Except that the Mozart requiem is a shadow of his greatest works. Of course, that's not to say it doesn't have its moment (i.e. the bits he actually wrote), however, in much the same way as with the performing editions of the 10th, it isn't the real thing and it feels it.

Of course that's not to say that people should play, or can't enjoy, enjoy either work. Clearly (as evidenced in this thread), they can and do. However, it doesn't  alter that, in my view, the 10th is not in the same league as his ten actual symphonies (including Das Lied), a view shared by a number of significant interpreters of his work.

Yesterday I came home from my s/h CD operation with (among other things) the Norrington Mahler 4th. A few days ago I'd also read, well, I supose I should really say skimmed through, to be honest, David Hurwitz' hysterical article on vibrato. Curious that Norrington and Hurwitz hear completely different things in the same old recordings. Now, I'm not in any way an expert on "historical" recordings, which I tend in general to avoid, but I do know that if you listen to orchestral recordings from as recently as the 1960s you can still hear clear differences between the "sound" of different orchestras which have been considerably ironed-out in the meantime. Going further back in time these differences must increase, I would think (and of course this applies to many other areas of musical performance), such that in Mahler's time they would have been quite pronounced. The point being that, regardless of the rights and wrongs of vibrato in orchestral strings as exemplified in the strong opinions of the two aforementioned authorities, it doesn't seem inconceivable to me that orchestras around 1900 might have had sharply-distinguished "house styles" (there wasn't anything like as much movement of players between orchestras as there is now, nor were there any broadcasts or recordings of course), some of which involved string vibrato and some of which didn't. So Norrington's realisation ought to be welcomed on the grounds of putting a bit of the lost individuality back into orchestral practice, leaving aside its "authenticity".

I found Norrington's tempi more surprising than the string sound, especially in the second movement and especially the molto più mosso at the end of it. As Ollie has said, it's a performance which deserves to be heard, and for me it might well be up there with Kubelik, and I was going to say Boulez but then remembered that Boulez's second movement (despite the solo violin having, for once, what I'd regard as exactly the right approach) sticks doggedly to the same tempo throughout and (less forgiveably) uses a take where an important clarinet phrase didn't get played at all.

Komsi's rather hampered by the balance I think - I suspect it worked better in the hall.

I was in Stuttgart recently and happened to be playing a piece with a cellist who's worked quite a bit in that orchestra although not under Norrington. He assures me the players can't wait to get back to wobbling again as soon as the Norrington weeks are over. Poor things. I had also assumed on the basis of the ravishing opening to the 4th symphony slow movement that the cellists must have been first on board the non-wobbling boat. Far from it, he says. Apparently the principal clarinettist is the biggest Norrington fan. No surprise there...

Certainly agree that it's rubbish.

If nothing else Mahler would deserve a mention for expanding what the symphony could contain (what happens after death - No. 2) and the form (six movements - No. 3).

Um ...?

Is this simply b/c Matthews requires one to write 5 symphonies b/f gaining "symphonist" status, or does he actually hold the utterly moronic view that the first four aren't particularly good?

Or (perhaps (?) more reasonably) is he simply making the point that the first four have unusual forms/instrumentation, somehow balking at all the (odd) vocal and choral bits and the disproportionate movement lengths and seeing that as somehow outside of the symphonic tradition?  

In any case, it's a baffling remark.

The comment does come in Matthews' sleeve notes for a Mahler 5 somewhere, doesn't it? It does seem a very weird thing to say. I'm not defending it as a statement but maybe it makes a bit more sense with a bit more of Matthews' context for the remark?

blimey - that changes it around rather.
i agree with him.

After all, before Mahler there weren't all that many symphonies (at least not ones with numbers... which for example Berlioz' didn't have) which experimented quite so much with the form and the forces. Perhaps Matthews' point is that Mahler's purely instrumental pieces from the 5th on sort of retrospectively validated the symphonicness of the previous works; also that the 5th comes closer to being genuinely self-contained than its predecessors and was the first Mahler symphony conceived from the beginning in its final form. (Or almost. ) I don't sign up to everything Matthews writes in that note but if that's his point then it seems a reasonable one to me.