Customer Reviews

Mahler: Symphony No. 10 (Carpenter Completion)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

re: Delos/Litton/Dallas Mahler 10th Carpenter completion.

I bought this yesterday and listened to it twice, once last night, and today. Normally, I can post after a single listen, but this "completion" is so radically different from the Cooke, and I was so shocked at times by what I heard I thought it best that I listen to it again before giving my initial impressions.

First a bit of background. I didn't recognize the greatness of the Mahler 10th until the Wyn Morris/Cooke 2, but my admiration was almost exclusively for the outer two movements. The Rattle/BPO/Cooke 3+ opened my eyes to the possibility that the inner three movements were well worth listening to also.

My first reaction to this Carpenter completion was very negative. After listening it to it for second time, I give it a mixed review, but overall still consider it significantly inferior to the Cooke. In general, I think the goal of any attempt to "complete" the Mahler 10th should be to give the clearest impression of what Mahler actually left behind. Interpolations and extrapolations should be kept to a minimum. Any addition of notes that aren't actually there should be added only with the greatest of care, only when absolutely necessary, and with a conservative mindset to keep Mahler's intentions as intact and authentic as possible. In light of these criteria and IMHO, the Cooke succeeds and the Carpenter completion badly fails at times.

Too often the Carpenter adds material that isn't in the Cooke (I assume Cooke didn't leave anything out), either quoting or paraphrasing from past Mahler works or adding new material that sounds not even remotely similar to anything I have ever heard Mahler do. While it is true that Mahler never stood still, every Mahler work that I have heard is almost immediately recognizable as his. Even though the notes are largely Mahler's, there are moments in this completion that I would not recognize the work as either being the 10th or Mahler's. For me the critical opening section of the final movement is MUCH less effective than the Cooke 3+. For example, although Mahler marks the bass drum forte, Carpenter decides to make it piano (Litton compromises somewhere in between) because that's what he thinks Mahler would have heard from an 11th floor hotel room when the funeral procession that inspired this section passed by. That strikes me as a poor reason to go against Mahler's expressed wishes. That's only one of several complaints I have with this section, arguably one of the more crucial of the work.

Is there anything good about this release? Absolutely! The Delos sound is just wonderful. Excellent balance, dynamic range, warm, live, 3-dimensional sound is all there. The Dallas Symphony for the most part plays their hearts out and to my mind and ear give a technically better performance than the Rattle/BPO. I like very much some of Litton's approach to the first movement versus Rattle's. Both performances of the 1st movement (where Carpenter's tinkering seems to have been kept mostly to a minimum) are excellent although different and each has its strengths and weaknesses. Elsewhere, there are sections where I actually prefer what Carpenter has done versus Cooke. Carpenter's more dense scoring, when it works for me, does add emotional weight to the work. But the bottom line question remains, did the performance move me? The answer is it did, very much so, in fact to tears, but in different spots than in the Cooke.

Mahler purists probably don't listen to the 10th except possibly the first movement. Cooke purists should probably avoid this performance like the plague or listen to the 1st movement only. Those who can tolerate Carpenter's lapses where he adds far too many of his own ideas or attempts to graft, unsuccessfully IMHO, bits and pieces of prior Mahler material, and a much weaker approach to the initial section of 5th movement, but are looking for different attempts to score and interpret this unfinished masterpiece may enjoy giving this performance a try, but definitely bring to the experience a VERY open mind.

Finally, this release drives home what I already know. It was a tragedy that this work was never completed by Mahler, and there is plenty of opportunity for future completions for those who are so inclined and have the ability and talent to really get under their skin what the Mahler sound is all about.

George

Let's set aside the whole issue of Carpenter's "completion". This Delos recording deserves five and a half stars just for the outrageous execution of such an incredibly difficult score by the Dallas Symphony, along with the beautiful DSD sonics that Delos coughs up here. Come now, give them a round of applause for that much. How you'll react to Carpenter's efforts is a purely personal thing.

Yes, it's true that Carpenter overshoots his mark; often times conjuring up the more expressionistic sound world of Alban Berg (Wozzeck; Three Pieces For Orchestra). But this is also much more of a completion than Cooke's somewhat threadbare "performing version" remains. I would never suggest that one own the Carpenter in lieu of the Cooke - own it as a supplement. As overheated as this may be from time to time, I think that the narrative is pretty well connected and integrated. Nobody would be fool enough to believe that this how Mahler would have finished the piece. But in many respects, it's simply more fun and fulfilling to listen to than the bare-minimum Cooke version is. Proceed only if you can do so with an open mind. Come on, some of you can do that.

