Bruckner's Abbey

Started by Lilas Pastia, April 06, 2007, 07:15:30 AM

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Lilas Pastia

DON'T MISS THEM !!!

Both are on the half dozen "best" roster.

Israfel the Black

I have been way out of the loop lately in terms of music. Can anyone recommend me some notable Bruckner recordings released in the past year or so?

Daverz

Quote from: Israfel the Black on August 02, 2008, 12:28:39 AM
I have been way out of the loop lately in terms of music. Can anyone recommend me some notable Bruckner recordings released in the past year or so?

Check out http://www.abruckner.com/newreleases/featurednewrelease/

M forever

Interesting to see that Profil have put all their live Wand recordings from Munich in a box. But I don't see that offered anywhere except for jpc, apparently neither amazon.com nor .de have it or maybe I am not searching right. jpc.de is a good site to search for recent releases when you type "Bruckner" in the box where it says "Suchbegriff" and then click on the red button, then in the little box "Datum" so that the arrow pointing upwards becomes black. Then the hits will be listed with the most recent ones first. There are surprisingly many new releases as well as re-releases. I thought the classical recordings market was supposed to be "dead"...

A fairly interesting recent Bruckner release I got is the 9th with OSR/Janowski, a very individual and a little quirky interpretation. I haven't made up my mind yet if I just find it interesting, or if I find it actually really good (or not).

There is also a new recording of the 9th coming out soon with SD/Luisi which could be very interesting. I haven't heard him conduct Bruckner, but the Strauss discs he has made in Dresden so far are all very good and well recorded.

Another recent 9th which I have seen discussed but not heard myself is the one with the version of the completed finale with Bosch and his orchestra in Aachen. They have actually already made recordings of about half of the symphonies.

Simone Young has been continuing her Bruckner cycle in Hamburg with recordings which all feature the first versions. I have the 2nd but I am not very enthusiastic about this recording, so I will probably not rush to check out the 3rd and 4th which have come out since then.

There is also some new (3/6) Bruckner from SWR/Norrington which could be interesting, at least.

Drasko

Quote from: M forever on August 02, 2008, 03:01:32 PM
Interesting to see that Profil have put all their live Wand recordings from Munich in a box. But I don't see that offered anywhere except for jpc, apparently neither amazon.com nor .de have it or maybe I am not searching right.

http://www.amazon.de/The-Munich-Recordings/dp/B0013816L0

Renfield

I am interested in that Wand Munich box set. In the opinion of you more erudite Brucknerians, ought I eventually go for it?

greg

Quote from: Renfield on July 07, 2008, 09:32:32 PM
Seems like we'll wait and see what comes out of it.
It'll probably be the best thing. EVER.

Renfield

Quote from: GGGGRRREEG on August 02, 2008, 03:36:26 PM
It'll probably be the best thing. EVER.

What do you know about Luisi that I don't!? :o


Adding to my above question, when is that Luisi/SD 9th coming out?

greg

Quote from: Renfield on August 02, 2008, 03:42:23 PM
What do you know about Luisi that I don't!? :o


Adding to my above question, when is that Luisi/SD 9th coming out?
Dude, I like, totally have a feeling...........

i just know, can't explain it, i just know, man..........

PerfectWagnerite

Quote from: rubio on July 29, 2008, 12:26:14 PM
Keilberth's classic Bruckner 6 and 9 will be available again in Japan 24/9 - 1000 yen per CD. Much better than those crazy ebay price these can go for.

 
Amazon is taking orders for them and they are coming out sometime in September according to them.

I wonder how this guy feels paying $40+ bucks for one of them:


rubio

Quote from: PerfectWagnerite on August 04, 2008, 08:42:35 AM
Amazon is taking orders for them and they are coming out sometime in September according to them.

I wonder how this guy feels paying $40+ bucks for one of them:



I saw this. I thought I could pick it up if it went for $10-15. But yesterday one guy payed $120 for Richter in Leipzig :o :o :o, and that one just has been released for about £10 (Parnassus) in better sound than the M&A release. I guess that guy has not picked up this news...
"One good thing about music, when it hits- you feel no pain" Bob Marley

PerfectWagnerite

Quote from: rubio on August 04, 2008, 09:05:22 AM
I saw this. I thought I could pick it up if it went for $10-15. But yesterday one guy payed $120 for Richter in Leipzig :o :o :o, and that one just has been released for about £10 (Parnassus) in better sound than the M&A release. I guess that guy has not picked up this news...
Or maybe he just doesn't peruse this forum ;)
Or maybe he HAS to have the original release with a different cover. Who knows.

Lilas Pastia

Some recent listening:

- Symphony no. 9, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Giulini. This is a live recording in good sound, dated 2/1/1978. It is rather different from both the 1976 Chicago (studio) and the later, famous Vienna version (also studio, 1988). The ninth is obviously a work the conductor cared immensely about late in his carreer. He programmed it in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Vienna, Amsterdam and Stuttgart. Recordings of these concerts have been issued and are generally available.

