A stunning Mahler Sixth It’s not every day you get to walk out of the concert hall wondering whether you’ve just heard the best performance in your life of a given work. Particularly when the work is Mahler’s epic/tragic Symphony No. 6 and you’ve got 30 or 40 recorded versions on the shelf at home. And most particularly when — no disrespect intended — the performers are an amateur group, in this case the New England Conservatory Honors Orchestra, giving a free concert. But the Mahler Sixth I heard a week ago Wednesday had everything going its way. I had thought Jordan Hall might be too small for this black hole of a symphony, in which Mahler empties the percussion larder (harps, celesta, xylophone, large bells, cowbells, rute, hammer), but it turned out to be just right, focusing and clarifying the sound in a way that Symphony Hall wouldn’t have. And then, Boston Philharmonic director Benjamin Zander, one of the world’s better Mahler conductors, was on the podium, giving the students the benefit of his expertise and getting ideas for his upcoming recording of this symphony with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London. I suspected it was going to be a good evening when I saw that Zander had divided the first and second violins antiphonally, as was Mahler’s practice (but is seldom done today). But I wasn’t prepared for the opening juggernaut from the cellos and basses, who dug into the A-minor death march as if they’d all sold their souls to the devil, or the Fafner-like growl from the tuba. The first trumpet was both pungent and creamy, and there were unusual colors in the initial appearance of the major-minor motto. Throughout the orchestra functioned like a giant chamber ensemble, the instruments all distinct in their personalities. And Zander, intense and intuitive, left himself ample room to paragraph. The D-minor chorale that follows the death march was hushed, slow, but never sentimental; the " Alma " (after the composer’s wife) F-major second theme was by turns explosive and sighing, with a big sigh at the end. The E-flat celesta-and-cowbells pastorale (I always think of " The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, " from The Wind in the Willows) was awestruck, as it must be, and hovered over the rest of the symphony, as it should. The double-time celesta section at bar 341 flowed right out of what had gone before (as it seldom does), and if the coda was too hysterical for my taste (at Zander’s tempo the sound picture blurs), well, Mahler does ask the orchestra to " press forward. " The Scherzo was even more demonic, with the proper " awkward " lilt in the " old-fashioned " trio and a spooky, hypnotic F-minor third subject; the outburst at bar 371 had me looking for the repeat button, and the closing contributions from the bass clarinet and contrabassoon were superb. So was the elevated phrasing in the second bar of the Andante, the violas’ notes detached as Mahler asks. Zander supplied passion and subtle shaping; typical of the orchestra was the horn solo at bar 124, a slight bobble but with this kind of phrasing who cares? I only wish I had felt more of a release at bar 155, where the orchestra should go crazy with joy. And though Zander made a coherent whole out of the notoriously difficult 30-minute finale, I suspect he can shed even more light on its forbidding structure. The orchestra was not note-perfect here, but it would be difficult to improve on the hard-plucked low harp notes at bar 17, or the low bells at bar 29 (like the similarly wonderful cowbells, they were positioned outside the hall, behind the balcony), which knelled in their own rhythm, or the swaggering horns and snickering trumpets that bring in the second subject at bar 141. And the hammer (which gets buried in many recordings) was here a carnival ring-the-bell model that shook the hall. Zander helped no little by creating a sense of nervous apprehension before each of its three appearances So, maybe not the greatest Sixth I’ve ever heard (there’s Barbirolli and Tennstedt and Bernstein), but the greatest live Sixth, and ample reason to look forward to the upcoming Zander/Philharmonia releases (all on Telarc) of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony this month, the Fourth in August, and the Sixth itself next year. BY JEFFREY GANTZ

Under Richard Conrad, the Boston Academy of Music has been proving that Boston has the musical forces to tackle some pretty heavy repertoire: Richard Strauss’s Arabella and its American descendant, Samuel Barber’s Vanessa; John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera and Kurt Weill’s most ambitious Broadway musical, Lady in the Dark; and Puccini’s rangy operatic triptych, Il trittico. These were all done on minimal budgets yet succeeded with remarkable professionalism and stylishness.

To commemorate the centennial of Verdi’s death, BAM took on its most elaborate project, Un ballo in maschera (“A Masked Ball”), one of the Italian composer’s most elegantly constructed operas (it’s built around a series of disguises before the climactic masked ball itself) and a work of unflagging musical inspiration. And it takes place in Boston (Verdi’s original conception, about the assassination of Sweden’s King Gustav III, was shot down by the Naples censors as being too inflammatory). The first Boston performance, in 1861 (only two years after the premiere in Rome), was presented by the Boston Academy of Music!

