Newly available on a single CD, Rattle's superb interpretation now sweeps the board. Tempos are unfailingly appropriate, broader than Ormandy's (CBS) but less extreme than Levine's (RCA). Perhaps his orchestra does not play with the svelte assurance of the Philadelphians—the violas sound strained at the outset and there are problems of co-ordination in the difficult second scherzo. Yet, in terms of passion and commitment, the Bournemouth band is second to none, far more convincing than the New Philharmonia in Wyn Morris's pioneering Philips account of the definitive Cooke version (3/74—nla).
Rattle's achievement is in a special class, empowering the music with such emotional clout that you forget the scholarly debate. There are in fact several adjustments to Schirmer's published score which the conductor explained in the splendid original booklet, unaccountably dropped by EMI. Most obvious is the transition to the finale created by merging the drum stroke which ends the fourth movement with the one which triggers the fifth. The opening pages of the finale are awesome here, the drum strokes stronger and more reverberant than for Levine or Chailly (Decca) whose muffled thuds make autobiographical rather than dramatic sense. Both Levine and Rattle tend to clip the dotted rhythms of the Allegro moderato section—an oddly jocular effect. Also questionable is Rattle's decision to give a percussive edge to the return of the overpowering dissonant chords from the first movement: in truth they still seem a mite underplayed. For the most part, however, this is music-making of extraordinary fervour. Mahler/Cooke's unexpectedly positive valediction can border on the sentimental. Not so here, where the final 'sigh' is almost unbearable—heart-rending stuff which also carries the structural burden of the entire symphony. Rattle was in his mid-twenties when he recorded this disc, proving that the great conductors are alive and well but need to watch their own noisy intakes of breath. With excellent sonics (and unadventurous indexing) this is an essential purchase.'