United Kingdom Mahler: London Philharmonic Orchestra / Vladimir Jurowski (conductor). Royal Festival Hall, London, 24.1.2026. (JR)
Mahler – Symphony No.10 (completed by Rudolf Barshai)
Soon after Mahler’s death in 1911 at the age of only 51 came news of a five-movement Tenth Symphony. The first movement, a lengthy Adagio was more or less complete: this movement is frequently now performed in concert on its own and rightly considered one of Mahler’s finest slow movements. Apart from one major dissonance, it does not progress (if that is the right word) into the atonal world of the Second Viennese School, although there is more than a nod in that direction. The third movement, intriguingly entitled Purgatorio (an Allegretto moderato) was salvageable. The other three movements were, however, a tangled mass of sketches. Scrawled across these pages were exclamations evidencing Mahler’s desperation with his wife (whom he discovered was having an affair with young, handsome architect Walter Gropius) and his failing health.
I now must, I am afraid, take you through the various ‘versions’ and ‘completions’ of this symphony, and we start with a ‘Performing Version’ in 1964 by musicologist and musician Deryck Cooke. He deliberately did not want to call it a completion; he assiduously pieced together the scraps of music and used as little additional material as possible to make the symphony performable. This ‘version’ – with assistance to Cooke by Berthold Goldschmidt – was itself subjected to a further revision (between 1966 and 1972) with help from British composers Colin and David Matthews. This has been the version universally played (and which most of us of a certain age grew up with, perhaps Simon Rattle’s 1999 recording with the Berlin Philharmonic) until, in the year 2000, Russian conductor Rudolf Barshai decided to have another bash. Cooke thought it was an impertinence to re-compose the symphony. Barshai had no such qualms. Britten, Shostakovich and Schoenberg were all previously asked to fill in the gaps but all refused.
I should mention, just for the sake of completeness, that there are many other versions, by Clinton Carpenter, Joseph Wheeler, Remo Mazzetti, Yoel Gamzou and a joint effort by Nicola Samale and Guiseppe Mazzuca. There are also several chamber versions, and a piano transcription. You will be lucky, if that is the right word, to ever hear any of them in live performance: however, many have been recorded.
Rudolf Barshai was a Russian conductor and violist; born in 1924, after founding the Moscow Chamber Orchestra in 1955, he emigrated to the West in 1977. British readers will remember him as Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra from 1982 to 1988. Jurowski advocates the Barshai version, saying that ‘it brings Mahler more into the proximity of Shostakovich and perhaps Britten (who both adored Mahler as we know)’. (Barshai made the well-known string orchestra version of Shostakovich’s Eighth Quartet, which Shostakovich pronounced ‘even better than the original’).
Barshai’s version of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony is fuller in tone and texture than Cooke’s. Barshal enriches the overall sound, adds colour, particularly with striking use of an array of percussion, but also with two tubas, guitar (elements of the Nachtmusik from Symphony No.7) and a cornet. It certainly adds warmth to the whole. Both versions sound like different takes on the same work, and you can pay your money and take your choice. Purists and some critics will prefer the Cooke version: others will certainly find much to interest and entertain in Barshai’s richer, less austere version. Jurowski presented a cogent argument for more outings of this latter version.
The London Philharmonic Orchestra played outstanding well, although I suspect most players had never played the last four movements. I highlight Juliette Bausor’s mellifluous flute playing in her long solo in the final movement. Jurowski did not unduly linger in any of the slower passages and gave us spirited accounts of the Scherzo and Allegro pesante.
The banged drum in the last movement was extremely loud, sounding almost like gunshots, even though offstage, certainly not muffled as in the Cooke versions.
It was good to see the Royal Festival Hall sold out, somewhat surprising for a work which I suspect some will not have ever heard. (If they thought they were going to hear anything like Mahler’s earlier symphonies (Nos. 2, 3, 5, 6, and 8 in particular), they were in for a rude awakening). This work is a natural progression from Mahler’s Ninth Symphony (a new recording by Jurowski and the LPO has just been released on the LPO label and on first hearing on BBC Radio 3 sounds magnificent) and Das Lied von der Erde.
