The career of Mitropoulos, the great conductor of the prestigious New York Philharmonic, took a tragic turn when, in 1957, he was attacked by the press for his private life – he was homosexual. He was forced to resign and was replaced by his protégé Leonard Bernstein, and his recordings gradually fell into oblivion. Yet Mitropoulos was a complete conductor, a great symphonist, accompanist and opera conductor. Mitropoulos’s conducting style was lively (Schumann’s fabulous 2nd in 1940!), sometimes even violent (Mendelssohn’s 3rd in Salzburg) but always nuanced, precise and lyrical (his 1956 Don Giovanni in Salzburg is undoubtedly the apogee of the post-romantic interpretation of the work). Although Mitropoulos infused his performances with incredible intensity and suffocating tension, he never lost sight of the melodic line, always placing it in the foreground (as his recordings with soloists demonstrate). What’s more, he knew how to give his interpretation a higher dimension through detail and energy (his Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz literally sweeps everything in its path). He knew how to give the orchestras he conducted a powerful sound, with a sense of transition and articulation that gave great dramatic coherence to his interpretations. Meticulous, but also sometimes brutal in his methods, there was something indelible in each of the concerts he gave, and this still permeates all the recordings we can listen to today, despite the often mediocre sound quality. 

So much for introducing the conductor, and now let’s talk about the recording. It was October 4 1955, in New York, and Mitropoulos was conducting the Philharmonic in Mahler’s Sixth Symphony. In the recording we have of this concert, we hear all the essential components of Mitropoulos’s art, brought to their climax. 

The first movement begins dryly, but there is no acidity to be found throughout. Every detail is underlined with subtlety, and becomes part of a taut narrative, supported by the lyricism that intervenes more and more. The transitions are extremely subtle, and each mood is painted as if in a painting caught in constant motion. Each section of the orchestra is brought to the fore, in turn and then in the tutti too. Each articulation is unprecedentedly supple, and the dramatic structure emerges, with Mitropoulos thus bringing out, or rather emerging, tensions and issues. The themes are clearly presented and characterised, but never in a caricatured way.

This art of narrating runs through the second movement. Extraordinarily lyrical and lilting, the depth of each attack makes each stage of the development more dizzying than the previous one. The low strings are astonishingly round (and at the same time, not so much; they sound powerful, and if you know Mitropoulos, you know how capable he is of modulating them). The agitation, the very torment, is permanent. The Mahlerian narrative has a real physical impact on the listener, but Mitropoulos’ art of breathing ensures that the discourse is not stifled.  

The Scherzo is built on contrasts, and the transitions are once again extremely flexible, tying everything together. This form of horizontality suits the movement well, which constantly oscillates between tension and standstill, the battle seeming permanent. The tension is no longer linear, and it will be even less so in the Final. Extremely tense, suspended, one question follows another, and in the end it’s not chaos, or death, or the end of hope, it’s a description of nothingness that Mitropoulos makes! At first glance, it might even seem an almost nihilistic interpretation. The Malheran hero seems defeated, inert. It’s not that the battle is lost, it’s that it seems never to have happened. And it is from this unease, this unbearable nothingness, that the tension comes. There’s nothing left, and at the same time you can feel that everything in the recording indicates that there is something: the hall, the orchestra, the conductor. And yet we feel drained listening, or rather feeling powerless in the face of a listening experience that is impossible because it is over. 

In this recording, Mitropoulos delivers one of the greatest Mahlerian performances in history. Never have the issues at stake in the « Tragic » symphony seemed so close, so urgent, and quite simply so powerful. There is a kind of direct connection that can be made with this performance, with the physical impact that acts on the listener’s whole body. There is almost a kind of necessity in hearing the sounds of the audience, in that it anchors this music in reality.

This is perhaps my favourite recording of this symphony, the complete opposite of John Barbirolli’s vision (New Philharmonia Orchestra, EMI/Warner), just as sombre but slow and crushing, yet animated by the same tragic oppression. Mitropoulos has recently been the subject of a major retrospective, available from Sony, with some fine masterings, but unfortunately only the studio recordings are available.