Sym, 6, : Tilson Thomas / Sfso

This album received the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance and was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Classical Album.
This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.
Gustav Mahler said of his Sixth Symphony that 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." It is indeed an enigmatic work, its relentless grimness belying the fact that it was written during one of the happiest periods of the composer's life. And where Mahler's other symphonies end in a resolution of triumph, tranquility, or resignation, the despair and desolation of the Sixth is unremitting, relieved only by the inevitable and tragic hammer blows of fate in the finale.
Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas wisely chooses to dispense with any psychological assessment of the composer's motivation, instead leading the forces of the San Francisco Symphony in a taut account of the work that's refreshingly free of dramatics. Conductor and orchestra cast an unflinching gaze into the dark heart of this masterwork and the result is a powerfully direct and focused performance that radiates emotional intensity.