This performance has of course less to do with Gustav Mahler than with Mr. Clinton A. Carpenter. The 'naked body' is Mahler's, yes (the symphony is complete from beginning to end, in a sense: the first two movements and the first 30 bars of the third movement exist as full score drafts, the rest exist as four stave scetches with many indications of orchestration), but the clothes that are being 'draped around it' are a somewhat strange and they do not always fit (what we would think Mahler would have come up with in the end). But the same can be said to be the case - to some degree - with necessarily all 'completions' or 'performing versions' of this, Mahler's last and incomplete musical testament.
On his deathbed Mahler ultimately decided that the scetches were NOT to be burned. Whether one likes it or not, the Pandora's box of Mahler's Tenth has been opened, and can never again be closed. But then, the 'score' of the Tenth as left by Mahler is an evocative piece of music in its own right. As such, it has been discovered and studies by many a musically gifted mind. And I for one am very glad that 'performing versions' of these scetches do exist and are being played and recorded.
The only way that I can 'judge' or appreciate this music is through hearing it. Not being able to judge the 'authenticity' of any performing version of Mahler's Tenth (I can't read music), I have to judge them by what I read about them and what I hear and feel when listening to them. And from what I have heard, the 'performing version' by Deryck Cooke, in collaboration with Berthold Goldschmidt, Colin Matthews and David Matthews is the one that stays truest to the source material. I do like that version the best, especially in the already 'classic' recording by Sir Simon Rattle leading the Berliner Philharmoniker (together with the Chailly/RSO Berlin recording). The starkness of the source material IMHO only intensifies the power and depth of the music as it is left by Mahler, however incomplete, which is good.
Well, back to Clinton A. Carpenter's 'completion'. There are to my ears often a bit too many idiosynchratic and fantastic distractions here, which make this 'completion' sound too much like an 'interpretation'. Nonetheless, the flesh is weak, and I must secretly confess that I am fascinated by all the sounds that Clinton Carpenter weaves around the 'naked body' of scetches for the Tenth Symphony, although the end result is often too baroque and over-orchestrated IMHO. Wacky sometimes, even, to my ears. Too excentric to sound like 'real Mahler' (for as much this is possible). Or, as Tony Duggan from Musicweb so eloquently puts it: "Mahler was heading into a simpler style at this time. Right through [...] the whole symphony in this edition, there is always so much going on in a way that for me is fundamentally un-Mahlerian in one very crucial aspect. Mahler was a master of clarity of thought. Even in his most thickly scored passages the listener's ear never has trouble following his fundamental line of thought. Whereas here, in Carpenter's edition, over-scoring frequently prevents this for vast tracts of the music."
In the end I will turn to Chailly and Rattle (Berlin) (and maybe the Rudolf Barshai - added percussion here and there - and Kurt Sanderling recordings/interpretations as well) more than this rather excentric interpretation. The sound for this recording is just great though: spacious but detailed.
This 'completion' does't really add anything of musical value, but for Mahler-Ten-enthusiasts (like me) it is nice to have alongside the other more insightful, less excentric interpretations of Mahler's scetches, if only just for curiosity's sake.

Deryck Cooke was the most intelligent of completionists in the Tenth Sym. because he didn't pretend to be Mahler. He added as little of his own ideas as possible, even if his reticence sometimes left very bare orchestral bones in terms of harmony and secondary lines. As for those who followed, Wheeler, Carpenter, and Mazzetti to varying degrees stepped over the line, trying to pose as Mahler impersonators with unacceptable intrusions of their own.

The worst is surely Carpenter, which makes this CD a dismal experience--the man has no idea, apparently, how sub-Mahlerian his retouchings actually are. The clogging of counterpoint and filling out of orchestration are cumbersome. This performance is quite forgettable and regrettable, but so are all the sets I've heard that present any other Mahler Tenth except for the Cooke.

I give this two stars because the recording is stupdendous (as usual for Delos) and Litton probably gives us a good performance, but given the material, it's hard to say. The textures of this Carpenter completion are so dense and idiosyncratic that I hardly recognize it as a work of Mahler. Before hearing this Carpenter, I'd heard and immensely enjoyed three different completions, all of them at least trying to make a Mahler sound out of the material (Cooke being the most conservative and the most successful in my opinion), but this effort is just grotesque. It is dense, bombastic, and vulgar, and not in the magnificent way that Mahler himself is sometimes vulgar (as in sections of the 1st movement of the 3rd), but in a manner disrespectful to the source material. There are totally gratuitous quotations from other Mahler symphonies, who knows why. Well, I suppose you could say we got the Carpenter reconstruction out of the way. Somebody had to do it. And it is certainly an honest effort on the part of Litton and his band. But from the program notes, it sounds like Litton did it more as a favor to a friend than for any musical value this Carpenter effort has. I can't help making one more comment. I was so used to hearing the powerful bass drum blows at the end of the fourth movement and at the beginning of the fifth movement, that the anemic taps in the Carpenter come off more as a joke than an attempt to be tragic. I just threw up my hands in despair and shook my head in disgust.