The rapturous applause at the end was testament to a fine performance of an interesting completion and version of Mahler’s final oeuvre.
John Rhodes
I fully agree that the Barshai version deserves more outings. Prior to seeing this, my only familiarity with this version was from the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie recording (under the baton of Barshai himself), but Jurowski’s precision and the splendid playing of the LPO cemented this (at least in my head) as a new ‘standard’ of the Tenth.
The array of mics on stage suggests that this performance may be released – similar to the excellent Jurowski/LPO Ninth that was launched the day before the performance – and one can only hope that the bronchial contagion that affected the audience between (and even during) movements can be suppressed and removed as effectively!
I had a seat behind the timps in the front row of the choir, and despite the extra weight of the percussion and brass that such a location will bring, the interplay between first and second violins, and the immersive ‘surround sound’ spread of the entire orchestra still came through with force and clarity, and made for a memorable experience.
With the Tenth, there’s always the sense that anything beyond the first and third movements is little more than a ‘what would Mahler have done?’ guessing game, and if you play this game, you’ll always be unsatisfied, as the question cannot truly be answered. But if you do NOT play this game and avoid taking a condescending approach of viewing II, IV and V as mere ‘fan fiction’, you have a full work that can be enjoyed in its own right. Authenticity isn’t always about purity and origins, and this performance of the Barshai Mahler 10 struck me as a fully authentic outing that was a joy to experience.
I thought it was a pretty weird performance. Maybe that’s as it should be. The opening Adagio was very intense, but glacially slow – probably as slow as Wyn Morris’s recording. And then, having got through that, Jurowski took a break and sat on a piano stool just beyond the podium. It was as though we were observing that five-minute break that Mahler asks for after the first movement of the Second Symphony. I didn’t get much from the second movement, it seemed a little tiresome, and I was disappointed by Jurowski going attacca from Purgatorio to the fourth movement. That nasty little movement – and it wasn’t nasty enough in this performance – needs to stand separate at the centre of the five-movement arch, I think, whereas Jurowski’s (Barshai’s?) idea seemed to be that the first movement be somehow separated and the last three movements should all run together, again rather like the second symphony. Although Jurowski made some dramatic gestures, I didn’t hear the all the snarling and ironic bite I feel the fourth movement aspires to. That maybe partly be due to Barshai’s orchestration, and it did improve as it went along. The loud off-stage drum beats weren’t that loud up where I was in row E in the balcony and the strings and trumpet (I think that’s what happens) didn’t manage to maintain the intensity as they took up the melody from the extraordinary flute solo. Up in the balcony, that final gesture from the strings, the massive crescendo leap of a thirteenth, ‘Almschi’ written the score, didn’t quite cut the mustard. Come the finish, I certainly felt I’d been with the musicians through something very intense, exhausting, but it felt weird, as though somehow misdirected. I hadn’t quite understood what Jurowski was after.
I completely agree with Ken’s observations and have to disagree with John’s review. It’s perhaps unfair to compare this LPO performance with the Cooke performing version which I heard at the Berlin Festival in September 1999, given by the BPO under Rattle. That had seared itself in my memory starting with the long opening line for the violas. By contrast, the LPO section sounded so thin and lacking in tonal depth that I wondered whether I had misremembered. I hadn’t. It can be heard on the live Rattle recording in all its glory.
The basic problem with Barshai’s version (and we should recall that he did a fantastic Shostakovich cycle with WDR forces) is that he keeps adding sugar and spice (the wacky array of additional percussion instruments, for instance) to the bare bones of Mahler’s structure, as if to suggest that otherwise the work would fail to make any kind of effect. Composers, musicologists and others will always be free to reimagine Mahler’s own sketches, but in this instance I felt that Barshai was not doing Mahler any service at all.