Kirill Petrenko in conversation with Martin Menking (16 min.)

With this work, which posterity has given the epithet “Tragische”, Kirill Petrenko presented himself in his first season in office as a Mahler conductor with the Philharmoniker. In this interval feature from January 2020, Kirill Petrenko talks about the sombre content of Mahler’s Sixth – the only Mahler symphony to end in a minor key –, the biographical aspect of the composition, and the corrections that Mahler always made to his scores even after the premiere. And we discover what role historical recordings play when Kirill Petrenko prepares to rehearse a Mahler symphony. He is interviewed by cellist Martin Menking, who became a member of the Philharmoniker in 1996.