Emotionally draining music

[Harry]

I'm sure you've already acquired it, Harry 

Anyone have a Bruckner 8th recommendation?

O, yes, for a much higher price as was necessary!

Absolutely Karajan!

[Bonehelm]

Bruckner 8th? Giulini/VPO

[greg]

Pettersson 7 ........... I'm a wreck after that one ...........

man, it's been so long since i've heard Pettersson. I don't have any of his CDs anymore, but I no what you're talking about. I listened to half of his symphonies at school 

[Sergeant Rock]

Anyone have a Bruckner 8th recommendation?

Boulez/Vienna...this surprised me; who'd have thought Boulez would be such a great Brucknerian?

Maazel/Berlin...bought this because it was cheap, not expecting much--his Bruckner in Cleveland never impressed me much--but I was blown away

Giulini/Vienna...the first choice of many here

Karajan (EMI)...an eccentric choice though. Better to choose one of the DG 8ths; I don't have a clear preference between Berlin and Vienna so I have them both.

Celibidache/Munich...but only if you think you can endure his extremely slow tempos

Sarge

[not edward]

Two works I don't think I've seen mentioned in this thread:

Prokofiev's Sixth Symphony
Busoni's Doktor Faust

[Ten thumbs]

I find emotional drain much more real when playing than when listening because one is contributing so much of oneself to the music. Apart from the obvious Schubert Sonatas, I will single out two sets that take  a lot out of one: Brahms Op 118 and Schumann's Kreisleriana. I recommend you try them.

[Bunny]

Why would you listen to music that is revolting to your sensibilities?  I never do. 

And if you do listen to such repulsive, revolting, repellent, sickening, appalling, abhorrent, loathesome music, why would you invest any energy into it?  Is it forced upon you?  (in which case we'd like all of the details, please  )

How can you be "emotionally drained" by something that either you avoid or you utterly fail to resonate with?

I wouldn't do it by choice, but sometimes I've been caught in situations where it's been unavoidable.  A business dinner with obnoxious, boring people who had music by Yanni and Kenny G is not a memory I cherish.  When I left I was so emotionally drained I could have slept for a week.  Simon Rattle conducting the BP is another painful experience that I will never again repeat.

[Lethevich]

I am, for the simple reason that 9 is, overall, a darker more disturbing work than 8, full of negative emotions. The elation I feel during the Scherzo or in the Finale of 8 is uplifting rather than draining. I immediately want to hear it again. A critic once called the Eighth's Scherzo, the machinery of heaven. I hear the Scherzo of 9 as the machinery of hell. It's demonic. The Adagio sounds to me like someone completely losing faith...in his beliefs, in life itself. The demons have won. I end up pondering mortality, specifically, my own.

Sarge

It also makes me wonder why this was Bruckner's symphony "dedicated to God". I don't mean it as an insult, but if the finale really was going to be as massively optimistic as would be required to counterbalance the first two movements (the realisations of the finale do not indicate this), it would be a big change from his previous symphonies which never had such huge (Mahlerian-like) shifts in mood, and doesn't seem to be something he was capable of or interested in attempting. Which makes me wonder whether he was even intending it to be as dark as so many people find it, and if he wasn't, how did it end up like that?

I also find the 9th very hard-going compared to the previous few, and this is heightened by that enormous adagio which has no grand final movement to finish it off. It just sounds like a symphonic death...

[Bunny]

I am, for the simple reason that 9 is, overall, a darker more disturbing work than 8, full of negative emotions. The elation I feel during the Scherzo or in the Finale of 8 is uplifting rather than draining. I immediately want to hear it again. A critic once called the Eighth's Scherzo, the machinery of heaven. I hear the Scherzo of 9 as the machinery of hell. It's demonic. The Adagio sounds to me like someone completely losing faith...in his beliefs, in life itself. The demons have won. I end up pondering mortality, specifically, my own.

Sarge

You know, it doesn't help that Bruckner was unable to finish the symphony; it's not as if he didn't have plenty of time to work on it.  I suppose he found it too difficult to imagine how to end it, either in a positive and redeeming way or in a dark and even more tragic ending.  I imagine Schubert had similar problems with the his unfinished symphony as well.  Sometimes the work on paper is as far as it should go, despite any requirements of form.

[BachQ]

I wouldn't do it by choice, but sometimes I've been caught in situations where it's been unavoidable.  A business dinner with obnoxious, boring people who had music by Yanni and Kenny G is not a memory I cherish.  When I left I was so emotionally drained I could have slept for a week. 

