Simon Rattle - Mahler: Symphony No.10, Brahms: Piano Quartet (1985)

It was something of a surprise to be reminded that this recording was made thirty-eight years ago. I've been re-listening to it and Rattle's later recording with the Berlin Philharmonic recently and found my memories confirmed. The Berliners are a great orchestra, make a sumptuous sound, and Rattle is on fine form. And yet, it is the intensity of the Bournemouth performance that is the more gripping for me: it is constantly on the edge, just as Mahler was as he struggled to get the outline of this intensely personal music onto paper in the last summer of his life. Deryck Cooke's Performing Version of the sketches and drafts is an astonishing achievement: we can never know how the work would have turned out, how it might have been refined had Mahler lived, but Cooke provides us with overwhelming evidence that Mahler was enriching his musical language in extraordinary ways. The 1980 recording helped to establish this Symphony in the repertoire and, listening to it today, it would be a glacial heart that failed to melt during the flute solo near the start of the last movement.