BAM didn’t quite pull it off, but it provided some ample rewards. First, there was baritone Robert Honeysucker as Renato, loyal friend of Riccardo, “governor of Boston,” who discovers that the disguised woman he is rescuing from the scene of a compromising rendezvous with the governor is none other than his own wife. Honeysucker’s rich and mobile voice — true “bel canto” — is a superb vehicle for Verdi’s lyricism. His pained dignity in “Eri tu” (“It was you”), the aria in which he decides to go in on the assassination plot, was the most beautiful and moving moment in the production and deserved the ovation it received. Especially since Honeysucker was costumed and wigged in a way that made him look ridiculous (crimson coat over maroon knickers with white knee socks and a tricornered hat — white — that he had to wear pinned to the back of his head, like a yarmulke or beanie, because of his pompadour).

Lithuanian mezzo-soprano Danute Mileika was another treat as the “sorceress” Ulrica, who predicts Riccardo’s assassination (this was the role of Marian Anderson’s belated Metropolitan Opera debut). Her unforced, full-bodied voice easily negotiated the highs and lows of this role, and her restraint made her uncanniness all the more believable. The trouser role of the page, Oscar, often turns into simpering effeminacy. But soprano Laura Bewig Chritton performed the tricky coloratura with accuracy, vigor, and dash.

Soprano Ellen Chickering, as Amelia, Renato’s loyal wife, who’s tempted by the governor’s ardor, and tenor Ray Bouwens as the horny governor both sang with enthusiasm, considerable power, and occasional grace. Chickering seemed to be having some difficulty focusing the middle part of her voice, and she went shrilly sharp at the end of the love duet. They’re old BAM colleagues, but there was surprisingly little chemistry between them.

This absence is the by-product of some major problems. David Daniels is a sensitive and idiomatic conductor. I loved the way he highlighted Verdi’s sense of undertow — the low growls of the brasses and basses that depict the hidden forces, the romantic and political intrigues, beneath the glittering surface (maybe Verdi’s most glittering, with his deft parodies of 18th-century court music, and even fugues!). But Daniels’s tempos tended to drag. Just enough to frustrate Verdi’s characteristic emotional rush.

Conrad’s program note refers to Laura McPherson’s spare scenic design as a “marriage” of Gilbert Stuart and Magritte. McPherson’s witty sets for Lady in the Dark were a highlight of that production. But in Ballo, the mixture of conventional flats (for the opening and closing scenes at Faneuil Hall) and bare-bones empty space (for Ulrica’s waterfront hideout and Renato and Amelia’s apartment) didn’t jell. It looked like less like style than like cost cutting. The 18th-century costumes were ugly, and none of the singers looked either good or comfortable in them (as opposed to the 1930s costumes that were such a witty part of Il trittico). Amelia’s billowing gold gown looked more like upholstery than clothing. And poor Honeysucker in that doorman’s uniform.

Conrad’s last BAM directorial effort was Il trittico, in which he showed his skill at both gritty realism (Il tabarro) and sly comedy (the brilliant Gianni Schicchi — one of the best opera productions I’ve ever seen). But he was defeated by Ballo, where the staging must find a way to embody the contrasts we hear in the music between the frivolous, apparently lighthearted social world and the darker forces undermining it. Conrad opted for line-ups and diagonals rather than images of emotional tension. There was astonishingly little eye contact between singers. As often as not, their backs were turned to one another — as in amateur melodrama but rarely in life. Amelia pleaded with Renato for one last embrace with their child from an uncomfortably semi-recumbent position on an easy chair, and there was even less interaction in the love duet. The three conspirators sing “Let’s unite our wrongs” looking straight out into the audience.

And yet, and yet . . . all that gorgeous music. Amelia’s desperate midnight aria as she searches under the hanging tree for an herb to purge herself of her illicit love for Riccardo; Riccardo’s jaunty sailor song (he’s in disguise too); Ulrica’s summoning up the demons; the ensemble in which Riccardo laughs at Ulrica’s prophecy; the ensemble in which the conspirators (Sam and Tom!) chuckle when they discover that Renato seems to be having a secret tryst with his own wife. What I’ve loved about the Boston Academy of Music has been the way the required penny pinching has triggered imaginative solutions. That didn’t happen with Ballo in maschera. It just might be one of those operas that simply needs cash flow. But I admire BAM’s gutsiness in reviving, on its own terms, one of the masterpieces of this great — and popular — opera composer whom we don’t see enough of in Boston these days.

Issue Date: April 26 - May 3, 2001