Jesús López-Cobos - Mahler: Symphony No. 10 in F-Sharp Minor (2021)

Mahler’s original score of the 10th Symphony was left incomplete at his death in 1911. The manuscript was left in a safe in Vienna until 1924, when Mahler’s widow, Alma, allowed a facsimile to be published. Ernst Krenek and Alban Berg prepared the first and third movements for performance, which were premiered by Franz Schalk in that same year. The remainder of the manuscript was only partially orchestrated and full of sketch material and alternative passages.

From the years 1947 to 1959, three different men began “completions” or “realizations” of the score: the American Clinton Carpenter, and the Englishmen Joe Wheeler and Deryck Cooke. None were aware of the others’ work on the manuscript until the BBC broadcast a performance of Cooke’s version for the Mahler Centenary in 1960. Alma Mahler was outraged by the performance and put a ban on further performances or publications of the score that lasted for more than two years.

Remo Mazzetti’s first performing edition of the Mahler 10th Symphony was begun in 1983 and premiered in 1989, but after he at last heard a full 1997 performance of the work in the Wheeler edition (begun in 1953), Mazzetti became dissatisfied with his own edition and began to revise it. The new revised edition was premiered in performance by Jesus Lopez-Cobos in Barcelona in 1999, and in the United States, with the Cincinnati Symphony, on February 4th and 5th, 2000. Telarc recorded the performances immediately following the American premiere. Mazzetti remarked, after hearing the performances, “I really believe I got things right this time.”

Maestro Lopez-Cobos, in his final season as Music Director of the Cincinnati Symphony, will end his tenure there with a major European concert tour. Launched by a concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall on January 22, 2001, the orchestra will perform five concerts in Spain, four in Germany, and three concerts in Poland, from January 25 to February 13. This is the orchestra’s first major tour of Europe since 1995.

Upcoming recording projects with Lopez-Cobos and the CSO include the release of the Rachmaninoff Second Symphony and the Vocalise in March of 2001, and the Shostakovich Symphonies No. 1 and No. 15, in the summer of 2001.