The purchase of this disc completed my array of recorded Mahler X completions (Wheeler, Carpenter, Cooke I, Cooke II, Mazetti I, Mazetti II, Barshai). I must admit that among all of these, I find the Carpenter edition, together with the Mazetti I, the least convincing. Indeed, Carpenter is the only one who tinkers with Mahler's notes to such an extent that the atmopshere of the piece itself is changed, and we are removed from, rather than brought closer to Mahler's dying thoughts. He is also the only one who extends his interventions significantly into the first and third movements, normally considered more or less complete the way Mahler left them. In neither case the additions are an improvement; indeed, these movements most distinctly show the problem of Carpenter's approach. It is almost as if he harvested a truckload of little snippets, trills, chords and motives from the other symphonies, and then dispersed them randomly through this one. You may be surprised to find the string accompaniment to the 7th symphony tenorn horn quoted literally in the opening pages of the 10th's Finale. Unfortunately, all these additions rarely rise above the level of surface decoration, and with the surface so abundantly decorated, it is pretty hard to make out what is happening underneath. Like in the Mazetti I, percussion is much overused. Big drum rolls strip the 'organ chords' of the first movement from their overpowering majesty, making them sound almost tacky. While others debate whether the final turn of the first Scherzo should be marked with a cymbal crash or not, Carpenter does not beat about the bush and adds not one, but two! Not that they are particularly noticeable in his noisy, overworked version of the piece, where any sense of general musical line is lost in the prevailing hubbub. Compare this to a very complex and busy movement like the Rondo Burleske from the Ninth, and you'll see that Mahler was able to write such music and still maintain clarity - it is what distinguishes him from the Carpenters... What this version does to the Purgatorio movement verges on the criminal. Again all kinds of needless details, notably some intrusive trumpet fanfares that overplay the Wunderhorn character of the piece, all but obliterate the urgent, brilliantly concise musical discourse we know from other versions. Next, the second Scherzo is stripped from any spookiness, and is less distinct from the first than in other versions. Twothirds in there is a surprising (and very welcome) moment of stillness, with floating string chords that don't sound very Mahlerian, but are beautiful nonetheless - but this element, too, is essentially random, and is broken off never to return just as unexpectedly as it appeared. The finale fares no better, and once or twice accents conventional harmonic progressions in a way that sounds almost amateurish. Nor was I convinced by the penchant for sentimental cello solos, not a feature common in Mahler. All in all, a version to make you yearn for the otherworldly spareness of Cooke. The recording is loud and tiring to match, with some extreme spotlighting of solo instruments. This is for Mahler X completists only. For a really good reading of a really good performing edition, get the Chailly (Decca), the Berlin Rattle, or, my personal favourite, the Gielen (Hännsler)Mahler: Symphony No. 10 (Performing Version by Deryck Cooke).

For the most part, I do not enjoy the Carpenter version of Mahler's Tenth. To me, it simply does not sound as much like Mahler as do other performing versions such as those by Mazzetti and Cooke.

True, it's still quite beautiful and poignant in many places, and the finale is a touching peaceful exit from life. The Mazzetti and Cooke interpretations just sound more like Mahler's voice. This is subjective, of course, but Mahler has been my favorite composer for most of my life, and the Mazzetti version especially sounds like one which Gustav Mahler would applaud.

You may indeed enjoy this, but if you have long loved the music of Mahler, first try the Mazzetti version by Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony or Simon Rattle's Berlin Philharmonic performance of the Deryck Cooke interpretation.

Carpenter went in other directions. It still sounds nice, but it doesn't sound quite like Mahler.

All recordings of Mahler's Tenth Symphony have the notation that they are "performing versions" but this recording states on the cover "Carpenter Completion." Competition? Carpenter? Who is he? How could the symphony be completed? How arrogant of him to do this! NO - This is a recording that every Mahler or music fan should own.

Clint Carpenter worked on the completion of Maher's Tenth Symphony from 1946 to 1966 - 20 years! Longer that and before any other person. I have corresponded with Mr. Carpenter, he is a very modest man, in bringing Mahler's Final Vision to the masses.

This is my favorite version, following the Berlin Philharmonic, Simon Rattle (Cooke). This latest recording of Mahler's Tenth Symphony "Carpenter completion" is recorded with sonic vigor. Andrew Litton conducts with perfect execution of the Carpenter score and great "tight" precision playing from the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, bring fourth great sound quality from this Delos recording. This recording does have a big dynamic range, so you do need to turn the very beginning up a bit more than normal. Once you do that, everything is sharply in focus, and you're in for quite an aural treat.

I appreciate as other do that this "completion" feels more "finished" than most of the others (Cooke, Mazzetti, and Wheeler). The program notes are great, with overviews of Mahler's Tenth Symphony in all its versions.

This is a milestone recording. Litton makes it clear that he does his very best to honor Carpenter's wishes in terms of tempi, and tempo relationships (from one section to another), in other words, the tempo ideas that you'll hear emirate more from Carpenter than from Litton.

This symphony was first performed in 1983, 17 years after it was completed. It had its recorded premiere in 1995 -- in a rare and forgettable recording, now - 36 years later, Mahler speaks to us again.

Bravo!