Mahler: Symphony #10
(performing edition by Deryck Cooke, in collaboration with Berthold Goldschmidt, Colin Matthews and David Matthews)
EMI Classics - #56972

reviewed by Christopher Coleman
for RTHK Radio 4

A selection from the First Movement of Gustav Mahler's Tenth Symphony, one of the most beautiful and anguished art works ever created. I've called Mahler's Tenth "the greatest piece of music never written" because it remained unfinished at the time of his death. Although parts of the symphony are complete and orchestrated, and there is a continuity of music in an abbreviated composer's shorthand known as "short score" from beginning to end, so much is left undone that Mahler originally told his wife Alma to burn it. There are three or four substantial versions of the work--the most significant are the two created by musicologist Deryck Cooke. It is the second of these, done in collaboration with Berthold Goldschmidt, Colin Matthews and David Matthews, that is recorded on this EMI Classics CD of the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. Clearly this is not exactly what Mahler would have presented; but in the words of Cooke, "Mahler's music, even in its unperfected and unelaborated state, has such significance, strength and beauty, that it dwarfs into insignificance any uncertainties." I agree wholeheartedly. This is not a piece of music I would want to be without, regardless of its provenance. Listen to this extract, the climax of the first movement--the pain of loss is practically tangible.

This is a truly unique achievement--Music like this has not existed before or since. Mahler stood at the cusp of the modern century; but his contribution is the last dying breath of Romanticism. All the tools and techinques of tonal music were his to command, and where expression demanded it he expanded his musical world to include sonorities well outside the traditional tonal realm, as we have just heard. But most significantly Mahler constructed the richest, most subtle musical world I know of; one in which sudden juxtapositions and superimpositions of mood create a psychological tensions and movements that mirror real life. During the composition of the 10th Mahler visited Sigmund Freud as a patient; while there he recalled an incident when as a child he was traumatized by his father beating his mother. As he ran out of the house, he came upon an organ grinder playing merrily away. This juxtaposition of emotions is key to understanding Mahler's music. Listen to this example from the Fourth movement, a scherzo. For Beethoven and other composers the scherzo was a light movement, a joke; but listen to the stunning intensity and contrast of emotions in this short excerpt:

Another of Mahler's contributions lies in his concept of melody. For Mahler, a melody was not just to be performed on one instrument, but by the whole orchestra. His position as a conductor of world-reknowned orchestras gave him the opportunity to learn the orchestra as no one else had, and so his melodies pass from one instrument to another, from one section to another, without regard for practical limitations imposed by a single instrument. As in the first example we heard, leaps follow one another in the same direction creating melodies that literally soar, and they attain an astonishing level of feeling as a result.

This example leads me to my sole criticism of this disc--the performance. As you may have noticed, the tuba was decidedly weak there, and the brass, particularly the trumpets, unpleasantly brash. This is very surprising given the orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic--indeed, I know of no other recording they've made that I feel this way about. This is a live recording, but frankly the performance does not meet the demands of the piece consistently. That is not to say that it is bad, although tempi are often too slow for my taste; just inconsistent.

Let's close with a portion of the extremely touching ending of the work.