The fine Mark Wigglesworth with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales is my favored Cooke performance edition. It's intense... passionate. Mahler wrote some harrowing dense block chords in the first movement that I still find shocking and practically have me jumping out of my skin-pure 20th-century harmonic writing to my ears and prophetic in what was to come in music as the turbulent war-like century unfolded.

To me, he was still at the height of his creative powers, no diminishment whatsoever, and his writing seemed more judiciously sparse, modern, and streamlined. The piano score was partially orchestrated but unfortunately he ran out of time to complete it, but never ideas. I think it's a remarkable symphony, well worth hearing, that shows his resolve and resilience after his depressing health diagnosis and his divorce from Alma, a woman he was still deeply in love with and emotionally attached though she'd had a love affair with someone else.

He had incredible powers of creative and personal resilience despite his losses and that's not mentioned nearly enough, as I believe he's too often played as a neurotic emotional basket case or sentimentalist. Too many conductors play his 9th as his final goodbye to the world. But it wasn't. There was the 10th and some conductors have played his 9th with little sense of reserve whatsoever, as if there would be no 10th, rather than playing the 9th as if there might be more to come, even if Mahler may not have known it himself at the time.

The 10th is one of my favorites because it's still highly personal, expressive, and seems to point to the future both melodically and harmonically. If only Fate had granted him more time to fully complete its orchestration rather than only two of the movements. IMO, the symphony reveals just as much about himself as the others with the same kind of creative inspiration and mastery.

https://www.amazon.com/Mahler-Symphony-No-10/dp/B000BJOOF2

 

The fine Mark Wigglesworth with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales is my favored Cooke performance edition.

I saw Wigglesworth conduct the Cleveland Orchestra in Mahler 10 a few years ago--even better than the BBC Music CD because it's a better orchestra. If you run across a downloaded broadcast of this performance, don't bypass it!

 

I love to sample non-Cooke editions of the tenth, and am continually surprised at how the completed first movement survives whatever is done to it. Maybe more indestructible than other movement he wrote.

Favorite edition: Mazetti 2. Various reasons. Sounds slighty more Mahlerian than Cooke. Gets rid of xylophone in 4th movement. Segues 4th and 5th movements with a single drumbeat -- which I've wanted to do since first hearing the first (Ormandy) recording eons ago. Gives the slow beginning to the last movement to the string basses rather than the Wagner tuba (which one wag of a critic likened to Fafner waking up hungover).

To my knowledge this edition has only been recorded by Lopes-Cobos and the Cinncinati Symphony -- but it's a gorgeous performance. The long flute solo at the beginning of the finale will take your breathe away. And the conductor has a wonderful way of dealing with the Klezmer passages in the inner movements. And that last Big Chord (and the passages melting away from it at the end) are shattering. Good job!

 

FYI - even the first movement isn't really complete. There are several sections where the winds were scored and seemed suspiciously empty. Others filled in the blanks and made that performable.

I love the 10th. It's remarkable that no matter what completion you hear, it still sounds like Mahler, so strong is the material. Of course not all completions are equal. Mazetti did two and I like both. Wheeler is pretty good. Samale-Mazzuca is good, the only recording marred by an unbelievably bad edit. Barshai is ok. The more recent Gamzou was interesting, but leaves Mahler's sound world behind too often. I loathe the Carpenter. Why in the world Zinman chose it for his cycle is one of the great mysteries.

So I'm the large camp: Cooke is the best we've had. Some conductors retouch it, especially the percussion writing. The aforementioned Wigglesworth is top-notch, as is the Rattle/Berlin recording. There are many other recordings of Cooke (any version) that I like: Ormandy, Levine, Sanderling...

If you're really into the 10th, you simply must hear this set:

 

FYI - even the first movement isn't really complete. There are several sections where the winds were scored and seemed suspiciously empty. Others filled in the blanks and made that performable.

I love the 10th. It's remarkable that no matter what completion you hear, it still sounds like Mahler, so strong is the material. Of course not all completions are equal. Mazetti did two and I like both. Wheeler is pretty good. Samale-Mazzuca is good, the only recording marred by an unbelievably bad edit. Barshai is ok. The more recent Gamzou was interesting, but leaves Mahler's sound world behind too often. I loathe the Carpenter. Why in the world Zinman chose it for his cycle is one of the great mysteries.