OK, I see your point.

I was in a grocery store recently with the most annoying pop music playing as background ...... it was killing me, so I got the hell out of there ....... Next time I will be armed with an iPod .......

[not edward]

You know, it doesn't help that Bruckner was unable to finish the symphony; it's not as if he didn't have plenty of time to work on it.  I suppose he found it too difficult to imagine how to end it, either in a positive and redeeming way or in a dark and even more tragic ending.  I imagine Schubert had similar problems with the his unfinished symphony as well.  Sometimes the work on paper is as far as it should go, despite any requirements of form.

Agreed.

That slow movement is shattering, and probably has more weight than any symphonic finale that came before (with the possible exceptions of Beethoven 9 and Bruckner 5). I don't see how any finale could follow it successfully: a negative one would be superfluous and I find it very hard to imagine how a positive one would fit in with the rest of the work.

[Haffner]

Mahler Symphonies nos. 3 and 9 (6 is strangely more Affirming in a not-so-exhausting way, for me at least)

The whole of Die Walkure is so packed with stunning music that it's easy to put off Siegfried for a day or so.

But Beethoven's op.132 as a whole is the single most emotionally draining (yet at the same time Affirming) piece of music I've ever heard. I am coming to the belief that people can have their lives improved by this String Quartet. There's a catch: it takes several listens.

[George]

But Beethoven's op.132 as a whole is the single most emotionally draining (yet at the same time Affirming) piece of music I've ever heard. I am coming to the belief that people can have their lives improved by this String Quartet. There's a catch: it takes several listens.

Never has homework so closely resembled dessert.  0:)

[jochanaan]

...Celibidache/Munich...but only if you think you can endure his extremely slow tempos

True.  Even I, who love Celibidache and think he was the greatest Brucknerian ever, find it difficult to adjust to his tempos in the first and last movements, although the Scherzo and especially the Adagio are--well, words of praise fail me.

[Bunny]

Agreed.

That slow movement is shattering, and probably has more weight than any symphonic finale that came before (with the possible exceptions of Beethoven 9 and Bruckner 5). I don't see how any finale could follow it successfully: a negative one would be superfluous and I find it very hard to imagine how a positive one would fit in with the rest of the work.

Have you heard Harnoncourt's recording of the Bruckner 9th?  He performs it as an unfinished piece looking for a resolution and it does work.  There's a second cd with a discussion and performance of the finale fragment, but my German is non-existant so I cannot comment on it.

It's better in concept and execution than that last unfinished episode of the Sopranos. 

[jochanaan]

Here are a few others that "drain" me that haven't been named yet:

Bach's B minor Mass
Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites
Purcell's Dido and Aeneas
Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw
Sibelius' Tapiola
Varèse's Ameriques and Poème Electronique

(Has anyone mentioned Górecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs?)

But at the top of this heap are the Mahler symphonies, especially #6 and #9, and Das Lied von der Erde.

[greg]

(Has anyone mentioned Górecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs?)

oh, forgot that one!
at least for me, emotionally draining, but for others, they probably just fall asleep

[Nunc Dimittis]

Part:  Stabat Mater - The first time I heard this I was driving home late at night.  I pulled into my driveway and sat there for several minutes waiting for the piece to end.  Even after it had ended I could not get myself to move for over a minute.  I was drained not just emontionally but physically.
Pettersson:  Symphonies 7 and 6
Shostakovich:  String Quartet no. 13

[Cato]

I am amazed that only one person mentioned KARL AMADEUS HARTMANN here!  All 8 symphonies qualify as various night rides through spiritual Siberias!

The Mahler Tenth Symphony as completed by whomever should be added to the list, along with Beethoven's last Piano Sonata Op. 111.

Not to be forgotten: the murderous psychological journeys of terror and mystery known as Pelleas und Melisande and Erwartung by Arnold Schoenberg!

I often showed the performance of the latter with Jessye Norman to my German classes, and many times "exhausted" is the term several students used afterward.  "That music!  It's so...tense!" was a comment I once heard from a student who sighed audibly at the end.

[MISHUGINA]

Furtwangler's wartime Bruckner 9th. And I've heard many Mahler 9ths but Horenstein's live performance with LSO is one of the very, very few ones that is difficult to sit through for pretty damn good reason. The closing few minutes of the Adagio is too painful to listen, it drains more than just few sheds of tears.