***1/2 Harold Farberman/London Symphony Orchestra

MAHLER SYMPHONY NO. 6

(Vox)

Think the symphonies of Gustav Mahler are loud, ugly, and expensive? Try this recording of the dark, tragic Sixth: it's pellucid, sensuous, and, at $10 for 87 minutes, cheap. Harold Farberman isn't exactly a household name even among Mahlerites, but this 1982 performance, now finally out on CD, is an overlooked gem. His tempos are slow, but the sharp contours and heterogeneous textures keep everything kaleidoscopic -- this is a heroic reading that debunks the all-too-common view of Mahler's Sixth as a surrender to nihilistic despair (it's no bleaker than, say, Wagner's Ring). Farberman won't replace Barbirolli (EMI), Bernstein (DGG), and Tennstedt (EMI) at the top of my list -- but they all cost a lot more.

Besides, this reissue comes with its own mini-mystery. In his CD booklet note, Richard Freed, alluding to the controversy surrounding the order of the inner movements (Mahler changed his mind about them once and possibly twice), points out that "listeners can make their own call with the present CD, either letting Harold Farberman's performance run as is, with the scherzo preceding the slow movement . . . , or programming the disc to place the slow movement before the scherzo." As it happens, Freed also wrote the liner note for the original 1982 LP release (on MMG), and at that time he said, "In the performance recorded here Harold Farberman has opted for Mahler's first revision in which the slow movement precedes the scherzo." That's right, on the LP the Andante precedes the Scherzo, but on the CD the Scherzo precedes the Andante -- and it's the same performance! So which way did Farberman conduct it? Did he authorize this bit of "editing"? And is Freed hoping we'll forget what he wrote in 1982?

-- Jeffrey Gantz