It was only in the post-Stalinist period that Mahler's music began to receive performances in the former Soviet Union, and it was Kondrashin, amongst all the Soviet conductors, who led the way. In the same year that he gave the belated premiere of the Shostakovich 4th Symphony, he made the first Soviet-era recording of a Mahler Symphony, the Third.

Kondrashin's Mahler was truly 'Russian' in its whiplash orchestral discipline and scorching excitement, but it also was informed by a keen structural awareness and shapeliness of line. Kondrashin's interpretations are characterized by great urgency, an emotional state that perfectly compliments the complex musical canvas of Mahler's vast Sixth Symphony.

The Symphony No. 6 in A minor by Gustav Mahler, sometimes referred to as the Tragische ('Tragic'), was composed between 1903 and 1904 (rev. 1906). The tragic ending of No. 6 has been seen as unexpected, given that the symphony was composed at what was apparently an exceptionally happy time in Mahler's life: he had married Alma Schindler in 1902, and during the course of the work's composition his second daughter was born.