So I'm the large camp: Cooke is the best we've had. Some conductors retouch it, especially the percussion writing. The aforementioned Wigglesworth is top-notch, as is the Rattle/Berlin recording. There are many other recordings of Cooke (any version) that I like: Ormandy, Levine, Sanderling...

If you're really into the 10th, you simply must hear this set:
View attachment 111956

This Testament disc is back in stock at Berkshire Record Outlet broinc.com at a small fraction of the asking price on Amazon, if anyone else is interested. Presumably a cutout but I'm not picky about such things.

 

I am listening to the Gielen recording for the first time and am very impressed. I will have to go back to the Rattle recordings and refresh my memory for comparison. While intellectually I think that the Berlin performance is the best, emotionally I prefer the older Bournemouth recording ... perhaps because I saw him do it with the Los Angeles Philharmonic not long after that recording.

FWIW, my choice after the Cooke is the revised Mazzetti. I understand that Mazzetti was inspired to do the revision after helping to prepare the Colorado Mahlerfest performance of the Wheeler version.

 

The first recording of the Cooke edition was by Ormandy. Cooke later revised it.

 

I have a few complete Mahler 10s and like nearly all performing versions apart from the Carpenter, which I feel sounds wrong to my ears. I have Zinman's Carpenter 10 and don't like it at all. The Wrigglesworth is a fine Cooke account.

 

I too have a decent number of recordings of this work, and as far as I am concerned, it is as part of the Mahler canon as any of the other symphonies. No qualms about "Mahler's final wishes" etc etc for me....

Lots of Adagios in my collection, which is fine, but I love the whole thing, so the torso experience isn't as important as the whole thing.

I have two recordings of the Carpenter edition, Litton and Zinman. No, it's nowhere near as convincing as Cooke, but as a version it predates Cooke, and if it were the only version we had, I'd not be less of a Mahler 10 fan, in all honesty.

I also once bought a "recomposed" version by a chap called Matthew Herbert; by mistake, I hasten to add. Sinopoli's Adagio with some weird nature noises superimposed. Pretentious and insulting claptrap as far as I am concerned, truly awful, and made worse by the fact it is available on a characteristic eye-catching DGG (the label of quality) CD, yellow logo et al.

I also have the Joe Wheeler version (Olson on Naxos) and like that very much. It's got more of a pared down chamber atmosphere, and one could argue this was the way music was going in or around 1910, so why not? I think it's a fine alternative to the ever-evolving Cooke edition.

I do not like Ormandy's original recording. The recording itself sounds very dated indeed. Other than that, I find Wigglesworth surprisingly good (surprising because it's a freebie given away with a magazine!), and so are Chailly, Gielen, Inbal and a couple of others.

On a parallel thread, I have put Rattle's recording down as a desert island disc. Not the Berlin one, which I think is a bit slick and Mary Poppins, but the rawer, thinner, more threadbare Bournemouth recording. It was the first I heard and it remains my favourite, maybe because I hear that sense of innocent naked discovery in the performance even now, and it remains incredibly moving for me. I expect to be in a minority of one on that, but I'm sticking to what I like....

 

My Top Three, in order: Gielen, Wigglesworth (BBC National Orchestra of Wales), Rattle (Birmingham). Gielen's is particularly fine, but if you can find Wigglesworth's BBC recording don't hesitate to snap it up. I'm with Robert Pickett on Rattle, in that I much prefer his rawer Birmingham rendition than the more polished one from Berlin. Like "mbhaub" above, I can also recommend the Berthold Goldschmidt recording on Testament, not least because it includes Deryck Cooke's fascinating illustrated lecture on how he created his performing version of the score.

All my choices are Cooke versions, because they're still the most listenable and most Mahlerian, IMHO. That said, I recall being impressed by Rudolf Barshai conducting his own reconstruction, although I don't listen to it very often.

 

Rattle did the 10th with the Bournemouth Symphony and Berlin Philharmonic

 

Boulez/Cleveland
Tilson Thomas/SF
Bernstein NYP

Complete - Thomas Dausgaard/Seattle

 

I like Rudolf Barshai and the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie with his version of Mahler's symphony 10.

