Bruckner's Abbey

[MishaK]

I have Davies in 2 and 3 conducting the Linz.

So, how is he? I'm mostly interested in his 4th and 8th, actually, since he conducts the original versions of those.

[Sergeant Rock]

I only listened once many, many months ago. Don't have a memory of the performances. I'll give him another go soon and report back.

Sarge

[Cato]

Dudes!  Maybe some of you knew about this, but it was new to me:

http://www.therestisnoise.com/2011/07/bruckner-rock.html

Some rock group STOLE the opening music from Bruckner's Fifth Symphony!   

Okay, maybe they thought of the confiscation as an homage!  0:)

[jlaurson]

Dudes!  Maybe some of you knew about this, but it was new to me:

http://www.therestisnoise.com/2011/07/bruckner-rock.html

Some rock group STOLE the opening music from Bruckner's Fifth Symphony!   

Okay, maybe they thought of the confiscation as an homage!  0:)

A colleague of mine was recently very much fascinated by this. Unfortunately he got it 'wrong' in his head, and now always thinks that the rhythm in Bruckner is "wrong".

There are plenty such cases in music (and why not). Morrisey's "The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils" is DSCH-5, for example. And not obscure and in one place, but throughout the song, front, back, and center.

[MishaK]

There was a Canadian indy band that used the rand des vaches from symphonie fantastique as a background ostinato in one of their songs. Name escapes me now.

[eyeresist]

And of course, Pachelbel's Canon = Village People's Go West.

[Cato]

I have spent several weeks relistening to the complete DGG Eugen Jochum set of Bruckner symphonies.

This is the series which introduced me to Bruckner almost 50 years ago!     As a result, it is somewhat "imprinted" in me, i.e. other performances get compared to Jochum's. 

Nobody is waiting for me to say that all 9 works are great spiritual and psychological experiences.

What is always so tantalizing about Bruckner, especially upon repeated hearings, is the richness of what I call the musical unconscious in the works, i.e. the counterpoint, the secondary or tertiary themes or motifs in the background, or just simply the strings playing a complex tremolo chord.  One finds this ability in many great composers (Schoenberg comes to mind), but Bruckner's ability here is - for me at least - a source of wonder.

When one revisits such works over 5 decades, one's intellectual and emotional responses become ever more complex: accretions pile up, and in one sense an effort to forget everything that one's soul has linked to the works in the past years becomes essential.  To make any work seem exciting and new again, a dose of forgetfulness can be very handy!   0:)  Of course, simply hearing a new performance by an invigorating conductor can do the trick  (e.g. a performance a year or two ago of Mahler's Seventh with Boulez conducting in Chicago really revolutionized my perception of that work!)

And yet, one reason to listen to e.g. Bruckner's Second Symphony is that it does take you back to 1963, as well as to the early 1870's, and you experience both eras now in 2012.  Or none of this: you can simply enjoy following the lines and be amazed at the thoughts occuring to you via this supposedly "minor" work, which is much more major than you believed!   

[Karl Henning]

I enjoyed the entire post, Cato, but esp.:

. . . (e.g. a performance a year or two ago of Mahler's Seventh with Boulez conducting in Chicago really revolutionized my perception of that work!)

[Cato]

I enjoyed the entire post, Cato, but esp.:

(e.g. a performance a year or two ago of Mahler's Seventh with Boulez conducting in Chicago really revolutionized my perception of that work!)

Yes, for a few moments - I came upon the performance in medias res - I thought I was hearing an unknown and early work by Anton Webern  , but quickly knew it was the Mahler Seventh.

On Bruckner: the eccentric and even revolutionary aspects of the symphonies still hold their power for me.  Consider the driving energy of the First Symphony,  the strange Scherzos of the Sixth and Eighth, the proto-Bartokian nature of the Ninth's Scherzo, and of course the expressivity of the Adagios (especially in the last 5 works, but the earlier ones are not to be ignored).

I was also struck again and again by the debt Mahler owes to Bruckner's Third Symphony.
This is understandable, since Mahler worked on a piano reduction of the work.

Eccentric musicologist Dika Newlin wrote a book 60 years ago or so called Bruckner, Mahler, Schoenberg where she analyzed the threads linking all 3 composers.  (She had been a student of Schoenberg's in fact.)  I have mentioned it before.  Recommended, even though I do not agree with everything in it.

[Cato]

Since I have been writing about Bruckner today, a reminder:

if you can make it to Toledo, Ohio (NOT Spain    ) on April 15th, you can hear the Bruckner Third Symphony in Holy Rosary Cathedral there with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra performing.









Toledo also has one of the top 10 art museums in the nation, not to mention an excellent (and compact) zoo with things like a "Hippoquarium" and other unusual features.