I listened to it twice in as many days to confirm the opinion I initially had. Giulini's is a spacious and deeply probing vision of the score. He emphasizes its sensuousness and minimizes its dissonances. The latter are generally presented within the context of a deeply cushioned and resonant orchestral sound. Giulini's ninth is never abrasive or tormented. It is imposing yet elegant, with melos and pathos in perfect balance. It reminds me a lot of Walter's lyrical and warm Indian Summer version, but with bolder, more tragic gestures. This Amsterdam ninth is slower than the more compact and dense Chicago disc (EMI). In Amsterdam the coda of I is not the cataclysm one sometimes hears (Keilberth, Kubelik, Klemperer). He clearly saves some decibels and drama for the second half of the Adagio. The scherzo is simply perfect in its balance of grinding dissonance, bold, furious punches and broad overall tempo.  I haven't listened to the DG Vienna in at least four years, but if memory serves, he went even further in the direction of stark deliquescence (winds and strings) and growling snarls (low brass and timpani).

- Symphonies 3 and 4 from a 6-disc set devoted to some of Knappertsbusch's many available performances. He was selective, never playing symphonies 0, 1, 2 and 6, and using corrupt and long discredited versions of 4, 5 and 9. Haas had published his versions some ten, even twenty years before, and yet, as late as the early sixties he was still playing those shockingly truncated texts (4 and 5 are particularly bad in this instance).

Be that as it may, the third is a version of immense power and drama. The Bavarian RSO play superbly, with some of the most awesome, fearsome trombone playing I've heard in this work. I wonder if this "1890 Thorough revision Bruckner with Joseph and Franz Schalk Ed. Theodor Raettig" edition used retouches in the brass. Knappertsbusch' s conducting is prone to sound wilful and sometimes incoherent, especially next to the lucidity and clearcut vistas of Böhm or Kubelik. But it's also engulfing and it regularly mounts and scales the heights with unsurpassed theatricality. The finale in particular is a superb piece of conducting, one of the only times where the truncated 1890 text doesn't sound, well, truncated. It's all of a piece and culminates in a grandiose account of the coda. Recorded in 1954 in very good sound. I listened to it twice in a row. It's really a knockout, and I wish the commercial EMI release was reissued. Timings are almost identical, so presumably it should offer a bettter sounding substitute of this performance.

The fourth is magnificent in the first two movements. The ending of I is awesome in majesty and dramatic urgency. Knappertsbusch had a unique way of punching home the climaxes with liberal use of broadening, timpani swells and big, bold ritards for the money shot. In this interpretation the Berlin Philharmonic play quite well, but there are horn bloopers here and there. What rules this performance out of the running is the bizarre text of the Scherzo and the heavily cut and patched one in the Finale. In the scherzo about a third of the music is totally reworked and sounds incoherent and anticlimactic. In the Finale what music one hears is all there from the familiar Nowak or Haas editions, but senseless cuts are made to presumably give it a tidier structure. It's not as disconcerting as the Scherzo, but one has the feeling of bad edits. Again the coda of IV is brilliantly dramatic. Here the sound is obviously more ancient but still serviceable.

Gustav

Quote from: PerfectWagnerite on August 04, 2008, 08:42:35 AM
Amazon is taking orders for them and they are coming out sometime in September according to them.

I wonder how this guy feels paying $40+ bucks for one of them:



Don't feel too bad for this guy, i saw some guy paying 58 dollars for the same recording last year!

Lilas Pastia

Moving right along, I listened yesterday to a truly fantastic interpretation of the increasingly popular first version (1873) of the 3rd symphony. When it was first aired some 20 years ago, this was viewed as a curio not really worth exploring. Then came along a broadcast here, a recording there, that alerted serious listeners to the reality that there's so much more than meets the brucknerian ear than received opinion would leave one to believe. Whereas the 1890 Nowak was the rule some 25 years ago, it has become a minority statement these days among brucknerians. Most issues one will stumble on in 2008 is likely to be of the 1877 version or the original 1873.

Mainly, the difference is from a big, Beethoven 9-size work chockful of ideas and slightly overpadded on the seams (1873) to a slimmer, still sizeable work with some fat shed in the process (1877). OTOH Bruckner may have resented the editorial process, as he composed a silly, demential codetta for the scherzo that was appropriate as the proverbial Mona Lisa mustache. This perfectly proportioned version (if one excludes the scherzo appendage) has been rather diversely treated by conductors and orchestras over the past 40 years. Some gave it the big treatment, others seemed eager to make it a second Beethoven 7th. Consequently not coming to grips with the still discursive Finale.

Most of the recorded versions are of one of these quite different versions (once again, a Bruckner version means a text Bruckner came to approve and publish, whereas an edition is more or less a proofreading of that published text. Hence the 1873, 1877 or 1888-1890 versions in editions by Nowak, Haas, Oeser or some other Bruckner scholar. The various Loewe versions are spurious in the sense that they were published but not approved - if by inaction - by the composer.

