Royal Festival Hall, London
Rudolf Barshai’s audacious completion of Marhler’s final unfinished symphony slathers on the colour, and its diverse timbral details came over loud and clear thanks to the LPO’s playing and Vladimir Jurowski’s textural lucidity
For decades following his premature death at the age of 50, it was believed that the fragments of Gustav Mahler’s 10th symphony were just that: skeletal ideas impossible to flesh out into anything worth hearing. It was British musicologist Deryck Cooke who first took a proper look, discovering that crucial melodic lines were intact throughout the entire work. His subsequent lithe-limbed “performing version” has been embraced by many – but some have adopted a more interventionist approach, the most popular being Russian conductor Rudolf Barshai, whose audacious completion Vladimir Jurowski presented here.
As Jurowski admits, Barshai’s orchestrations bring the music closer to Shostakovich and perhaps Britten – both huge fans of Mahler. On its own terms it succeeds, though for those familiar with Cooke’s version it’s a bit of a culture shock. Where the Englishman deployed restraint and a scrupulously Mahlerian palette, in the movements the composer left most incomplete – the second, fourth and fifth – Barshai slathers on the colour. There’s a clattering xylophone, a guitar (miraculously audible amid the orchestral melee), a Wagner tuba, a cornet, a second tuba to beef up the most terrifying passages, a second harp, celesta, woodblocks, tubular bells and a trio of tiny gongs. That these diverse timbral details came over loud and clear was a testament to Jurowski’s textural lucidity and the outstanding playing of the LPO.
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