdorf mellowed? Possibly‚ though this is so intrinsically dull a performance it is difficult to say what had happened in the 18­year interim. The dullness‚ it has to be said‚ emanates largely from the orchestra and‚ by devolution‚ from the recording which is strangely bland and unfocused‚ as though the normally excellent Bavarian Radio engineers were themselves somewhat nonplussed by the orchestra’s drab and puddingy playing. Perhaps it is not without significance that 1983 marked the end of the four­year interregnum which followed Kubelík’s retirement as chief conductor of the orchestra. Orchestras‚ like abandoned gardens‚ soon run to waste when there are only caretakers or friendly neighbours to tend them.