What were the circumstances surrounding the concert featuring Mahler’s Sixth Symphony in Liège?
ER: That concert was made possible in 1997 thanks to the support of Crédit Communal de Belgique and the dedication of a remarkable individual whom we must honor: Paul Beusen (1944–2023). Initially, the Maestro favored Berlioz’s Requiem, but then the idea of tackling Mahler’s Sixth Symphony became obvious. Carlos Païta refused at the last minute to allow the concert to be broadcast or recorded and even threatened to cancel everything; it took the decisive intervention of his son Alexandre to persuade him otherwise.
It was his final concert, and he had a premonition of this ultimate challenge, for he confided to his son in his dressing room: “I hope this isn’t the last one.”
As soon as the performance ended, you could hear him say “Thank you” to the orchestra. For the first time, he had been brought to his knees by fate, and we have heart-wrenching and deeply moving accounts from the musicians who then fought a fabulous battle to follow his instructions and help shatter fate with those terrifying hammer blows that make this a unique performance, ending in a yearning for resignation and emptiness.

In your opinion, what are the strengths of this performance?
AH: Mahler’s Sixth Symphony is already ‘tragic’ in and of itself—for once, the title and reputation are fitting—and the existential intensity is such that one cannot emerge from such a listening experience without being left speechless, or even having all the images and preconceptions one might have had about such a work vanish. In a way, this unique interpretation—as is often the case with Carlos Païta (Celibidache might almost take offense)—makes us wonder what a performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony by the Maestro might be like (we know he performed it in Washington before his ‘divorce’ from the U.S.).

What are your conclusions when you compare his interpretation to those of Bernstein/Vienna 1988 or Abbado/Berlin 2005 or similarly excellent recordings?
AH: There are so many major versions, starting with George Szell’s (that’s how I first discovered the work, and listening to it again, I find this version very solid—and I thus pay tribute to this great, esteemed, and courageous conductor), then, above all, for a very long time, John Barbirolli’s, and finally, among the more risky choices, Kondrashin and Karajan (I won’t mention the more recent ones, not even Currentzis’s). But never has the score been explored as deeply—not in terms of form, but in its existential intentions—as in this unique recording by Carlos Païta. That said, I still have a soft spot for Bernstein’s recordings, which are always surprising and authentic.

Do you know if Païta conducted any other Mahler symphonies besides Nos. 1, 2, 6, and 9?
AH: He also conducted the Third under very unusual circumstances that deserve lengthy discussion, given how extraordinary his interpretation still is. The best and most forgiving—or so they suppose—will say that this is a historical record; the most discerning will recognize both the clumsiness resulting from an orchestra that was undoubtedly not up to par, yet which, in doing so, manages to bring out the work’s truth, perhaps even—in its intensity—as never before (the hymn to nature is also marked by its mourning, or worse still, the destruction to which it is currently being subjected) its lesson for the future—ecologically speaking, of course.
For in music, we hear more than what we hear; we encounter history, thought, and even a political vision of nature.

What can you say about Païta’s repertoire? Are there any major works in which you don’t see him at all? Or, to put it another way: what kind of works suited him best?
AH: I don’t know, and I certainly don’t want to jump to conclusions now that we’ve heard Carlos Païta—thanks to his son Alexandre and the generosity and passion of Éric Rouyer—in works by Dukas and Lekeu. Carlos Païta was cherished by Ernest Ansermet—that says it all! He loved French music, as evidenced by his passion for Berlioz (a temperament so close to his own), La Fantastique, and then, no doubt, his sole foray into opera with La Damnation de Faust.
But it was the paths of Romanticism—including Late Romanticism—that drew him in, with Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner (orchestral excerpts only, but sublime!), Brahms, and Bruckner above all, and then Mahler, at a time in the 1980s when, in France at least, he remained unknown. In this regard, the current programmatic frenzy surrounding Mahler has something opportunistic and inauthentic about it—it feels like a solidification and trivialization, that is, an aestheticization rather than the existential revitalization that Carlos Païta was able to breathe into his performances.
This is to say that Carlos Païta would be even more unhappy today, given the current conditions of musical performance and marketing, than he was in his own time—when he was already disrupting the emerging conventions of the field— hence his persistent obscurity in the media (now dispelled thanks to the Palais des Dégustateurs), though this has been powerless to diminish the veneration he has consistently received due—let’s put it bluntly—to his honesty.

Carlos Païta divided opinion during his lifetime, and he continues to do so today. What do you say to those who claim he is too brutal?
AH: Carlos Païta isn’t ‘brutal,’ but I understand what you mean. I believe his interpretations are, in the literal and strictest sense, a deep dive into the works—an osmosis within which life was played out and replayed in terms of its meaning.
The intention is to reconnect with the clamor of a vanished sound—the sound of a breakthrough into what the world and history fail to offer, which leaves us metaphysically unsatisfied.
Carlos Païta is one of those conductors—like a few others—whose visions are take-it-or-leave-it. Except that if one leaves it, the music slips away and loses its deeper dimension by surrendering to the mundane rituals of concerts for a purely aesthetic—and therefore insubstantial—appreciation.

Païtas gereizter, nervöser Mahler