Customer Reviews

Mahler: Symphony No. 10

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Every once in a while, an awesome recording of a difficult and complex Mahler symphony shows up right out of left field. This is one of them. Then again, after the excellent job that the team of Noseda/BBC Phil./Chandos did on Prokofiev's long "Stone Flower" ballet, should anybody be surprised at all? The real question that needs to be asked is this: did we need yet another fine recording of Cooke III, when the more developed Samale/Mazzuca version - premiered in Perugia, Italy by Martin Sieghart/Vienna Symphony - has yet to be recorded? Probably not. But when the results are this good, there's always room for another one at the top; especially given the equally excellent program notes included, authored by David Matthews - the best I've read anywhere on the whole Mahler 10 topic (even if I don't agree with all of his points).

Some may disagree, but I think that this is a much better overall recording of Cooke's third and final edition of M10 than the recent Michael Gielen one on Haenssler. Predictably, Gielen is always excellent with any passage - in any work - that sounds the slightest bit like the so-called Viennese second school composers: Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern. Hence, his second scherzo was outstanding, as was most of the quicker development passage in the fifth movement (capped by a spectacular smash on the big tam-tam). But Noseda is better at holding the tension from start to finish. His first scherzo is excellent, and nearly makes one forget just how awkwardly orchestrated, and un-Mahlerian sounding, much of the second movement really is. Thankfully, the optional but badly needed cymbal crash is included near the end of it.

Not only was Gielen rather prosaic with his first scherzo; he was also too quick and hasty with the short but pivitol "Purgatorio" movement as well. Like Ormandy, Noseda takes this haunting mini-movement quite seriously. In fact, if you're one of those folks who has pined for the old Wyn Morris M10 recording for decades (Philips), you're ship may have arrived - Noseda is deliberate, intense, and highly rhythmic in both scherzos. No detail is simply skated over. But even more important, Noseda doesn't let the back half of the fifth and final movement sound limp, prostrate, or passionless (and I hate using the word, "passion").

Surprisingly, both Rattle and Gielen allow the last 10 minutes of the fifth movement to just lay there; floating around in a sort of gossamer way. I think it's a mistake to treat those last 10 minutes as though they were a repeat of what happens in the Mahler 9th. Like Ormandy, Noseda coaxes his strings to pour it on thick and heavy, but keeps the tempo going at the same time. In other words, Mahler still has some blood flowing through his veins. I like it. And you should like it too; because ultimately, Mahler 10 is not about Alma (or a portrait of Alma). Instead, it's about Mahler's feeling for - and perceptions of - his lovely young wife, Alma.

OK, I've babbled on and on, so here's the short version: excellent conducting, excellent playing, excellent sound, and excellent program notes. Did I forget anything?

I wanted to like this reading of the Mahler tenth symphony, completed from the composer's own sketches. Of course this performing edition is steeped in some controversy, since Mahler's assiduous practice during his lifetime was to revise and revise and revise his symphonies, given what he found actually happened in real live concerts of the works. So, even if we had been left a full first edition of the Mahler tenth by the time of the composer's death, chances are that Mahler would still have revised it further, always exploring, always perfecting.

Later versions would have been the fruit of the composer's considerable conducting experience, along with the evolving impact of modern instruments being adopted in the world's orchestras, along with the stunning increases in an average professional band member's technical expertise. Those gains in technical expertise continue right up to the present time when student orchestras regularly perform difficult works which professional musicians in major concert halls once found incomprehensible and nearly impossible to play well.

If one has serious reservations about playing a performing version of the Mahler tenth, then surely that reading will not be released on commercial disc these days. Witness the circumspect releases of the first movement only as actually completed by the composer, from Maazel/VPO, Bernstein/NYPO and VPO, Sinopoli/PO London, Bertini/Cologne, Szell/Cleveland, and others.

The flood gates are opening, however.

Ormandy's pioneering Philadelphia reading is now accompanied by Rattle having done a performing edition twice, once with Bournemouth and once with Berlin. Add in Levine with Philadelphia, Kurt Sanderling with Berlin Symphony, Gielen with Baden-Baden/Frieburg SWR, Inbal with Frankfurt Radio, Lopez-Cobos in Cinncinnati, Chailly with Berlin Radio, Barshai with Junge Deutsche Phil, Slatkin in St. Louis, Olson with a Polish band, and the list goes on.

Like any of the other Mahler symphonies, the performing versions of the tenth are magnetic pole collectors of considerable musical attention, possibly mystical insight, and the sorts of athletic genius we associate with sports instead of with music. Whether a conductor and band attempt the single finished first movement, or try this or that later performing approach, we do - as Alma herself later admitted - hear Mahler's real musical voice.

But what of Noseda, the BBC, and this reading?

I wanted it to be excellent, but to my ears and heart, it falls way short. Obviously Noseda and the band are working hard, giving themselves over, committed, involved. But the phrasing is way too sectional - leaving this work to unfold, piecemeal. This makes a listener suspect that Mahler's sketches were so incomplete that the assembled musical mosaic must inevitably suffer.

I also fault Noseda and BBE on technical musical grounds. Very disappointing.

Technically, we would find more hair-raising finesse, care and precision in a Vienna bakery that does fine chocolates and cakes than in this reading.

All you have to do to begin hearing what is missing is to put one of the better competitors on for a quick spin. Almost everybody else does better in all band departments - winds, strings, brass, percussion. If you really want to look across the musical gaps that separate Noseda from the rest, play Barshai leading the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie in a live - yes live - performance that outdoes Noseda and the BBC on almost every level in every musical way. Of course, Barshai is leading his own performing version, probably adding in extra dollops of risk and commitment. But the differences in performing editions do not in the least undermine Barshai's - and the JDP's - wide-ranging superiority. The youth orchestra simply out-plays the professional one.

Now if dissing this disc by way of a youth orchestra comparison seems unfair, play Levine in Philadelphia, Sanderling in Berlin, or Gielen in Baden-Baden/Freiburg.

Better yet - thanks to Amazon Japan and worldwide shipping - compare Noseda and the BBC to Daniel Harding with the Vienna Philharmonic, just looming on our release horizon timelines.

You will hear Harding in Vienna laying out the performing version, varied ever so wisely from sweet chamber textures to the massive dissonance of the famous nine notes of the wrenching chord in the first movement, excellent, and above all, whole. You will hear Mahler in his real musical voice, and not a whit dimmed in intelligence and mystical spirituality by heart problems - either the ones diagnosed by the cardiac surgeons he consulted in Europe or the ones Alma's affair with Gropius might have given him. The muffled big drum beats in the last movement are simply without equal - heavy and imposing enough to shake you up, yet still muffled as if a grief-stricken voice were speaking intimately.

Of course, the exact moment when I realized I was returning Noseda to the resale store, I had no idea that Harding with Vienna would eventually be released. Lucky me, lucky us. We almost have it at hand now. And if you cannot just yet get hold of Vienna under Harding, you will still do very well with Sanderling and the Berlin Symphony, or Barshai and the JDP. Or those older lions, Ormandy with Philadelphia, or Levine with Philadelphia. One star for Noseda, then, especially if or when compared to Harding and Vienna, or the others whose musical values continue, undimmed.