As mentioned some time ago under "What Allan Is Playing," a Bruckner concert in the cathedral has become a tradition under Stefan Sanderling in the last decade.  I have been fortunate enough to hear several of them, and can highly recommend the concert.


http://www.toledosymphony.com/index.php?src=events&srctype=detail&refno=77&category=Mozart%20%26%20More

[Dundonnell]

This has probably been discussed elsewhere but it would take far too long to check out

My attention has been drawn to the recent concert in Berlin when Simon Rattle conducted the Bruckner 9th with the reconstructed fourth movement. I understand that he conducted the work again recently in New York. Bruce, I think that you were there

Having lived with the 9th ending with that glorious, heavenly Adagio for around fifty years I was exceedingly sceptical, even after reading this-

http://theclassicalreview.com/2012/02/rattle-berlin-philharmonic-deliver-bruckners-ninth-in-all-its-restored-majestic-glory/

and then I watched this-

http://www.digitalconcerthall.com/en/concert/2516/rattle-bruckner

I must confess that thirty seconds or so into the short excerpt from the finale when the brass chorale begins my eyes filled with tears   No one, but no one, has ever written for the brass with such sublime majesty as did Bruckner

Rattle has recorded the Ninth including this fourth movement for release by EMI-

http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/Anton-Bruckner-1824-1896-Symphonie-Nr-9-4-s%E4tzige-Version/hnum/2571066?SESSIONID=14b4acb310a945e850299f20f7bd5e58

Sold

[Cato]

My attention has been drawn to the recent concert in Berlin when Simon Rattle conducted the Bruckner 9th with the reconstructed fourth movement.

Having lived with the 9th ending with that glorious, heavenly Adagio for around fifty years I was exceedingly sceptical, even after reading this-

http://theclassicalreview.com/2012/02/rattle-berlin-philharmonic-deliver-bruckners-ninth-in-all-its-restored-majestic-glory/

and then I watched this-

http://www.digitalconcerthall.com/en/concert/2516/rattle-bruckner

I must confess that thirty seconds or so into the short excerpt from the finale when the brass chorale begins my eyes filled with tears   No one, but no one, has ever written for the brass with such sublime majesty as did Bruckner

Sold

40 years ago or so, an acquaintance of mine had access to the Library of Congress and photocopied the sketches of the finale for me: I waited and hoped for a competent composer/musicologist to complete the movement, since yes, it was obvious that a great deal of glorious music was present.

I know that the purists are against such things, but the various versions of the Finale sound convincing enough, much like the completion of Mahler's Tenth.

[eyeresist]

Yes, I've been hoping for this recording for a while now. I'm not a great Rattle fan, but he was so convincing in Mahler 10 that I couldn't help believing he would do very well here too. Must reserve my copy now!

[DieNacht]

I´ve been listening to the Bruckner / Paternostro low-budget set in the last few days, admittedly partly just as "background music". I very much agree with the views of the musicweb-reviewer, including that this set has major flaws, in fact I´ve never heard so many orchestral errors, often quite embarrasing, in a compilation of recordings, and some of the symphonies and the Te Deum receive rather pedestrian performances also, or articulations I don´t agree with and find unispired, not worth going into. Paternostro is often quite good in making the string section sing, whereas the brass vary a lot and also don´t always follow the rest.

So far I´d say that the 5th and the 4th receive good and interesting performances, the 7th a reasonable play-through albeit apparently less romantically committed and more slender than I prefer. The 2nd is decent too, at times fine, but completely runs out of energy in the Finale and becomes curiously ghostly, with an incomprehensible decrease in the playing quality too. Many parts of the 8th, including the Adagio, have some intense moments and it is worth hearing. I´ll return to those, especially the 5th I liked a lot, though some recordings articulate its contrasts much more.

There doesn´t seem to be any chronological development as regards performance level; the better ones are scattered in the long concert cycle. The sound is very good, spacious, natural, and an enjoyment, with many details. The final moments of the 5th should have a better defined brass section, though. But some of the symphonies receive provincial performances that should be only of very local interest.

In its own way, the set has been illuminating to me as regards Bruckner playing and the efforts involved in obtaining really good performance/recording results. As an example, the 3rd is very uneven, but it does have its scattered moments, in spite of the defects and it often being rather dragged out or pedestrian. The Scherzo for instance is quite gripping.

Additional rehearsal and recording time, also pointing to highlights of the musical ongoings and sense of line in these works, could have made this cycle more valuable. Its content is moderately interesting as a supplement, but should never constitute the only recording of any Bruckner work in one´s collection.

[Cato]

The Paternostro set has become rather infamous in the last years for its low quality of playing and some oddities in the conducting, as Die Nacht noted above.

Paternostro has a website: http://www.robertopaternostro.com/en/biography/  He is not an amateur by any means.

One wonders why the set was released, if there are so many disconcerting errors in the performance.

[DieNacht]

I guess it´s a combination of local interest from the orchestra (the Classico label here in Denmark for instance has been an example of valuable recordings of rare repertoire etc. as well as many examples of "unnecessary" or poor promotion recital CDs) and that the Membran Label has specialized in cheap budget box sets, often sold in audio supermarkets etc. at a very low price (5-15 Euros). Since these are live recordings, they must have been rather inexpensive to produce. Still, there are some fine moments in the set though, and the sound is impressive. If one has heard a short excerpt of a Bruckner symphony and finds him interesting, this could be an impulse buy.

A record dealer I once worked for said rather regrettingly "Any item can be sold in some quantity" ...

[Dundonnell]

Rattle on the Ninth Symphony, Fourth Movement:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Z9Jlgh_gpSs

[Sequentia]

A sample of the Finale (as performed by Rattle and the BerlinPhil) can be found here:

http://www.digitalconcerthall.com/en/concert/2516/rattle-bruckner

[Drasko]

http://tower.jp/item/3094799/ブルックナー:-交響曲選集

Japan-only release, but maybe an international one will follow in some foreseeable future.

[Leo K.]

http://tower.jp/item/3094799/ブルックナー:-交響曲選集

Japan-only release, but maybe an international one will follow in some foreseeable future.

I have not heard Sinopoli's Bruckner, thanks for the heads up!