It is tempting to conclude that Chandos are on to a winner here. Even though the International Mahler Society Edition (1963) suggests a running time in the region of 80 minutes, single-disc Sixths remain a rarity. Sony Classical missed a trick when they remastered Bernstein's New York account; it still comes with the Eighth on three ill-filled discs. That leaves Solti's famously extrovert Chicago version with the bargain basement to itself. Szell's more sober live taping has been its only real competitor—and Szell dispenses with the first movement exposition repeat. Enter Chandos. They alone can boast up-to-the-minute sound (Jarvi's economical rivals are more than 20 years old) and they drive home their advantage by offering an unexpected bonus. The Symphonisches Praeludium has a couple of distinctly Mahlerian moments, and its Bachian preoccupations might be thought to imply a link with the mature composer. Refreshingly, Peter Franklin's notes make no great claims for its authenticity. (Albrecht Gursching's scoring seems rather thick.)
Jarvi's reading of the main work is notably fresh and unfussy and he inspires some committed playing in a score which no longer presents insuperable problems to non-metropolitan orchestras. That said, what works in concert doesn't always survive repeated listening in the home, and I find Jarvi's straight-down-the-line conception already sounding a trifle anodyne. It is not solely a matter of pace, though he does get through the whole symphony in under 73 minutes. Bernstein and Kubelik take a not dissimilar view of the opening march, effectively ignoring the marking's ma non troppo qualification. Even so, the energy in their Allegro energico comes also from an intelligent reading of the score. However carefully the notes are rendered by the Scottish players, and the horns are often superb, I don't detect sufficient sense of line in either Jarvi's direction or Chandos's characteristically imposing production, bold but distanced. Even if you prefer your Mahler Sixth to sound more like an offshoot of Gotterdammerung than a prototype for Webernian attenuation, its contrapuntal life needs to come through more strongly than it does here. As a result, and despite all that 'energetic' playing, the excitement tends to remain on the surface. If Jarvi was intending to restore a lither sort of classicism to the proceedings, he ought perhaps to have insisted on a leaner, cleaner, chamber-music sonority.
The Scherzo, in accordance with the overall design, is not at all Wuchtig. The demonic aspects of the dance may have been exaggerated by some interpreters, but to me Jarvi merely sounds undercharacterized. It is hard to believe this is the same conductor who plumbs the depths of Shostakovich's quasi-Mahlerian Fourth. The Andante movement is again oddly detached, at the opposite pole to Karajan's glorious, long-breathed meditation. No doubt the finale is exciting enough in its own way, but there are some peculiar balances in which the woodwind all but drown out the brass. This is most worrying at 18'22'' (fig. 146) where the clarinets are scarcely pp as marked and the muted trumpet and trombone are mere shadowy presences, picked up via what sounds like an extraneous microphone. Jarvi's is an enjoyable modern performance, but this is a piece which cries out for something more.'