(Cooke)sym.10: Chailly / Berlin.rso

In the history of the symphony one frequently finds writers viewing the genre's development in the 19th century as proceeding along two concurrent yet diverging paths: those composed without attempting to match the monumental scope of Beethoven's final symphony (Mendelssohn's, Schumann's); and those that strove to match or, ideally, surpass Beethoven's milestone (by Brahms and Bruckner). The Symphonies of Gustav Mahler belong to the latter group, and represent the end of the Romantic line of great Viennese symphonies.
Ironically, with the closing of this one door, another opened, although this time the historical narrative would not be conducted through the compositional realm. Just as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony haunted composers throughout the 1800's, so Mahler's symphonic legacy has haunted devotees and scholars since his death in 1911. Imbued with Mahler's trademark topos of death, and the possibility of overcoming death through music (a topos arising from another monumentally influential work, Wagner's opera 'Tristan und Isolde'), Mahler's detailed sketches for an unfinished Tenth Symphony were orchestrated and made complete in five movements through the collaboration of musicologists and conductors. It now seems that Deryck Cooke's "performing version of the draft for the Tenth Symphony," published in 1976, has brought Mahler's symphonic ouvre to a close.
As always, Chailley avoids sentimentality and gives a weighty, clear-sighted reading. His musicality lies in combining a gracious, easygoing manner with the utmost scrupulousness in phrasing and dynamics. The latter, as Bruno Walter showed, was essential to any successful interpretation of Mahler, and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra delivers.