General Category > Gustav Mahler and Related Discussions

light holiday listening: annual M10 fest.

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Leo K:
Regarding the Litton/Carpenter disk, I was really amazed to find how "large" the 10th became when I first heard this account.  I'm still absorbing this version, as I'm so used to the Cooke and Wheeler versions, but I really like the Carpenter...Litton's performance is real epic and exciting.  I should have got this along time ago, but I was too influenced by alot of negative reviews.  The discussion on the old board convinced me to give it a try. 

barry guerrero:
I'm glad you chose to give Carpenter a chance. It's easy see why people would be freaked out by the Carpenter completion. But weirdly enough, I think he his excesses actually sound more like Mahler than some of the other, more restrained versions do; simply by way of his harmonic voicings and orchestration. Anyway, after your done absorbing Carpenter, I'd like to burn you a copy of S/M and let you chew on that. I'd be curious to get your reaction. Unfortunately, it won't sound anywhere as good to you, sonically speaking, than the Delos recording. It's also not nearly so well played. But I like what S/M come up with.

Barry

John Kim:
Like Barry, my overall best pick of M10 is the Litton/DSO/Delos, not so much because of the version but mostly the extraordinary playing & sound Litton gets from his orchestra. When the playing is of such a high order, I cannot complain they are playing Carpenter's edition. In fact. I like Carpenter's orchestration very much and that adds to my fondness of this recording.

Leo K:

--- Quote from: barry guerrero on December 29, 2006, 09:43:31 PM ---I'm glad you chose to give Carpenter a chance. It's easy see why people would be freaked out by the Carpenter completion. But weirdly enough, I think he his excesses actually sound more like Mahler than some of the other, more restrained versions do; simply by way of his harmonic voicings and orchestration. Anyway, after your done absorbing Carpenter, I'd like to burn you a copy of S/M and let you chew on that. I'd be curious to get your reaction. Unfortunately, it won't sound anywhere as good to you, sonically speaking, than the Delos recording. It's also not nearly so well played. But I like what S/M come up with.

Barry

--- End quote ---

Thats great, thanks!  I'm really curious to finally hear the S/M completion.  I've heard they also did a completion of Bruckner's 9th, which I haven't heard, but Bruckner is still rather new to me.

I'm playing the Litton now at work, and it is stunning, especially the string playing. 

Also, I remember remember reading a good article by Carpenter on the Mahler Archives site, and it helped me to prepare to hear his version.  I'm going to review that and the other articles today at work.  I remember running across Theodore Bloomfield's article In Search of Mahler's Tenth: The Four Performing Versions as Seen by a Conductor in the Musical Quarterly in the early 90's...it was my introduction to Mahler's 10th (which can be found online here:  http://www.jstor.org/view/00274631/ap020287/02a00010/0).  I spent many blissful afternoons poring over that article. 
 
 

barry guerrero:
The Bruckner 9th is a totally different situation. Bruckner actually numbered his pages, and they keep finding new pages for the finale, here and there. It makes you wonder how those pages could have possibly become so spread out. Anyway, everything up to a certain point is entirely Bruckner. Then, from there on, the Restoration people - and there's a whole slough of them with the Bruckner - have to compose on their own. The entire coda to the finale is purely conjectural!

No offense to anybody here, but I've yet to listen to one of these completions (Bruckner, that is) that I find entirely satisfying. In fact, Bruckner's own writing sounds more like a first movement to a 10th symphony, than a finale to the 9th - well, to me anyway. It just sound as though it doesn't have much relationship to the previous three movements. Probably the best place to get a feel and explanation for all this, is on the Bruckner 9th recording with Harnoncourt. He has a second disc that gets into this whole topic, with a running commentary by Harnoncourt.

I sure wish Harnoncourt would change his mind about Mahler. I'd love to see him make a recording of the first symphony, especially if they gave him the VPO or Concertgebouw, which they always do. I bet he could easily match Norrigton in the inner movements, but beat the pants off of him in the finale.

Barry

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