The older I get, the more I believe that nobody has yet bested Deryck Cooke's Mahler 10 completion. (His admirable modesty notwithstanding, what he wrought was effectively a completion.) That said, I think Klemperer put it best when he said that any attempts at making the Mahler 10 sketches performable required a "second Mahler".
We have the first movement mostly complete, at least—some of the most beautiful and perfect music anybody ever composed.
I was surprised to read in the recent Déjà Review (https://musicwebinternational.com/2024/06/mahler-symphony-no-10-delos-2/) of this how much the late, respected Mahler guru Tony Duggan disliked this recording, in that while I concede that the scoring is very lush and perhaps a degree over-elaborated, I thoroughly enjoy it and am happy to hear it as a supplement or alternative to the more widely played, recorded and celebrated Deryck Cooke version. I certainly do not share his view that "Litton’s conducting of Carpenter's scoring comes over as saccharine and sickly" or that the arrangement "distorts Mahler’s voice". To be fair TD finishes by declaring "But these are the opinions of just one person, one Mahlerite with some experience. I hope that another review of this recording can appear here on Music Web to give another opinion." I would be interested to know if others share his aversion or enjoy it as I do.
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