 

So do I. Duggan who wrote a lot about Mahler recordings and admired the Reordings by Rattle and Sanderling went overboard on the Barshai, whose Mahler 5th also won his plaudits as the best out there.

 

I have Levine and Rattle for Mahler 10. Think they are both the same completion score.

 

Just for clarification - the Mahler 10 versions are not completions, they are performing editions of what Mahler left. The entire symphony existed in short score when he died so no completion was necessary (e.g. the Bruckner 9th), but only parts of it had been orchestrated (1st & 3rd movements and a few parts of the 2nd). The short score also included notes about how he intended to orchestrate other parts. What Cooke et.al. did was to flesh out the orchestration given the existing score, notes and what is known about Mahler's style in order that the symphony can be performed.

Personally I think that everyone who is really interested in the Mahler symphonies should hear the 10th if for no other reason than to quash the idea that the 9th was a farewell as some (e.g. Bernstein) have said. It is no more a farewell than the 6th which is part of a diptych including the 7th which he began immediately upon finishing the 6th.

 

Good post, but a couple of points. First,saying that Cooke chose to do things in Mahler's style is a can of worms, because Mahler underwent stylistic changes, from his Wunderhorn Symphonies, to the more impersonal sounding 5-7, and then something else in the Ninth and Das Lied. Where many of the completions differ is in the style picked. Personally, I am not in favor of Wunderhorn Mahler reappearing in the last movement of the Tenth.
Secondly, when Mahler wrote his last works, he knew his Aortic Stenosis was going to kill him. I don't know how anyone can interpret those tremulous viola quivers that launch 9/I as anything but a man with an arythmia being conscious of his impending mortality. So he finishes the Ninth, intended as a farewell, and...whoops, I'm not dead yet! Now what to write? Well, Alma's infidelities seemed to have inspired a crisis that launched the First Movement, and as for the rest....

 

Have just heard the insightful Michael Gielen performance. For me, it has more warmth than the Wigglesworth recording, somewhat more romantic in a way that I think Mahler’s wife Alma would have loved. It sounds more like her with Gielen. The recorded sound is outstanding and the string section is rich, vibrant, and wonderful. I look forward to repeat listenings of this warm performance and remarkable symphony. I find the same effortless composition in Mahler’s music as I do in Mozart’s. I hear a great similarity in effortlessness though not of course in compositional style. Perhaps that’s why both composers are at the top of my listening list, the Mahler 10th being one of my great personal favorites that still sounds fresh and modern to my ears. It’s also of interest to hear a melodic quote from Dvorak’s New World Symphony in the iv movement of Mahler’s 10th… The “new world” (!) and that’s where he was getting ready to go...

 

For me the 10th is Mahler's most life-affirming symphony. Following the 9th's resignation into oblivion, in the 10th Mahler came out of the abyss, went through hell, and finally found love that triumphed over death.

IMHO conductors who recorded only the Adagio tended to try too hard to over-play the music to make a complete symphony out of it, so I seldom go back to such recordings.

I am not too bothered by the difference among performing versions, the instrumentation, the additional composition, one thwack or two thwacks etc. But at the end of the day, I suppose I belong to the Cooke camp. I like the barebone nature of it, not to mention a large variety of recordings to enjoy.

I am under the impression that Wheeler IV and Mazzetti II are both pretty much barebone-oriented like Cooke (is that so?), still they seem to be more eventful (and colourful) and, it could be just me, they sound more intrusive, especially in Scherzo II and the Finale. On the other hand, I like Barshai's rich and colourful orchestration, which I find a more coherent listening experience than Wheeler IV and Mazzetti II. The Samale/Mazzuca is interesting. I think the "enforcement" at various places works pretty well from a listener's perspective. The choice of instrumentation, especially in Scherzo II and the Finale, also sounds less intrusive to me than Wheeler IV and Mazzetti II. So far I have no motivation to hear the Carpenter or Gamzou version. Everything that I've read about them seems negative.

[Cooke I] Goldschmidt/LSO 1964 Live (Testament) - Full of raw energy. Also a collector's item with Cooke's lecture!

[Cooke I] Ormandy/Philadelphia 1965 (CBS) - Gritty! No pussycat allowed. This is not the buttery Ormandy that I know but it's a nice surprise.

