Concert Review: Too Many Cookes

Sir Simon Rattle conducts the completed Mahler Tenth.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Sir Simon Rattle at study.
Photo by Monika Rittershaus for EMI Classics/WBC. 

When Gustav Mahler died on May 18, 1911, he left behind five folders of musical sketch material. There were two completed movements and three of four-stave sketches: the bones of his unfinished Symphony No. 10. On Monday night, in the concluding performance of a three-movement series, Sir Simon Rattle and his London Symphony Orchestra gave their first New York performance together of this still controversial work, in a five-movement performing edition created in 1960 by musicologist Deryck Cooke.