Bruckner's Abbey

[Valentino]

Thanks for the tip folks. I downloaded the Güller 9th on FLAC. It really sounds marvellous.

[André]

A couple more interesting but not exactly famous Bruckner 9's - both in the 3 movement version.  This one;



one of the very earliest BBC Music Magazine cover discs (Vol.1 No.2 in fact).  Recorded live by the BBC PO in the cavernous acoustic of Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral - a massive 12 second reverb - by the BBC PO.  Klee 'uses'/recognises the implications of that kind of overhang in another steady performance.  Personally, even though this is a good performance - I do find that amount of resonance an issue possibly except in the very closing pages when the final great dissonant chord swirls around and then again in the very closing pages when the orchestra seems to ascend into some kind of ethereal and distant acoustic heaven(!)

The other interesting one is this;



Wakasuki was obviously a Bruckner expert and I do like German orchestras in Bruckner.  Nothing untoward or even surprising just a solidly fine Bruckner 9

The Klee performance could be played as an in memoriam for his wife, soprano Edith Mathis who died last week.

[André]

If you think that the 1891 medical episode precludes any regard for the finale of the Ninth you should also refuse to listen to the first movement, scherzo and slow movement, all of which which were completed after 1891.

The first 2 movements were fully sketched as early as 1887. He set them aside to embark on a bunch of revisions. Also, the stroke he suffered in 1891 was only the first of a series of attacks that made his last years difficult. By 1894 he couldn't go up or down the stairs in his home (that's when he was offered a flat by the Emperor). It is also well known that Bruckner's heavy drinking (10 beers every day) took a toll on his faculties. You don't die of a stroke or alcoholism like 'boom, you're dead'. It's a long and severe decline from which the mind and mental faculties are not spared.

That's why I consider (along with many others) that the material for the finale is not up to the level of mastery showed in the first 3 movements.

[calyptorhynchus]

The first 2 movements were fully sketched as early as 1887.

Ok, so you should be listening to the two movement version of the Ninth, and don't even think about listening to Helgoland.

[André]

I'm afraid you don't get it.

[calyptorhynchus]

I'm afraid you don't get it.

No, you don't get it, the finale that is.

[lordlance]

I'm afraid you don't get it.

Not really part of this debate but I am curious why the exception exists for movement III and not IV. Or really even I and II? What's the reasoning behind the demarcation?

[Der lächelnde Schatten]

The first 2 movements were fully sketched as early as 1887. He set them aside to embark on a bunch of revisions. Also, the stroke he suffered in 1891 was only the first of a series of attacks that made his last years difficult. By 1894 he couldn't go up or down the stairs in his home (that's when he was offered a flat by the Emperor). It is also well known that Bruckner's heavy drinking (10 beers every day) took a toll on his faculties. You don't die of a stroke or alcoholism like 'boom, you're dead'. It's a long and severe decline from which the mind and mental faculties are not spared.

That's why I consider (along with many others) that the material for the finale is not up to the level of mastery showed in the first 3 movements.

A completely sensible explanation of the various reasons as to why the 9th finale wasn't finished. I forgot about that unfortunate stroke he suffered, which, no doubt, was blow to his wanting to get more work done. Also, I knew Bruckner loved beer, but didn't know he drank much.

We're fortunate to have what we have from him and, for that, I'm eternally grateful.

[Wanderer]

Ok, so you should be listening to the two movement version of the Ninth, and don't even think about listening to Helgoland.

Or Vexilla regis. Or Psalm 150.

[Cato]

Not too much time right now, but a remark on a website today reminded me that Bruno Walter was a great champion of Bruckner, and in 1940, he wrote a long essay called Bruckner and Mahler for the journal of The Bruckner Society of America called Chord and Discord.

Here is the link:

http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/articles/bruckner/brucknerandmahler.php

I will comment more later!  😇

[Cato]

Not too much time right now, but a remark on a website today reminded me that Bruno Walter was a great champion of Bruckner, and in 1940, he wrote a long essay called Bruckner and Mahler for the journal of The Bruckner Society of America called Chord and Discord.

Here is the link:

http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/articles/bruckner/brucknerandmahler.php

I will comment more later!  😇

A salient excerpt from Bruno Walter's essay from 1940:

...I often heard (Mahler) call Bruckner his forerunner, asserting that his own creations followed the trail blazed by his senior master. Of course that was over forty years ago, in the days of Mahler's Second, the symphony which, more vividly than all his other works, reveals his affinity with Bruckner *.

Yet from the Third Symphony on, (Mahler's) development was marked by an ever increasing deviation from Bruckner's course. I cannot recall Mahler making the same remark during later years. Nevertheless, down to his latest works, we meet with occasional features which might be called Brucknerian * *. Thus it is worth while attaining a clear idea of the nature and degree of their relationship.

