The wrenching power of the Ninth is such that distinguished Mahlerians of an older generation tended to ignore the shadowy existence of a Tenth, performing the Adagio on its own as if the problem didn’t exist. More recently, attitudes have changed, and, as the century draws to an end, we have become obsessed with the unfinished works of dead or dying artists; it’s almost as if we see in their unresolved tensions some prophetic vision of the life to come. This, the first generally available commercial recording of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony to use an edition other than Deryck Cooke’s, comes at a puzzling moment, Cooke’s performing version having achieved near-universal acceptance in the concert-hall and on disc. Collectors who have grown to know and love this music through the efforts of Eugene Ormandy, Wyn Morris, Sir Simon Rattle, James Levine, Riccardo Chailly or Eliahu Inbal (Kurt Sanderling’s Berlin recording has yet to reach the UK) will nevertheless want to hear what Leonard Slatkin and Remo Mazzetti have brought to the piece. There is nothing inherently wrong with tinkering with Cooke – his confederates have continued their search for an ideal version ever since his death – and, although it is sometimes claimed that Cooke added nothing of his own save patches of instrumentation, there are portions of the score where more substantial infilling was and always will be necessary.
Unlike Cooke, Mazzetti has not in general worked from the original sketches. Instead his idea has been to conflate the ‘best’ of pre-existing realizations. To summarize these: the conservative completions by Joseph Wheeler have been generally discounted; Cooke’s versions are lean and taut, filling in only the bare essentials to make a viable orchestral score; those by Chicago insurance man Clinton Carpenter (as recorded by Harold Farberman and the Philharmonia Hungarica for the Golden Strings label – nla) go much further, speculating wildly to provide the broad sweep and thicker textures supposedly characteristic of Mahler’s symphonic writing. Mazzetti comes somewhere in between. Some of his accretions are minor – a new piece of counterpoint on the cor anglais to replace Cooke’s equally speculative bassoon line in the Adagio. Elsewhere the effect is more dramatic. Mazzetti has a fondness for drum rolls and he tends to introduce them before significant peaks, the first occurring in the approach to the climax at 5'08'' (bar 58). Such innovations recall the Mahler of the Third and Fourth Symphonies rather than the composer who tended subsequently to back away from the merely illustrative in his absolute music. That said, the chamber-like clarity and linearity of the Cooke is in part a consequence of his decision to stick with unbroken string-dominated textures in the absence of indications to the contrary. Mazzetti’s jerky swatches of colour are the product of a less relentlessly intellectual approach, intuitive rather than scholarly.
Slatkin’s divided strings make quite a difference in the first Scherzo. Mazzetti’s version is altogether riper than Cooke’s, kitted out with baroque decorations that recall the finale of the Seventh or the Rondo-Burleske of the Ninth. The Landler elements are nicely swung by Slatkin, and, although there isn’t enough space between the players and the microphones for real sweetness of tone, I found this movement the most impressive of the five. The second Scherzo is again militantly full with bags of additional percussion. Towards the end, in music no more than vaguely sketched out by the composer, there are several uncomfortable moments. At 9'23'' (bars 492-4), Mazzetti reinforces the texture with trumpets but is it he or Slatkin who distorts Mahler’s rhythm in such a seemingly unnatural way? In the finale, after some oddly Sibelian-sounding subterranean rumblings – sample the cello solo from 2'00'' (bar 27 onwards) – he follows Mahler’s indication in allocating the ethereal ‘big tune’ to flute, but gives the tail-end of it to clarinet and then oboe. He also fills out the accompaniment so that the virginal purity we are used to in Cooke is somewhat compromised: I was reminded of the transatlantic pseudo-Mahler of Leonard Bernstein’s own music. The Allegro moderato core, substantially derived from the third movement, is made more specifically reminiscent of the finale of the Sixth. The restatement of the overwhelming dissonance from the Adagio is perhaps underpowered, but the stirring fortissimo restatement of the main theme from 18'45'' (bar 352ff), preceded here by the inevitable drum roll, represents a genuine attempt at catharsis which is surely right. ‘Authentic’ or not, this is one of the great moments in western music. The percussive vulgarity of the coda’s final appeal to Almschi! is less acceptable.
To sum up, I would guess that the performance itself isn’t necessarily the ideal vehicle for Mazzetti’s ideas. Slatkin is intermittently impressive but rarely moving, missing Rattle’s sustained intensity in the outer movements. Civilization doesn’t collapse with the famous nine-note dissonance; Slatkin incorporates it into the progress of the music, normalizing it. Nor is he ideally sinister in the problematical scherzos. Both sickly passions and subtler nuances tend to go by the board. Mahlerians of all persuasions will want to hear the results but may be tempted to conclude that Mazzetti’s completion relates to Mahler’s oeuvre about as closely as Free as a bird relates to that of The Beatles. Deryck Cooke, a man of the widest musical sympathies, would have been the first to appreciate the comparison. Mazzetti’s version may sound less like a ‘performing version’ and more like a finished piece, but that doesn’t make it ‘better’ or more authentically Mahlerian. Rattle’s disc remains the most convincing argument for a standard repertoire ‘Mahler Ten’. Slatkin’s, edited together from concert performances and more closely recorded than is usual from this source, comes with detailed notes and abundant good intentions. Newer copies have the arranger’s name spelt consistently throughout.'