Mahler: Symphony No. 10 in F-Sharp Major "Unfinished" (Completed by D. Cooke)

Approfondimenti

Conductor Osmo Vänskä and his Minnesota Orchestra have seemed to ease into their cycle of Mahler symphonies as it proceeds, and with the composer's unfinished Symphony No. 10, they reach a high plain of deliberate meditativeness. Vänska takes his time in the vast opening movement and finale, and the emotional tenor is kept even by Mahlerian standards. If one's ideal for Mahler is the histrionic performances of Bernstein, then Vänskä is to be avoided, here and elsewhere, but Vänskä's approach has its virtues, perhaps especially in the Symphony No. 10. It's almost an article of faith that this unfinished symphony (Deryck Cooke's 1989 completion is used) is autobiographical, reflecting the composer's mounting health worries and the decay of his marriage to his wife, Alma. But what if it's not? The symphony is the most dissonant of Mahler's ten, and he may simply have sensed which way the wind was blowing in the giant chords, containing nine of the 12 notes of the scale, that appear out the climaxes of the first and final movements. Vänskä balances the dissonances out with long, transcendent passages of calm that never lose their momentum and showcase Vänskä's years of work with the Minnesota Orchestra strings at its absolute best. Vänskä's two Scherzos are too nervous and disjointed to be real Viennese waltzes, and overall, the Tenth emerges in his hands as perhaps more of a proto-modernist work than any of Mahler's other symphonies, in an interpretation well worth the listener's consideration.

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