Among the really convincing recordings/broadcasts of the 1888-1890 version figure the Böhm, Szell and Knappertsbusch, and, to  a lesser degree, the Karajan, Gielen, and Jochums. Then, going backwards, we have the Haitinks (COA and WP) and the Kubeliks, the latter's Sony recording being my favourite (the earlier Audite is more exciting but less grand, so take it from there according to your preferences). And finally, going back to the text that earned Bruckner Wagner's approval and a sniff from the snuffbox are the Norrington, Inbal, various Blomstedts and Tintner recordings. Of those I haven't heard two of the Blomstedts, but the recent (2005) concert realy from San Francisco is a thunderclap in a blue sky of a version. It's a SF concert broadcast and I can't even recall its provenance. The sound is spacious but clouds and flattens noticeably at climaxes. But, heck! what a GIGANTIC vision! Fully 15 minutes faster than Tintner's famously dreamy Naxos version, its (perceived) dynamic range and electric charge are simply awesome. As are the orchestra's incredible weigth and density of sound (I was amazed), and the conductor's supercharged dynamism. I never expected that from Blomstedt, whom I heard here in Montreal in powerful and hugely convincing but much more spacious, "traditional" interpretations of the second and fourth.

So there you have it: just when I think I've nailed Bruckner's various texts "in order", I realize that they are all consummately imagined and realized views of a  symphonic vision that never stopped to develop. Something that in reality may have only existed in his dreams, actually. This broadcast may be floating here and there on the net and I urge anyone interested in Bruckner to give it a go. So, no gold medal, but a trio of laurel crowns to Blomstedt (1873), Kubelik (1877) and Knappertsbusch (1888).

NB: listening to Gielen's solid and committed Baden-Baden u. Freiburg disc (Hänssler) does not change the portrait. Anyone who wishes Haitink had taken a dose of Viagra will find this immensely satisfying. I did. But as of now I'll go for something kinkier.

M forever

Quote from: Lilas Pastia on August 12, 2008, 04:01:45 PM
Mainly, the difference is from a big, Beethoven 9-size work chockful of ideas and slightly overpadded on the seams (1873) to a slimmer, still sizeable work with some fat shed in the process (1877). OTOH Bruckner may have resented the editorial process, as he composed a silly, demential codetta for the scherzo that was appropriate as the proverbial Mona Lisa mustache.

  :'( M likes the coda to the scherzo.

Have you heard Harnoncourt's and Sinopoli's versions (both at, incidentally, the 1877 version)?


Quote from: Lilas Pastia on August 12, 2008, 04:01:45 PM
Of those I haven't heard two of the Blomstedts, but the recent (2005) concert realy from San Francisco is a thunderclap in a blue sky of a version. It's a SF concert broadcast and I can't even recall its provenance.

M also has a live recording of the 3rd with Blomstedt and the Gewandhausorchester.  :)

Lilas Pastia

Quote from: M forever on August 12, 2008, 04:20:26 PM
  :'( M likes the coda to the scherzo.

Have you heard Harnoncourt's and Sinopoli's versions (both at, incidentally, the 1877 version)?

Yes, both. I like Sinopoli's but found it rather severe and massive. Lacking volatility, which I think should befit a d minor work (for no good reason, I have to admit. I guess it's a 'mood' thing). Both alas appended the coda to the scherzo.  Funny in a Road Runner way, but doesn't it sound like the composer  had a fit of the tarentella? The same effect is achieved more naturally in the scherzo of the first symphony - a sudden shift of key and tempo. I have heard a good dozen more versions but not all make it to the finish, even if they made the qualifying rounds.

M also has a live recording of the 3rd with Blomstedt and the Gewandhausorchester.  :)

Really? How interesting! ;D



M forever

No, seriously. I have a whole box with live recordings of Blomstedt and the GOL which came out in Germany a few years ago. It includes this very nice Bruckner 3. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the CDs right now (yes, most of my stuff is still in moving boxes!), otherwise I could upload a sample or actually the whole recording. It's kind of "public domain", I guess, since it's taken from a MDR broadcast.

sound67

It cannot be in the public domain.
"Vivaldi didn't compose 500 concertos. He composed the same concerto 500 times" - Igor Stravinsky

"Mozart is a menace to musical progress, a relic of rituals that were losing relevance in his own time and are meaningless to ours." - Norman Lebrecht

Lilas Pastia

Well, if ever you get it to the light of day it would be a very nice addition. I love Blomstedt's Bruckner (his SD 7th on Denon is my favourite).

Another listen to the Gielen 3rd reinforces the very positive impression this disc gives. As good a rec as any for the 1877 version - or the third symphony's if you happen to think the 1877 is the "best" of all extant versions. The SWF orchestra is superb and they play in a hall that flatters their already excellent corporate sound - probably the Hans Rosbaud Studio. Gielen is a non-interventionist kind of dirigent, but he shapes the work with a sure hand. Each movement has a clear sense of direction. In a sense it's the opposite of Knappertsbusch's way. One can balance the strong safety and logic of one against the sense of discovery and danger of the other. Along the lines of Gielen one could name Böhm and Szell (1888 version), whereas Jochum veers in the other direction, although not so extreme. Midway sits (or stands) Kubelik with the BRSO.