The live concert of 26 November 1999, taken in one fell swoop, as it were, proves a monumental, albeit passionately subjective experience. To date, I have savored three of Herbig’s Mahler symphonies, and each has proved idiomatic, direct, and exquisitely balanced. The Sixth, says Herbig, is his personal favorite, and he communicates its alternately savage and intimate longings through a most responsive orchestra, especially given its proportions, which demand sixteen percussion instruments alone.
Whatever biographical influences permeate the work–the Alma theme in movement one; the agogic games of the Mahler children in the Scherzo, overseen by Death–the outer movements‚ sonata form imposes a classical rigor on the proceedings, whose architecture often becomes lost in the tumult of Mahler’s explosive inner life. With engineer Erich Heigold’s assistance, Berlin Classics mounts a ferocious realization of the score, from the poined triangle part to the fateful hammer blows at Fate’s conclusion. Herbig chooses to place the Scherzo immediately after the opening movement, juxtaposing the huge lament of the Andante against the expansive Finale, which brings no synoptic, conciliatory gesture of acceptance.
— Gary Lemco
