I did manage to steal a private hour and a bit yesterday and listened to
the Rosbaud\Mahler 6.  Comments follow the cd information.

Mahler 6\Rosabaud
Concerto for Flute and Harp\Bodensohn, Schmeisser, Rosbaud
Symphony Orchestra of the Southwest German Radio, Baden-Baden
Datum 12303-2

The accompanying notes refer to the Mozart performance as being live but
do not indicate wheter the Mahler is a studio recording or live recording.
It has the feel of a live recording, that sense of immediacy.  Tempos are
moderate, though the finale is longer than Barbirolli's.  The perfomrance
overall is much more on the urgent rather than the brooding side, anguish
rather than despair, an angry, beaten hero with foolish thoughts of
fighting another day rather than one who has hit bottom and knows he
cannot climb the ladder out again.

Timings are:

I.    Allegro     19'02"
II.   Scherzo   13'45"
III   Andante   15'19"
IV.  Finale      33'05"

The first movement is done quite formally; the march clips along steadily,
is not eerie or psychotic.  It's power stems from its perpetual nature,
something that won't go away; the climax is threatening without being
thunderous.  Alma's theme is handled tenderly, and then back to the march
again, this time in much more pointed fashioned; still though, things do
not seem sinister.  Then we come to the interesting bit, the little glimpse
of heaven.  It is here that Rosbaud excels and the eeriness of the movement
is truly first expressed.  It just seems wrong being there; heaven has no
business there.  When the march returns, it is now darker, tainted, rushed
rather than steady.  Alma has her second say and is quickly silenced.

The second movement scherzo is handled in typical Rosbaud fashion.  String
phrasings are pointed, cutting.  The whirligig is fueled with the details;
one senses the center of the spin.

The andante is melancholy, not gentle.  A sense of weary peace pervades,
as though one were in a point in a battle where the enemy ran out of
ammunition.  It is a peace haunted by what has been and what will come,
and what ultimately will be lost forever.

Rosbaud handles the opening details of the finale wonderfully, creating a
real sense of mystery; time itself seems to have taken a pause to ponder
its own direction.  For a brief interlude you sense the hero's fate under
consideration.  Climaxes to the development sections are crushing.  Rosbaud
handles the development between these climaxes very well; tension never
slackens, though we know our hero's fate is now certainly sealed.  One
senses a regrouping after each fall, a wounding and patching, so to speak,
but hope does not return, not even as a glimmer.

Thomas Heilman