Controversy continues to rage over Mahler's 10th Symphony. With the exception of the opening adagio and the second of its three central scherzos, the score was unfinished at the time of the composer's death, in 1911. Some believe the drafts should never have been tampered with. Many conductors have refused to perform one or other of the completions, of which the best known is Deryck Cooke's 1976 version, given here by the London Philharmonic under Daniel Harding.

Mahler would doubtless have made changes to his material had he lived longer, and you could argue that the 10th suffers from occasional inconsistencies in tone - the bucolic first scherzo sits uneasily with the rest. But what we have is also deeply unsettling. Written under the shadows of terminal illness and marital breakdown, and linked in Mahler's mind with the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, the score juxtaposes passages of nerve-racking violence with moments of spiritual calm. Harding, with his fondness for extremes of mood and tempo, is an ideal interpreter of the piece, taking its tensions almost to breaking point then seeming to hold time still for the music to achieve tranquillity. The LPO played with great intensity and clarity.

The symphony was preceded by a performance of Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings that left a great deal to be desired. The principal horn player, Richard Bissell, was tentative throughout and tenor Ian Bostridge was in poor voice, with a vibrato occasionally intruding into the tone. Harding deployed a far larger body of strings than one might expect in the piece, which brought home Britten's debt to the throbbing nocturnes of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, but also led to some problems of balance between soloists and orchestra.