[Cooke II] Sanderling/BerlinSO 1979 (Berlin Classics) - Deeply heartfelt, and slightly faster than most.

[Cooke II] Rattle/Bournemouth 1980 (EMI) - Intense, manic, magnificent, but also occasionally all over the place. Deliberate, as expected of Rattle.

[Cooke II] Chailly/RSOBerlin 1986 (Decca) - Clean, rational and beautiful. The opening Adagio may be a bit relaxed, but the rest is no tamed stuff.

[Cooke III] Wigglesworth/BBCNOW 1993 Live (BBC Magazine) - Fluent, agile, shattering, very well judged pace and wide dynamic range. The Finale is one of the most tender and touching.

[Cooke III] Rattle/Berlin 1999 Live (EMI) - A mellower Adagio and more urgency in the inner movements when compared to Bournemouth 80, which give a better balance among the movements. Although still deliberate. The tenderness of the solo flute and the strings that follows in the Finale is magnificent.

[Cooke III] Gielen/Baden-Baden 2005 (Hänssler) - Meticulously balanced, highly expressive. This is one of the most lively and most upbeat.

Gielen also made an Adagio-only recording in 1989. It's more pushy (and faster). Enough said.

[Cooke III] Harding/Vienna 2007 (DG) - Super tender, super smooth and super beautiful in one long breath. There is also a kind of light fluffiness to it. Very Harding-like.

[Cooke III] Wigglesworth/Melbourne 2008 Live (MSO Live) - Richer and weightier sound than BBCNOW 93 Live, otherwise a similar, and excellent account. There is an almost unbearable lightness (of being! ) in the quieter passages in both accounts, but it's slightly less pronounced in Melbourne 08.

[Cooke III] Inbal/Concertgebouw 2011 Live (RCO Live) - Warm, smooth, and glorious; and like Chailly's, after a relatively relaxed Adagio things become more high-octane.

[Cooke III] Dausgaard/Seattle 2015 Live (Seattle Symphony Media) - Turbulent and very much alive and kicking. "Surprised by Joy" in the midst of grief.

[Cooke III] Nézet-Séguin/Rotterdam 2016 Live (DG) - The sexy pussycat of the bunch. Another very tender and touching Finale.

[Wheeler IV] Olson/Polish National RSO 2000 (Naxos) - Not bad at all, just a little bit underwhelming.

[Mazzetti II] López-Cobos/Cincinnati 2000 (Telarc) - Tender yearning, at times idiosyncratic, especially in the Purgatorio.

[Barshai] Barshai/Junge Deutsche Philharmonie 2001 (Brilliant) - Brilliant and magnificent. Playing is superb.

[Barshai] Ashkenazy/Sydney 2011 Live (Sydney Symphony Live) - Much as I love Ashkenazy's Sibelius and Rachmaninov, his Mahler does not click with me, and his Mahler 10 is also unfortunately dwarfed by Barshai's own magnificent rendering.

[Samale & Mazzuca] Sieghart/Arnhem 2007 (Exton) - This is the dark horse! When it's expansive, it moves forward with purpose. When it's required to go berserk, it blows me away.

I don't have a favourite recording; but I suppose one cannot go wrong with Gielen, Wigglesworth or Dausgaard. Rattle, Barshai and Sieghart ought to be heard too. Personally I have a soft spot for Harding's, but I suppose it's not everybody's cup of tea. :lol:

 

Nice post Kiki. If you have no objections I'll do a cut and paste into my notes as there are a few recordings I'm keen on hearing.

 

2 favorite Mahler 10s:
Ormandy/PhilaOrch
Martinon/CSO live from '66
both Deryck Cooke
Ormandy's is solid, steady, very well÷played, well-recorded
Under Martinon, it sounds like a different piece, wild, frenzied at times, frantic...quite thrilling
both approaches work...wouldn't want to be without either....

 

........deleted......

 

Becca - Very fine, and just a question, or so. If the parts/perform. editions of the 10th are probably the "last thoughts", so to speak, of Gustav M in the orchestral world …. then where does that leave "Das Lied von der Erde"? One might assume that Mahler was "veering-towards" some final statements, of such … and a comparison might be Nielsen's 6th Symphony … but I might supposing, more than is really TRUE. … Anyway, Mahler's 10th, in any, cogent form … is one to be listened-to, accepted, and maybe a last testament, so to speak, of what a remarkable composer could coalesce, after years of gestations.

