This might be of interest to percussionists.

I just heard a really fine performance by Andreas Delfs and the
Milwaukee Symphony of Mahler's Sixth Symphony.  The last three movements,
and especially the andante, were superb.  I had a couple of minor
reservations about the opening movement:  the ensemble sound of the forty
wind instruments seemed a bit harsh early on but, if it was not just the
hall, as it might well be, it is likely to be OK by tomorrow.  (If I've
ever seen that many winds in one place, it has been a while.) I also would
have welcomed a ritard before one theme change, but that's probably just
heresy on my part.

One of the unique things about the instrumentation of this symphony is the
construction used to produce the famous hammer blows of fate in the finale,
and the radio publicity for this concert kept advising attendees to listen
for them.  Mahler himself had a box constructed which disappointed him
because the sound turned out to be too dull, even when he struck it
himself.  He might have liked this one, a box of about a cubic meter,
though less high than wide, and with a nice acoustic hole like a broad
window.  In the performance, the first two blows were struck by a female
percussionist of normal, even average, proportions, from shoulder height,
with the largest mallet I have ever seen.  The results were plenty loud.
But for the third blow, which Mahler himself omitted from some of his own
performances, evidently a really smashing blow was wanted, presumably by
Delfs, so the hammer was wielded by a large male percussionist who brought
it down like a strongman trying to ring the bell at a fair--assuming you've
tried or seen this.  What he succeeded in doing was making the whole box
jump--but the sound was audibly less satisfying than before.  A case of
trying too hard? Or maybe just that the first percussionist has something
to teach the second.

Jim Tobin