Mahler in the Sixth, squared

On Nov. 2, 1968, Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the first time; it was a Saturday morning Symphonies for Youth concert and he was 23. The following Thursday, Zubin Mehta, the orchestra’s 32-year-old music director, gave L.A. its first Mahler Sixth, then an obscure symphony.

In the 35 years since, much has changed. Tilson Thomas, or MTT as he is now known, has gone on to become the hugely successful music director of the San Francisco Symphony, but he has been long estranged from the musical life of L.A.

The Mahler Sixth has become as much a standard repertory item as a demanding, nearly 90-minute tragic and phantasmagorical symphony can be. It’s been recorded dozens of times; whole books have been written attempting to deconstruct its “narrative code” and other academic tasks.

Meanwhile, Mehta has demonstrated remarkable gifts for longevity. He was music director for a record 17 years in L.A. (where he is still an annual and warmly received guest conductor) and a record 13 years at the New York Philharmonic (where he wasn’t even much liked).

Appointed music director of the Israel Philharmonic in 1977, he was made its music director for life in 1981.

All these threads came together Thursday night through a remarkable coincidence of Mahler Sixths. At Walt Disney Concert Hall, MTT led the symphony in his first appearance with the orchestra in 18 years. One county away, Mehta programmed it with the Israel Philharmonic for the orchestra’s appearance at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Because MTT’s Mahler was repeated throughout the weekend, it was possible to compare both interpretations, and they couldn’t have been more different.

Mehta and the Israelis demonstrated a ferocious, implacable drive Thursday. At the Saturday matinee, MTT and the Angelenos were far more flexible, exhibiting a huge range of changeable emotion.

The sense of purpose in the Israeli Mahler Sixth, which is sometimes looked upon as a frightful march of death, was a push to the inevitable. Mission accomplished.

The purpose of MTT’s Sixth, on the other hand, seemed purposelessness, its sense that every moment in life existed for itself. Some will surely call this willful. I found it one of the most gripping Mahler performances I have ever heard.

One thing not in question was that the Los Angeles Philharmonic gave MTT everything he asked for, and it was simply amazing.

Disney Hall, in its first two months, has been broken in with terrific performances by the Philharmonic under Esa-Pekka Salonen and Pierre Boulez and the Berlin Philharmonic under Simon Rattle. But nothing has sounded so vivid as what MTT has been able to achieve.

First, he instinctively got the Disney acoustic. MTT encourages considerable expressive freedom from players, and the results on this occasion could be breathtaking.

The low tone of a solo tuba (the brass were uniformly sensational) could set a listener’s bones vibrating with a sound as terrifying as it was unforgettably seductive.

There was much speculation about how MTT would fare with players who had known him in his prodigal USC student days.

His tenure as the orchestra’s assistant guest conductor in the early 1980s was uneven, and he did not leave on friendly terms.

Moreover, the conductor was still reeling from the flu -- he had been too ill to finish a concert in San Francisco a week earlier. But the orchestra members played their hearts out for him.

Every now and then, MTT did overdo it. The Andante movement is a point of lovely respite, and it could have been handled more simply, without stretching the phrases quite so elastically. But it was gorgeous nonetheless. MTT separated the violins on opposite sides of the stage, and having the arching Andante melody moving across space between the strings was especially effective.

But mainly, MTT’s ideas were strikingly original. The way the winds spit out rhythms in the Scherzo proved to have such a visceral effect that you felt like spitting right back at them.

MTT turned the last movement into an unforgettable nightmarish half-hour of ineffable weirdness. The last minute of the symphony is famous for its horrible final chord, which comes crashing after a long silence. It is death’s triumphant blow. Unlike much else in this performance, it was not exaggerated. It sounded, in fact, almost natural. Death was no longer an intruder but a part of life itself, and this was a great performance of a symphony about death that could make a listener feel never more alive.

About the only thing Mehta’s performance had in common with MTT’s was that both conductors had decided just days earlier to reverse the order of the inner movements, performing the Andante before the Scherzo. The order has always been in question, but new research shows that these were Mahler’s final thoughts. So instead of a bludgeoning first movement followed by a bludgeoning Scherzo, we now get a lyrical respite before the big blowout of the Finale. In a program note, MTT explained that this was, for him, an experiment.

The new order allowed MTT to make the Scherzo more animated and extreme than he had done two years ago on a recording with the San Francisco Symphony.

For the hard-edged Mehta, the slow movement just got in the way, as if stopping to smell the flowers was an unaffordable luxury best dispatched with earlier rather than later.

The most impressive aspect of Mehta’s performance was his firm military command. He knew the most efficient way to get from point A to point B, and he got there. This is a very disturbing symphony, and Mehta conducted it bravely, with his usual blunt confidence.

Mehta is like the honest doctor who tells you the bad news and then what to expect. We need doctors like that. Mehta was considerate enough of his patients to soften the blow with a little sugar beforehand, leading a pleasant enough performance of Schubert’s Sixth Symphony in the first half.

But we also need spiritual guides who show why life is worth living. For MTT, the Mahler Sixth was enough for one concert. Love it or hate, this was all about the mystery, wonder -- and the mess -- of being alive.

And in case you were wondering about the hammer blows in the last movement, these are another issue of Mahler scholarship. Both Mehta and MTT opted for two blows rather than three. The L.A. Philharmonic had a bigger hammer.