 

Thanks, also, to Kiki … for listing the various versions (Cooke I, II and II … plus Wheeler, Barshai, et. al.), and a number of the various/many recordings, of such! Well, just a cavil, of sorts … 'bout one of your comments - "... conductors who conducted only the Adagio tended to try too hard to over-play the music …". …. Well, my friend, have listened-to one of the old masters - Szell (w/Cleveland, in 1958 … on YouTube) - and you will find ONE man who does NOT overplay any part of the Adagio, but who maintains a steady, but not stolid, pace … as he and his great Cleveland players of the time, find ALL of the emotional/logical import of this music, IMO … but without ANY exaggerations, per se.

 

Thanks 89Koechel! Appreciate your recommendation! TBH I have not heard Szell's Adagio, but have to say your positive reaction to it has got me intrigued. Since Szell also recorded the Purgatorio, that should be a nice bonus as well! I'm listening to it on Youtube right now. So far it sounds fluent and unforced (creamy Cleveland strings too)! Oh I need a CD to be sure, let's see if I can find a bargain! Thanks again!

 

You're welcome, Kiki …. and did you find it? Discogs.com has 5 listings for the LP version, coupled-with Walton's Partita for Orchestra. I think the prices start at $1.49 (!)

 

Thanks for the heads up! TBH I have not lifted the cover of my turntable for months.... so I'll pass on LP :lol: Saw a second hand CD on Amazon JP at a reasonable price. That's tempting. I'll see what else I can find.

Come to think about it, since Szell recorded both the Adagio and the Purgatorio, I can't help speculating that he probably saw them more as perform-able "fragments" of an incomplete symphony, rather than a piece (or two pieces) that would sound convincing on its own.

 

All musical assessments remain, to some degree, subjective. Yet, though I know this, I maintain that the most sublime moment in all of music resides in the final movement of Mahler's Tenth Symphony. At least for my ears. And I've heard lots of music.

My first choice remains the two LP box set on Philips, with Wyn Morris conducting the New Philharmonia Orchestra in the "finally revised full-length performing version by Deryck Cooke".

My records in this set, often played, still boast a high level of quietness as far as surface noise goes, and I can readily enjoy that "sublime moment" to the fullest, for I've never heard it played better (with more depth, clarity, and philosophical oomph) than in the Wyn Morris interpretation.

It's a moment near the ending of that great final movement, a meditation of the theme by the strings, several measures which, in the otherwise sparsely sketched-out original score, were indicated in full by the composer himself. As if he knew that this was the great moment in music. A harp lays down the harmony while the strings sing the theme, leading to a richly scored string passage which nearly takes the breath away. Mahler at his most profound.

I have long agreed with Bernstein's assessment that the Ninth is Mahler's "farewell" to life (and to the music he knew and loved) and that the lengthy final movement indeed reflects upon these two mysteries of passing -- that of life and that of the music. But I've also long considered that the Tenth is simply a continuation of the story -- music that Mahler had to write because as a lover of life he did not want his final utterance to be the dark throbbings of a dying heartbeat. I've long felt that the Tenth was Mahler's real final statement, one proclaiming that all of the universe is good and that the greatness of the spirit of man lives on well after any individual man's death.

Mahler marked one section of his symphony "Purgatorio". As a reader of Dante I can understand this thinking. Both Wagner and Liszt knew that Dante's "Paradiso" was beyond musical expression, but not the "Purgatorio", that realm of final cleansing beyond which waits the ineffable heavenly spheres. Those closing measures of the Mahler Tenth seem so to reflect the final steps in Purgatory as one gets his first glimpse of the sublime that lies ahead, one even beyond the skills of Mahler to express (though he does a pretty good attempt in his Fourth Symphony, one could argue!).

I will always rank this "unfinished" symphony high on my subjective lists of great music. Like Schubert's 8th or Bach's final Contrapunctus XIV of his Art of Fugue, such music must remain unfinished, for the only place where greater completion and more sublime sound is possible lies in a realm beyond that of us mere humans. This is truly music of the spheres, music of the universe, and, in the instance that I am philosophically wrong, music of Heaven and of God.

