Mahler - Symphonie No 10 - Simon Rattle & The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra - 1980CD - DDD - 75'57
EMI Classids 1992
Conductor: Simon Rattle
Orchestra/Ensemble: Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
This was one of Simon Rattle's first major recordings, made before he became music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and it remains one of his best interpretively. He leads a viscerally exciting performance of Mahler's 10th Symphony, which incorporates some changes made to Deryck Cooke's final performing version of the unfinished score. Some of these (the cymbal crash at the end of the second movement) are successful, and others (the extra percussion at the climax of the finale) are less so. What's abundantly clear is that the Bournemouth string players are having a hell of time coping with Mahler's and Cooke's merciless demands, but the sense of strain is, arguably, part of the musical message. Rattle is a musician who has consistently failed to live up to his promise, on disc, at least, and it's salutary to recall just how refreshing a conductor he was before a mindlessly adoring English press immunized him against constructive self-criticism and stunted his artistic growth. --David Hurwitz
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