Nott's Mahler 6 & 8

[Barbirollians]

To be fair, that studio recording is pretty widely regarded as one of the worst ever conducted by Glorious John.

Widely regarded by whom ? It has been accepted rather more to be a classic of the gramophone albeit an extreme view of the symphony as indeed is the CBS Bernstein.Both have far more character than many of the recent machine like run throughs of the symphony . Zinman's Mahler being particularly routine IMO.

[akiralx]

I hope Barbirollians doesn't mind if I answer your question. Don't go for either of them! My opinion is that the one JB to go for is the live Prom performance of August 16 1967 with the New Philharmonia also on Testament. JB was persuaded to choose the middle movement order of Scherzo/Andante for the commercial release but for the Prom he does what he wanted to do, A/S.

As I understand it he always performed A/S and that was the order on the original EMI LP release (I think), but EMI chose to reverse the order on the CfP reissue, to Sir John's dismay... This was rectified on subsequent CD reissues.