The first thing to be said about these CD issues is that EMI offers nearly 118 minutes of music and RCA only just over 80. With the price of CDs rising, this counts. The difference between the performances is not so vast that the matter of value for money can be highhandedly ignored.
Deryck Cooke adn his collaborator's achievement in giving this symphony to the world can never, in my opinion, be over-estimated. All the arguments against it have been frequently marshalled but no one seems to apply them to Mozart's Requiem, which is much less Mozart than the Tenth is Mahler. Thank goodness Rattle and Levine have thrown their hats in the ring on the side of Mahler/Cooke. Levine's recording has an odd history. He made the opening Adagio nearly two years before the remainder so one can hardly write of a unified performance. Yet if we did not know, would we guess? I doubt it. He is throughout slower than Rattle, but only marginally until the sublime last movement, when he takes over four minutes longer. But one does not judge artists by the stop-watch. He sustains his tempos without ever losing the melodic line or the rhythmic pulse. The playing throughout of the Philadelphia strings is of surpassing loveliness, and the same may be said of the solo flute, trumpet and horn, all recorded with excellent balance and sonic perspective.
Rattle's impassioned performance, issued on LP six years ago, is also a notable achievement and includes the conductor's own slight adjustments to the score (which he explains in the very informative booklet accompanying the discs). The EMI recording is in much sharper and closer focus than the RCA (without loss of balance) and though one may prefer the ghostly remoteness that the RCA sound imparts to the Purgatorio, Rattle's incisive performance of the second Scherzo makes more impact. On the whole Rattle's is a tougher view, Levine's more mellow. But there is no concealing that the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is not the Philadelphia, nor is it the CBSO as represented in the thoroughly invigorating performance (recorded at the Snape, Maltings) of Schoenberg's orchestration of Brahms's g minor Piano Quartet. Schoenberg was once approached to 'complete' Mahler's Tenth. He refused; and it was felt that he could not have suppressed his own musical personality. Maybe, but he could fool most of the people most of the time with this Brahms. Apart from some impressionistic colour and the exotic percussion (including xylophone) in the Hungarian finale, it is faithful to the original and gives us an 'extra' Brahms symphony which I thoroughly enjoy and commend to others. Neither issue is adequately indexed.'