Dimitri Mitropoulos’ finest Mahler recording remains his scorching 1955 performance of the Sixth Symphony with the New York Philharmonic, available in its best sound from New York Philharmonic Special Editions’ “The Mahler Broadcasts”. There’s also a New York Third Symphony from roughly the same period, badly played and perversely cut, which this complete recording blows out of the water. Mitropoulos was a tireless champion of Mahler, but in New York he had the misfortune to be competing with Bruno Walter, whose authority in Mahler’s music was incontestable, and later with Leonard Bernstein, who was simply a better conductor in general, and the greatest Mahler conductor ever. The fact was, Mitropoulos was extremely erratic, as his surviving broadcasts show, and while many of his fans point to this as a sign of his uniqueness, intensity, spontaneity, “spirituality”, or whatever, the bottom line remains the same: he was erratic. This Mahler Third, recorded for broadcast on October 31, 1960, was the work of a terminally ill man. In fact, Mitropoulos died the very next day in Milan rehearsing this very work. Perhaps because he was so weakened, he leads a very “straight” performance, one that is generally well played by the Cologne Radio Symphony. Tempos for all six movements are normal, and Mitropoulos achieves a wonderful intensity of expression in the final Adagio, especially in its painful, minor-key episodes. That said, there are so many really fine Mahler Thirds around in great sound that it’s hard to see who, aside from the conductor’s admirers, will want this. If you are a fan, though, take note, because next to that 1955 Sixth, this Third represents Mitropoulos’ Mahler at its best.
