Everything Mahler composed was a reflection of his own life, its tragedies and its successes. For all the oft-quoted mantra that for him the symphony represented the world, it was the world from one particular viewpoint. Mahler sketched his final symphony in the summer of 1910, when he had less than a year to live. He left the work unfinished, but not unplayable, as the first movement is complete and the remainder is fundamentally fully sketched out. Nearly half a century passed before the musicologist Deryck Cooke took up the Tenth and began to create his now-famous ‘performing version’. But this is an overly modest description of one of the greatest musical realisations of the past century, one that occupied Cooke right up until publication in 1976, just before his own untimely death. He was assisted latterly by Colin and David Matthews, both of whom also feature as composers in this Mahler festival. And how fitting that the Tenth should provide the finale to these celebrations, offering as it does a summation of so many aspects of Mahler’s other symphonies – the conflict between life and death, light and dark, resolving in writing of the utmost tenderness – and brought to fruition through Cooke’s vision.
It’s fitting, too, that alongside this work we have a new piece by Anthony Payne (born 1936), himself a great completer of scores – most notably Elgar’s Third Symphony. In The Period of Cosmography Payne explores a theme beloved of Mahler himself, namely the universe itself.

6.30pm Preview
Lynne Walker talks to Anthony Payne.

The BBC Philharmonic and Hallé concerts will be recorded for BBC Radio 3. The concerts will be broadcast from 5 April on consecutive Mondays at 7.00pm for 10 weeks.