Mahler's Symphony No 10 (in the performing edition by Deryck Cooke)
Mahler's Symphony No 10 championed by Rattle
The Gramophone Choice
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Sir Simon Rattle
EMI 556972-2 (77‘ · DDD). Recorded live 1999. Buy from Amazon
Over the years, Rattle has performed the work nearly 100 times, far more often than anyone else. Wooed by Berlin, he repeatedly offered them ‘Mahler ed Cooke’ and was repulsed. He made his Berlin conducting debut with the Sixth. But, after the announcement in June 1999 that he had won the orchestra’s vote in a head-to-head with Daniel Barenboim, he celebrated with two concert performances of the Tenth. A composite version is presented here. As always, Rattle obtains some devastatingly quiet string-playing, and technical standards are unprecedentedly high insofar as the revised performing version is concerned. Indeed, the danger that clinical precision will result in expressive coolness isn’t immediately dispelled by the self-confident meatiness of the violas at the start. We aren’t used to hearing the line immaculately tuned, with every accent clearly defined. The tempo is broader than before and, despite Rattle’s characteristic determination to articulate every detail, the mood is, at first, comparatively serene, even Olympian. Could Rattle be succumbing to the Karajan effect? But no – somehow he squares the circle. The neurotic trills, jabbing dissonances and tortuous counterpoint are relished as never before, within the context of a schizoid Adagio in which the Brucknerian string-writing is never undersold.
The conductor has not radically changed his approach to the rest of the work. As you might expect, the scherzos have greater security and verve. Their strange, hallucinatory choppiness is better served, although parts of the fourth movement remain perplexing despite the superb crispness and clarity of inner parts. More than ever, everything leads inexorably to the cathartic finale, brought off with a searing intensity that has you forgetting the relative baldness of the invention.
Berlin’s Philharmonie isn’t the easiest venue: with everything miked close, climaxes can turn oppressive but the results here are very credible and offer no grounds for hesitation. In short, this new version sweeps the board even more convincingly than his old (Bournemouth) one. Rattle makes the strongest case for an astonishing piece of revivification that only the most die-hard purists will resist.
Additional Recommendation
SWR Symphony Orchestra, Baden-Baden and Freiburg / Michael Gielen
Hänssler Classic CD93 124 (77’ · DDD). Buy from Amazon
It has become harder for interpreters to make their mark in what has become standard fare, yet Michael Gielen pulls it off. He has reversed his attitude to the nascent Tenth to present here an intriguing realisation of Deryck Cooke’s performing version.
Gielen’s narrative is not invested with Rattle’s passion (see above). He prefers to lay bare its gaunt, unfinished state, exposing even parts of the Adagio as the harmonic frame over which Mahler would have stretched more complex contrapuntal detail. No longer an inexorable meditation, the movement becomes rather an unfinished dialogue between arrest and movement. The orchestral sound is lean and light with some exceptionally hushed playing from the strings and no lack of exquisite detail. The transparency means that contested ingredients such as the deployment of glockenspiel in the second movement and Cooke’s discarded side-drum and xylophone parts in the fourth really register. And has there ever been a more perfectly judged Purgatorio?
The finale can be achingly tender but only where necessary. That great flute melody is almost plain as well as pure, but what care is lavished on the strings’ delicately nuanced response! Rattle goes for the opposite effect, the Berlin flautist floating his tone more poignantly, the strings avoiding the hint of sentimentality. Under Gielen the upward thrust of the heart-wrenching sigh concluding the work takes you by surprise: he has a way of foregrounding emotive detail before retreating to a more expository Klemperer-like stoicism.
Historic recommendation
London Symphony Orchestra / Berthold Goldschmidt
Testament mono SBT3 1457 (175’ · ADD). Recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall, London, August 13, 1964. Includes Deryck Cooke’s illustrated BBC talk and a studio performance by the Philharmonia Orchestra under Goldschmidt of Cooke’s incomplete first version, broadcast by the BBC on December 19, 1960. Buy from Presto Classical
Belying his low-key presentation, Cooke’s dramatic revelation, in his BBC talk on the Tenth Symphony, was that a continuous Mahlerian argument already existed on paper, needing only to be set free by a sympathetic editorial team. His own would take in the veteran émigré composer-conductor Berthold Goldschmidt and, subsequently, two budding composers, Colin and David Matthews. Alma, the composer’s widow, was apparently relying on the advice of Bruno Walter when she forbade further performances. Fortunately she was persuaded to think again, additional pages were found and the first public rendition of a full-length performing version took place in the Royal Albert Hall during the 1964 Proms season.
The necessarily incomplete studio rendering by the Philharmonia, including announcements as broadcast, moves more swiftly than the live account, preserving noises off and concluding applause. Both contain details later amended or corrected – which may or may not matter to you given the obvious fervour of the music-making. What it must have been to experience the finale’s flute melody for the first time outside a BBC studio! Goldschmidt gives this exquisite moment all the time in the world.
It is a sad irony that Cooke, like Mahler himself, died young, leaving unfinished projects of his own, but he is well remembered here. The tapes, from whatever source, would appear to have been tactfully reprocessed to open out the mono sound and eliminate any awkward gaps in continuity. Strongly recommended.
