Mahler, G.: Symphony No. 10 (Performing Version By D. Cooke) (Berlin Symphony, Sanderling)

The Kurt Sanderling Mahler 10th has not always been easy to come by. Recorded in 1978, it had only been available previously as a Japan import CD, and before that on very hard to find and grittily pressed East German Eterna LP's. Despite what the previous reviewer claims, Sanderling's performannce of the Mahler-Cooke 10th Symphony, in its five movement version is nothing short of revelatory. Sanderling uses the revised Cooke score of 1976 as his basis, and employs some most effective and subtle characteristic revisions of his own in orchestration; nothing terribly drastic and ALL to the printed scores benefit. In Kurt's hands, the first scherzo makes sense as never before, and The Finale in particular is nothing short of miraculous and overwhelming. In both movements here, some filling out of the scores bare spots have been ingeniously filled. As does Simon Rattle, extra percussional weight has been added in the Finale to more effectively depict sheer horror. Kurt Sanderling uses more of it and to much more stunning and profound effect. I've always found the Finale's final moments, as deeply moving as they are, to be somewhat overly bare. Kurt keeps the bass line going, and the effect is nothing short of hypnotic. The 1978 recording quality is clean, up front, clear and anything but crude (though obviously not as modern as the Digital versions by Rattle, Chailly etc). This performance of the Mahler-Cooke 10th has always had a reputation as being one of the best kept secrets among classical recordings. It is simply the most overwhelming performance of the Cooke Mahler 10th ever recorded, and simply must be heard by anyone with an interest in the composer. When all is said and done, you will be moved to tears. On those rare previous occasions when this recording has been reviewd on line or in publications, it has always been accolades and beyond. The previous review has been the only time I have ever seen or heard anything negative regarding this extrordinary performance. Simply, a must hear!!!

I tried this recording following the recommendation of prevous reviewer "Bert" Christmas, and I thank him for both his enthusiastic review and the tip. We are now spoilt for choice when it comes to recordings of the 10th; what was just a shell has been fleshed out by Cooke (in three versions), Wheeler and Barshai to become a wholly feasible, aesthetically satisfying, performance reality. Conductors feel free to make their own adjustments, particularly regarding how much "filler" orchestration and percussion are required, but we have ended up with some very pleasant dilemmas if constrained to select only one.

I have taken off one star when I would have preferred, had the system allowed, to remove only a half, simply because as much as I admire this Sanderling account, I am still under the spell of Barshai's magnificent version (see my review of the 2 CD set of the 5th and 10th on the Brilliant label) and want to indicate that the analogue sound of this 1979 recording, although digitally remastered, is not the equal of that given to Inbal, Rattle (see my comparative review) or Barshai.

The best thing about Sanderling's conducting is his grasp of tempi and understanding of how the five movements relate to each other. Barshai takes a more overtly emotive approach to the score and his orchestration is correspondingly richer than the more austere Cooke version, but Sanderling is even more bleakly world-weary, differentiating between the appearance of the great climactic, nine-note discord in the first and last movements by adding extra percussion in the last movement, then exploiting the contrast to bring great serenity to the closing pages of the finale. Those last moments under Sanderling are among the beautiful on disc, only I could wish for a tad more Mahlerian portamento on that last octave leap by the strings.

Nobody plays as beautifully as the Berlin Philharmonic under Rattle, but (incredibly) both the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie under Barshai and Sanderling's Berlin Sinfonie run them close. This is a magnificent recording, all the more so in the context of its being made over thirty years ago, when a performing tradition was still being rediscovered and reinvented by conductors such as Bernstein, Kubelik and Barbirolli. In that regard alone, Sanderling seems ahead of the pack.

I had been coming across references to the Sanderling recording, always deeply respectful, for years. They mostly just said they'd recommend it if it were available, but it wasn't, so they recommended something instead. Finally a few months ago I came across the music itself - sort of - in a choppy, sputtery YouTube compilation. Even in that form, it was enough to revive a relationship with Mahler which had cooled off, almost grown cold, after the wild delights and throes of passion that ensued shortly after our first encounter in 1965. I was sixteen at that time, and deeply nostalgic for how it had felt to be eleven. For me, eleven was a glorious moment, full of wondrous discoveries about art (awed by VanGogh stars, awed by the magical rainbow of snakes crawling out of my first oil paint tubes), music (listening--Beethoven, Bach, Cleftones, Shirelles), life in general (feeling fully alive at last), girls (imagining), cats, candlelight, moonlight, Herman Hesse, Zen sayings, my luscious and kindly English teacher, bicycling down empty roads through the woods in winter, you name it. Mahler made me feel eleven again. He restored to life my withering emotional roots -- bringing back the juicy, uninhibited, comic, tragic feelings I was afraid I might never feel again. That's what makes us fall in love with the guy. When he isn't being adolescent he's being childlike. You could even says he's Oedipal: fuming with murderous desperate rage against his brutal remote daddy, then sleeping it off or weeping it off in the warm glow of mommy's unconditional love, that drama most vividly realised in the Second and the Sixth, but always simmering and churning below the surface. And what a surface it is, the richest, most imaginative and inventive orchestration ever. You don't like Mahler, you don't love Mahler, you need Mahler. He accompanied me everywhere in my mind's ear. Whenever I got stuck and couldn't get a feeling about what I needed to do (in a problematic romance or a problematic painting) a Mahler record would supply the feeling I needed. A Mahler concert (Leinsdorf is underrated!) even resolved my indecision about whether to actively resist the Vietnam War.

This all would have sounded very crazy back in the days before the world's craziness caught up with Mahler's craziness and then went beyond even his worst nightmares. For a half-century at least, Mahler's music has served as a refuge of sanity, a place to be healed and recharged -- and there might be millions now who feel that way. Time passed, though, and I found I needed it less. And less. It wasn't just that I had absorbed all the recordings and concerts I could afford, so I had all the music inside me already. It wasn't just that I overdosed, I'd overdone it. No, it was worse. I was outgrowing Mahler. A live concert now and then, finally, not even that. For several years, the one exception was the Tenth, in which he had finally grown up all the way, and he could pull me forwards instead of backwards. The Tenth always worked for me, every time I heard it something new would emerge, some new wisdom or plane of consciousness. Then it worked less. Then it too stopped working. I started acquiring different versions, trying to get one that would do it for me. That feeling of being in the presence of some great cosmic intelligence, where was it? Each one did it less. I was getting bored. The Tenth too was sounding adolescent to me now. When you start to get old and death and loss are really happening, you don't need music that takes you into it, you need to come through it and out the other side. Wallowing in pain and crying out for consolation is for kids. I gave up. Could it be I'd merely imagined the bit about that supernatural yet deeply human presence? So it seemed. Those last ten minutes and the great final chord, once the holy of holies, now felt like a visit to a church I could no longer believe in.

Then I heard Sanderling.