Symphony No. 10

    Almschi, to live for you! To die for you!

    Mahler's scrawled note to his wife, across the pages of the finale of
    the unfinished Tenth Symphony.

    I was moved to tears, I had not realised there was so much
    Mahler in it.

    Alma Mahler, in a letter to Deryck Cooke, May 1963, after she had
    finally been persuaded to listen to a tape of his "performing
    version".

    One can have nothing but praise for the superb artistry with
    which Deryck Cooke has brought to genuinely Mahlerian life the
    taut fragments of the Tenth; he has made an experience which I
    would not willingly have missed, which merits the closest attention
    and gratitude of all who love Mahler's music.

    Harold Truscott.

As Peter Gammond once put it, Mahler's attempts to emulate Schubert with an
unfinished symphony were frustrated by Deryck Cooke with his "performing
version" of the tenth. (Previously such figures as Schoenberg, Shostakovich
and Britten had been asked to complete it.) There is much controversy over
this version, and many conductors (including Walter, Bernstein, Haitink,
Sinopoli and Abbado) have refused to perform it.

Mahler's widow, Alma, who lived into the early 1960s, initially, with Bruno
Walter's encouragement, put an embargo on performances. After Walter's
death in 1962, she was persuaded to listen to a tape of a BBC broadcast; she
unequivocally recanted her previous position, and even made previously
unpublished sketches available to Cooke, which he incorporated into his
revised version.

The argument about the tenth can never, of course, really be resolved.
Undoubtedly Mahler would have made changes to the work in revision, but
then he revised all of his symphonies after their first performances, and so, in a
very real sense, we do not have Mahler's last word on either Das Lied von der
Erde or the Ninth symphony, neither of which he lived to hear.

What is certain, in my opinion, is that there is 'so much Mahler' in this
symphony that to deny the world the opportunity of hearing what there is, in a
'performing version' - which is what Cooke modestly called his efforts - would
be to deprive anybody who can't read music fluently of a truly wonderful
experience. Make no mistake about it, even in its sketched version this is
well-nigh a masterpiece; had he completed it it would have ranked among
Mahler's very finest achievements. As it stands it is certainly considerably
more complete than Schubert's 'Unfinished' or Bruckner's 9th., both of which
are part of the mainstream repertoire.

The first movement of the tenth, the Adagio, was almost complete at his death,
and the edition of this made by the composer Ernst Krenek, at Alma Mahler's
request, is the one used in most recordings. Many of the records I have
already discussed include the Adagio from the 10th as a filler (e.g. Sinopoli's
6th, Abbado's 9th) but none of them are sufficiently spectacular to effect my
previous opinions of these sets. My favourite performance of the Adagio by
itself is Segerstam's, which is coupled with his superb Eighth.

Ormandy was not the world's greatest Mahlerian but his recording, uniquely,
offers us Cooke's first thoughts and is cheap - it's on a single mid-price (Sony)
CD. Levine's is a hybrid: the Adagio is the Krenek version and was recorded in
analogue sound. Some time afterwards Levine obviously had a change of heart
and recorded the other four movements in the Cooke version digitally. (Can
anyone confirm this for me? I don't recall where I read it now)

Rattle's version is of the complete Cooke revision, with a few minor
emendations by the conductor, and is excellent, although the Bournemouth
Symphony is not the world's finest orchestra. This has now been reissued on a
single CD and is highly recommended.

The Chailly, with the Berlin Radio SO, is highly regarded in some quarters and
is coupled with the orchestral version of Schoenberg's Verklaerte Nacht. It is
certainly the best recorded by far - if your speakers don't have difficulty with
the bass drum at the opening of the finale you have a very good (or very
poor!) stereo indeed. And it is very well played, but doesn't supplant Rattle. It
would be nice, though, if EMI would allow Rattle to remake this with his own
CBSO - now that would be worth waiting for.

There is also a version recorded in East Berlin in 1979 by the Berlin SO under
Kurt Sanderling, available on Ars Vivendi. This is hard to find but worth the
effort. While not as well played as Rattle of Chailly, nor as well recorded, it
may well be the most coherently convincing of them all. It's just a pity the
recording doesn't allow the massive climaxes in the outer movements to make
the impact they should.

Inbal's Frankfurt recording strikes me as nothing special, and I have yet to hear
the new Slatkin recording of the Mazetti version - and is there not a recording
somewhere of another version, by Joe Wheeler (?)

Finally, it would be nice if Philips would reissued the 1976 NPO/Morris
recording: these were the artists who premiered the revised version the
previous year; this is a very well played and recorded version, which should be
back in the catalogue.