Simply put, this set is a treasure that is also a bargain. Two masterful performances by Barshai and the outstanding Junge Deutsche Philharmonie (a youth orchestra playing like a world class orchestra), both performances among the best available versions of each work. Mahler's unfinished score for his Tenth symphony has been ably projected and realized in performing editions of (most commonly) Deryck Cooke, Joe Wheeler, Clinton Carpenter, Remo Mazzetti, and others. Performances of the Tenth are now commonplace, and there are numerous recordings, many compelling.
It was something of a surprise to be reminded that this recording was made thirty-eight years ago. I've been re-listening to it and Rattle's later recording with the Berlin Philharmonic recently and found my memories confirmed. The Berliners are a great orchestra, make a sumptuous sound, and Rattle is on fine form. And yet, it is the intensity of the Bournemouth performance that is the more gripping for me: it is constantly on the edge, just as Mahler was as he struggled to get the outline of this intensely personal music onto paper in the last summer of his life.
A host of accomplished conductors including Daniel Harding, Daniele Gatti, Bernard Haitink and Eliahu Inbal lead the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in these performances of Mahler's Symphonies Nos. 1-10. Recorded in Amsterdam over two seasons in 2010/11, the collection also includes 'Das Lied von der Erde'.
When EMI made their various sonata and concerto recordings with Claudio Arrau in the 1950s, his reputation in this country was at its zenith; and rightly so, to judge from much that their five-CD Beethoven Edition has to offer. Later, a reaction set in, something that first became apparent in these pages in 1963 as Arrau, now a Philips artist, embarked on his cycle of all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas.
The musical reconstructions industry keeps gathering pace, but few works have attracted as much attention as Mahler's 10th Symphony. Joe Wheeler (who died in 1977) was a brass-playing British civil servant with a passion for Mahler. This completion (itself in an edition by the conductor here, Robert Olson) uses the leaner orchestration of the composer's later years. But does it sound Mahlerian? Certainly more so than Remo Mazzetti's 1997 version, but neither caps Deryck Cooke's acute sense of authentic detail and color in his legendary edition.