 

All musical assessments remain, to some degree, subjective. Yet, though I know this, I maintain that the most sublime moment in all of music resides in the final movement of Mahler's Tenth Symphony. At least for my ears. And I've heard lots of music.

My first choice remains the two LP box set on Philips, with Wyn Morris conducting the New Philharmonia Orchestra in the "finally revised full-length performing version by Deryck Cooke".

View attachment 112135

My records in this set, often played, still boast a high level of quietness as far as surface noise goes, and I can readily enjoy that "sublime moment" to the fullest, for I've never heard it played better (with more depth, clarity, and philosophical oomph) than in the Wyn Morris interpretation.

It's a moment near the ending of that great final movement, a meditation of the theme by the strings, several measures which, in the otherwise sparsely sketched-out original score, were indicated in full by the composer himself. As if he knew that this was the great moment in music. A harp lays down the harmony while the strings sing the theme, leading to a richly scored string passage which nearly takes the breath away. Mahler at his most profound.

I have long agreed with Bernstein's assessment that the Ninth is Mahler's "farewell" to life (and to the music he knew and loved) and that the lengthy final movement indeed reflects upon these two mysteries of passing -- that of life and that of the music. But I've also long considered that the Tenth is simply a continuation of the story -- music that Mahler had to write because as a lover of life he did not want his final utterance to be the dark throbbings of a dying heartbeat. I've long felt that the Tenth was Mahler's real final statement, one proclaiming that all of the universe is good and that the greatness of the spirit of man lives on well after any individual man's death.

Mahler marked one section of his symphony "Purgatorio". As a reader of Dante I can understand this thinking. Both Wagner and Liszt knew that Dante's "Paradiso" was beyond musical expression, but not the "Purgatorio", that realm of final cleansing beyond which waits the ineffable heavenly spheres. Those closing measures of the Mahler Tenth seem so to reflect the final steps in Purgatory as one gets his first glimpse of the sublime that lies ahead, one even beyond the skills of Mahler to express (though he does a pretty good attempt in his Fourth Symphony, one could argue!).

I will always rank this "unfinished" symphony high on my subjective lists of great music. Like Schubert's 8th or Bach's final Contrapunctus XIV of his Art of Fugue, such music must remain unfinished, for the only place where greater completion and more sublime sound is possible lies in a realm beyond that of us mere humans. This is truly music of the spheres, music of the universe, and, in the instance that I am philosophically wrong, music of Heaven and of God.

Revisiting this thread your post struck me as wonderfully phrased, thanks for your input. I will look out for that 'moment' in the last movement next time I listen.

 

That was my first Mahler 10 a long time ago. I was glad to get the CD incarnation. Wyn Morris is one of those incredibly sad tales in music: a wonderful musician, fine conductor who just never made it to the big time. He worked in Cleveland for a while with Szell. Of the few LPs I kept when I purged the collection, I did keep all of Morris' Mahler: Wunderhorn lieder, Klagende Lied, Symphonies 2, 5, 8, 9, 10. If ever there was a budget box that should be provided, Morris' Mahler is a prime candidate. But who knows who owns the tapes and copyright these days.

 

Apparently Wyn Morris had an alcohol problem and was difficult to get along with, which probably hampered his career:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...were-undermined-by-his-relations-with-musicians-and-administrators-1930697.html

 

Deryck Cooke on Mahler's 10th (Dec. 19, 1960) and performance:

I think the way Mahler ended it with a sense of peace rather than bitterness is true and one of his greatest triumphs. To end the cycle of his symphonies in defeat would have been greatly disappointing and unthinkable. Despite his heartrending losses throughout his life (starting with the death of nine siblings), he invariably found a way to rise above it all and this overcoming can be heard in his great symphonies if one listens for it. Like Beethoven before him, I find this of tremendous inspiration. The triumph of inspiration is that it keeps one living fully until the very end.

 

Yeah, that'll be the Berthold Goldschmidt performance, especially done to illustrate that 1960 lecture. It's on a set of Testament CDs, along with a Proms performance from a few years later?

 

Wyn Morris's take on the 10th:

Mahler's long melodic lines and the way that he stretches tonality, I find truly incredible. For me, one of the greatest openings to any symphony I've heard. The composer is totally in the moment and rushes nothing in this opening. Morris plays it full and warm. What a symphony! Good performance so far...