Midwife to Mahler
Two of the symphony's five movements—the opening Adagio and the third (`Purgatorio')— needed little attention or none at all, having been wholly orchestrated, or almost so, by Mahler himself. Apart from a counterpoint here and there and certain harmonic fillings-out, all of which Mr. Cooke supplied conjecturally, the remaining three movements were structurally complete. In orchestrating them—i.e., in decid- ing what instruments should play which lines and harmonies—he was guided by Mahler's manuscript indications (these are sometimes sparse, sometimes comprehensive) and by stylis- tic analogy from the Mahler corpus. On hearing (in New York) the tape of an incomplete studio performance of. Mr. Cooke's `realisation,' the former Frau Alma Maria Mahler was so moved that she withdrew without qualification the veto which had been dictated by reverence for her first husband's memory.
The symphony's first full-length public per- formance was by the London Symphony Orches- tra under Berthold Goldschmidt. It took place at a Promenade Concert in the presence of six or seven thousand Londoners and aroused flame- like enthusiasm. Up in the galleries stamping feet sounded like a cavalry charge—or, better still, like a city rising to Tchaikovsky's Sixth' or Beethoven's Seventh for the first time. I dwell upon this demonstration as showing that Mr. Cooke's achievement is no mere act of musical scholarship (dismal phrase!) any more than Mahler is a mere `musician's composer.'
Now that we may hear it from end to end, the Tenth emerges not as a bone for specialists and fanatics to chew and snap over, but as a missive to the world. Some of us already knew the opening Adagio, which had many separate performances before Mr. Cooke came along.
Always we were staggered by wall of brassy dissonance, that ruthless interlocking of seventh
harmonies, which- rises about three-quarters. of the way through and is dominated by a scream- ing A natural on the solo trumpet. What the Prom performance disclosed was that this same device, with a peremptory minor-third motif picked up en route, recurs to even more stag- gering effect in the finale. It serves here as a foil to melodies of unearthly or hearth-warm or hovering beauty whose like Mahler had never encompassed before. One of these melodies, long and heavenly, for flute solo, should be within the repertory—or, at any rate, the ambition— of every principal-flute in the world. And who is ever likely to forget his first hearing of the desolating Schliige, double-forte, for muffled bass-drum which mark the finale's opening pages? I'll swear there were hundreds in the Albert Hall who dropped their jaws and went haggard, as at the intimations of calamity.
If Mahler had lived to revise, re-revise and re- polish it according to custom, the Tenth would not be quite as Mr. Cooke has, of necessity, left it. Even so, the world is in Mr. Cooke's debt. He has been midwife to a true repertory sym- phony. It has been a long lying-in. Mahler's composition sketch is dated 1910.
CHARLES REID
Previous page