* Mahler's Symphony #2, of course, "The Resurrection," has a great religious struggle in it, and while Bruckner's symphonies are devoid of texts, people have heard in them a spiritual struggle, sometimes because of the themes, the organ-like orchestration, or whatever.

For me, growing up in a Catholic parish with a marvelous organist, who often played the Masses of Theodore Dubois, Alexandre Guilmant, Pietro Yon, et al., and because of an inborn affinity for such music, I detected a grand, mighty, and unique religiosity in Bruckner from the beginning.

Bruckner led me naturally to Mahler, and Mahler led me to Schoenberg, another composer whose struggles with - or against - the Divine are as mighty as anything from his predecessors.

* * e.g. I think of Mahler's Eighth Symphony, especially in the First Movement's development section and at the end, where the brass and choirs are often charging upward, heavenward, as heard in many of Bruckner's symphonies.

Or consider both Ninths of these composers: in the first movements of both, one hears fragmentation, the nervous, ominous musical figures surrounded at times by the silence of a meditative desert, a desert lurking perhaps with temptations and doubts to be overcome somehow in the struggle to come.

Bruno Walter, some people may be surprised to know, conducted Bruckner's Symphony #5 in 1933 with the New York Philharmonic, and often programmed other Bruckner symphonies with the orchestra after his escape from Hitler and Company.

[André]

The spiritual undercurrent under many 'secular' large works (orchestral, instrumental, operatic etc) always surfaces eventually. Man's connection with the unknown, the spiritual is something that cannot remain hidden or buried.

Striving for 'better' is universal. At the juncture between the era of philosophers and science (say: 1850-1920 and don't sue me for that), the place of humankind must have been not just mind-boggling, but upsetting. Wagner sowed his musical oats, Brahms vomited them, Bruckner spiritualided/idealialized them, Mahler digested all that in a deconstructive Me-First way, and there we go.

Coming back to the posts' initial posit: Klemperer famously said that he was an immoralist, whereas Walter was a moralist. Music as message (Walter) or music as a means to convey a personal posture (Klemperer). I view both as equally valid.

[André]

No, you don't get it, the finale that is.

I think that was established already, yes ?

[Wanderer]

Wow, so you heard it, too. Thank you for posting that review, which brought back much of the experience. Now I want to give the four-movement version another hearing, just to see how — or if — my impressions might have changed in a decade. I see the Rattle recording is easily available on YouTube.

I was already familiar with the Rattle recording of the complete Ninth and to hear the same forces performing it live was a real privilege. The work gets its true dimensions and Bruckner's spirit shines through the finale unifying what came before in a most inevitable manner; and it's very important that the Adagio gets its properly proportioned place as part of a unified Brucknerian vision that was always destined to end in triumph instead of being interpretatively disfigured in unavoidable imitation of a Mahlerian finale movement.
I'll be attending a live performance of the whole Ninth again this coming September at the Brucknerhaus in Linz. 😎

[Cato]

I was already familiar with the Rattle recording of the complete Ninth and to hear the same forces performing it live was a real privilege. The work gets its true dimensions and Bruckner's spirit shines through the finale unifying what came before in a most inevitable manner; and it's very important that the Adagio gets its properly proportioned place as part of a unified Brucknerian vision that was always destined to end in triumph instead of being interpretatively disfigured in unavoidable imitation of a Mahlerian finale movement.

I'll be attending a live performance of the whole Ninth again this coming September at the Brucknerhaus in Linz. 😎

Ausgezeichnet!!! 


This was offered by a Bruckner fan...but only one movement!

We note that Paavo Järvi still cannot find his tie!   

[Cato]

The Bruckner Journal is now available: March 2025 issue!

https://www.brucknerjournal.com/subscription


The editor is looking for "younger" Bruckner enthusiasts to apply to the Bruckner Society of America to keep it going.

...Both the Journal and Society have always prided themselves as being
organizations dedicated to Bruckner enthusiasts of all levels of interest –
from scholar to the casual concert-goer.

As such, I would like to invite
anyone interested in maintaining the stature and importance of Bruckner to
become involved in the Journal and/or Society in whatever way suits your
interest. Please feel free to contact me directly.

Change can be welcomed and embraced. I look forward to Bruckner
remaining relevant and exciting for generations to come – and welcome all
new involvement as we all support our musical master together!

~ Michael Cucka
E-mail editor@brucknerjournal.com

The Bruckner Journal represents an attempt to keep the society going on a musicological level.

The Bruckner Society of America was founded in 1931 (!) and published a journal called Chord and Discord with wonderful articles.  I used to subscribe to it in the 1960's.

Here is the final issue, dated 1998, the first issue to appear in 30 years: it has 3 articles on Mahler as well as articles on Bruckner:

https://www.brucknersocietyamerica.org/society/ewExternalFiles/1998-c.pdf