Another Mahler Thread: 10th Symphony

[Roehre]

Haitink is even very suspicious about Adagio 10's state of completion: there are IHO too many empty spaces especially in the brass and wind sections compared to 9, let alone the older symphonies.
Personally I do appreciate that opinion, and Carpenter (and Barshai for that matter) haven't left the Adagio as it stands in the draft score(s) (plural, as there are differences between the draft orchestral score and the continuity draft on which the former is based)

[Roehre]

(....)It's also a curious stance for these conductors to take - they've all performed and recorded the work commonly known as "Mozart's Requiem", which contains far less Mozart than the Cooke performing version of the Tenth contains genuine Mahler.(....).

[Julien Sorel]

"Most eminent" = "oldest"? The "failure", of course is entirely theirs*, in allowing the Draft score to be accessible only to literate Musical scholars, they perform a gross disservice to the general public and to the composer whom they revere (and whose last wishes on the subject was that the work should be made available to the public).

It's also a curious stance for these conductors to take - they've all performed and recorded the work commonly known as "Mozart's Requiem", which contains far less Mozart than the Cooke performing version of the Tenth contains genuine Mahler.

* = Which isn't meant to sound as snide as it looks. I find their difficulties entirely understandable: I have the same problem with the completions of the Finale of the Bruckner Ninth - I've lived thirty-odd years with the three-movement "torso" of the work that this has "become" the work for me: the "failure" here is entirely my own. The emotional exhaustion after the Third Movement makes any further Music intrusive and unbearable, and I envy those coming new to the work who get to know it from the version Rattle recorded. And I keep trying, hoping that the psychological block preventing my hearing this Finale will one day evaporate.

Michael Gielen changed his view of the Cooke performing version of the 10th symphony, and a wonderful performance it is too. I wish Boulez would record it, but I remember him saying somewhere that would never happen. I'm afraid the finale of Bruckner 9 remains a stumbling block for me.

[Mahler's3rd]

I like the Simon Rattle/BPO Recording of the 10th, what though do colleagues & friends on the threads here think of the other versions/"Completions", The Wheeler, Barshai etc etc. Be very interested to know if anyone has seen any of the other versions and what they thought?

[salymap]

I'm afraid I don't know MAHLER '10' in any of its versions. I see it's being played liveon Thursday 21st by the RLPO conducted by Petrenko and filling the full slot from 7.30pm to 10pm. The Cooke compl.

Is it really that long ?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Is it really that long ?

No - not even Klemperer's recording of #7 is that long! About 70 mins, sals.

[Thropplenoggin]

No - not even Klemperer's recording of #7 is that long! About 70 mins, sals.

There appears to be an introduction by that most subtle and perspicacious of Mahlerians, Norman Lebrecht. Here's what the New York Times thought of his book, 'Why Mahler'.

En bref:

Writing of Alma Mahler, he all but invites comparison with his own work: “Nothing she writes can be accepted without corroboration.”

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

There appears to be an introduction by that most subtle and perspicacious of Mahlerians, Norman Lebrecht.

Writing of Alma Mahler, he all but invites comparison with his own work: “Nothing she writes can be accepted without corroboration.”

Ooh: that's good - perceptive and bitchy in equal measures!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Now who's going to claim that here I "all but invite comparison with [my] own" comments? Go on; you know you want to!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well: apart from the "perceptive", perhaps?

[Howdenite]

It is usually about 75 minutes. I wonder what they are going to do with the rest of the time! The concert is due to finish about 8:45.

[teamsaint]

It is usually about 75 minutes. I wonder what they are going to do with the rest of the time! The concert is due to finish about 8:45.

phone in?
Some tweets?
A bit of baroque to keep people interested?

[Wensleydale Blue]

Pity, Joseph Wheeler, Clinton Carpenter, Remo Mazzetti, Rudolf Barshai, Nicola Samale & Giuseppe Mazzucca, Yoel Gamzou
Michelle Castelleti, and even Ronald Stevenson for all their efforts at 'realising' this symphony. According to this thread their efforts never even left the stalls and Cooke won by 10 furlongs.

[Wensleydale Blue]

And which of Cooke's four versions are we talking about:

Cooke "0" – (1960, unpublished);
Cooke I – first complete performing version (1960–1964; unpublished)
Cooke II – second performing version (1966–1972; appeared in print in 1976)
Cooke III – a slightly revised form of the 1976 score (printed in 1989)

How many attempts to get things right does a man need?

[waldo]

I seem to have got into this thread just as the debate is disintegrating........

Reading the comments, it is interesting to see how many of them are about the "authenticity" of the work. Is it really Mahler? Did he finish it? Did someone else - Cooke or whoever - add anything important? And so on.

But that is really only one way of thinking about the work. The other, obviously, is to take it as it is - in whatever version you like - and judge it as a work of art in its own right. Either it is good or it isn't. Either it is a great work or it isn't. But for some reason this is not easy to do. Most of us can't listen to it properly until we have settled the question of authenticity, or at least formed a preliminary view of some kind. We don't feel compelled to do this with other works of art. When we watch a film, for instance, we don't worry about the fact that several hundred people were involved in making it. We just watch it. Who did what, doesn't matter. But with music - and Mahler 10 - we feel as if we have to know just who is responsible for just what bit of it. Did Mahler specify the flute in that passage? Did he want one or two drum strokes? Who wrote that line in the brass section? And unless we can settle these questions, we don't feel as if we can properly appreciate it. We want pure 100% Mahler - and nothing else.

I was reading an essay on Bruckner the other day - another composer bedevilled by questions of authorial authenticity. It wasn't especially insightful, but one of them contained an interesting digression on the "Romantic conception of the creator". The basic theory, which I can't be bothered to elaborate, is that our contemporary obsession with authorial origins has its roots in the idea of the artist as genius. The lone genius walks the hills, locks himself in a remote shack and produces a masterpiece. Anything added to this - by, say, a later editor or the hand of a helpful apprentice - is dismissed because only that which issues from the transcendent mind of the master carries any value. But that is silly, really. How the work came into being shouldn't really be all that important. All that ought to matter is the intrinsic quality of the piece.

But as I said, it is hard to think like this. In the long run, I suppose the work will stand or fall on its own merits and future generations will lose interest in the question. But right now, it seems important to know just who is responsible for the piece.........