I avoid listening to stand-alone first movements of M10, normally viewing them as superfluous cd fillers. But this evening I read the 2004 Guardian item on the symphony and was intrigued by the following:
"Before his death, Mahler finished the orchestration of the opening Adagio, which was first performed as a fragment in 1924. Alma was ambivalent, however, as to whether she would permit the symphony to be completed, eventually offering the task to Schoenberg, who turned it down. She initially objected to Deryck Cooke's now familiar version, only permitting a performance of extracts as a "lecture demonstration" in 1960, though in 1963, two years before her death, she withdrew her ban. Since then, completions of the Tenth have proliferated, though Cooke's revised edition, first heard in 1972, is most frequently used in performance. Even here, controversy won't die down. Many conductors have refused to perform the completed score."
I'd never picked up on a 'refusal' but how do we explain how many conductors never did perform or record a completion?
As I type I'm listening to Giuseppe Sinopoli's wonderful stand-alone first movement, and for the first time I am comfortable with just the adagio. Perhaps having listened to an awful lot of Webern in the last couple of weeks I'm less disposed to longer works at the moment.
Does anyone know of any conductors who have said anything definite about not being willing to perm a completion? It's a bit of a blind spot as far as I'm concerned. I'm not even sure of who has not been inclined to perform it - did Lenny ever perform it, for example?
"Before his death, Mahler finished the orchestration of the opening Adagio, which was first performed as a fragment in 1924. Alma was ambivalent, however, as to whether she would permit the symphony to be completed, eventually offering the task to Schoenberg, who turned it down. She initially objected to Deryck Cooke's now familiar version, only permitting a performance of extracts as a "lecture demonstration" in 1960, though in 1963, two years before her death, she withdrew her ban. Since then, completions of the Tenth have proliferated, though Cooke's revised edition, first heard in 1972, is most frequently used in performance. Even here, controversy won't die down. Many conductors have refused to perform the completed score."
I'd never picked up on a 'refusal' but how do we explain how many conductors never did perform or record a completion?
As I type I'm listening to Giuseppe Sinopoli's wonderful stand-alone first movement, and for the first time I am comfortable with just the adagio. Perhaps having listened to an awful lot of Webern in the last couple of weeks I'm less disposed to longer works at the moment.
Does anyone know of any conductors who have said anything definite about not being willing to perm a completion? It's a bit of a blind spot as far as I'm concerned. I'm not even sure of who has not been inclined to perform it - did Lenny ever perform it, for example?
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