MAHLER: Symphony No. 10 in F sharp major

Album review

The most important thing to know about this recording of Deryck Cooke's performing version of Mahler's Tenth Symphony with Michael Gielen leading the SWR-Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freibrug is that the conductor passionately and profoundly believes in the music. Not every conductor has: put off by the fact that Mahler didn't live to complete the last four movements, Bernstein, Solti, Kubelík, and Haitink didn't record more than the work's opening Adagio. Gielen, however, acknowledges that Mahler's Tenth is unfinished by letting the listener hear the score's voids and vacancies and, furthermore, he honors the integrity of Mahler's Tenth by letting the music that is in the score have its full measure of sound and meaning through Cooke's inspired realization. Gielen's Tenth is faster and more vital, even more angry, than most conductor's completed Tenth. His performance still begins in hushed quiet and ends in resounding silence but fills every note from beginning to end with a surging, soaring lyricism infused with love and fear. Gielen does not hesitate to push a tempo or increase a crescendo and at climaxes he sometimes seems to get a bit ahead of the beat, but the intensity of his interpretation makes his lapses understandable. The SWR-Sinfonieorchester's playing is more ragged than usual, perhaps in part because of Gielen's ardent interpretation, but they nevertheless hang with him through to the transfigured final bars. Hänssler's sound is deep and warm.
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