Bruckner's Abbey

[Cato]

That Adagio is EPIC! I mean seriously! This movement alone should get the gold prize in total awesomeness.

The ending of the Sixth Symphony's slow movement is a spiritual vision: it is the root, the DNA, of the next 3 slow movements in Symphonies VII, VIII, and IX.

[Mirror Image]

The ending of the Sixth Symphony's slow movement is a spiritual vision: it is the root, the DNA, of the next 3 slow movements in Symphonies VII, VIII, and IX.

The 6th is one of my favorite symphonies of the cycle. I always felt it was underrated compared to say the 5th, 7th, or 8th.

[Mirror Image]

There's so much about Bruckner the man that remains a mystery to me. I understand that he could be quite neurotic (like me ) and that he had severe self-doubt in his own music hence why so many performing editions exist of his symphonies. He was a simple man who was devoted to his religion, but to look at his pictures the music that we hear completely contradicts his own personality. His music is huge, masculine, brassy, and extroverted, but those slow movements reveal a deep profundity and spiritualness.

[max]

There's so much about Bruckner the man that remains a mystery to me. I understand that he could be quite neurotic (like me ) and that he had severe self-doubt in his own music hence why so many performing editions exist of his symphonies. He was a simple man who was devoted to his religion, but to look at his pictures the music that we hear completely contradicts his own personality. His music is huge, masculine, brassy, and extroverted, but those slow movements reveal a deep profundity and spiritualness.

Bruckner's music is like the final journey to the ultimate mystery. It creates a cathedral out of the cosmos every part a remnant of God. Bruckner was indeed a devoutly religious and simple man yet his music echos and strives toward the metaphysics of the divine like that of no other composer. The music in every sense corresponds to Bruckner's lust for God and becomes the sound map to that goal. With Bruckner more than anyone, even Wagner, I get that feeling of losing all sense of immediacy within the sound vaults of Bruckner's music.

If you think his music is extrovert and loud with the exception of the slow movements all I can say is there are many layers left to penetrate.

[Octave]

Just a product inquiry.  Is there any substantial difference between the two Skrowaczewski/Saarbrucken full-cycle boxes?  Aside from the cover.


Both seem to be dated 2004 at Amazon.  I'm assuming they are both content-identical reissues of the Arte Nova edition:

[jlaurson]

Just a product inquiry.  Is there any substantial difference between the two Skrowaczewski/Saarbrucken full-cycle boxes?  Aside from the cover.


Both seem to be dated 2004 at Amazon.  I'm assuming they are both content-identical reissues of the Arte Nova edition:

Yes. Arte Nova licensed the Oehms production -- when the two companies were somehow, tangentally connected (if only because operated out of Munich; Arte Nova then by the chap who now owns and runs NEOS). Then Oehms realized that that they probably ought to take that set back into their own fold and re-issued it themselves and the licensing deal ran out. (That would have been about 2004.)

In doing so, they produced/re-issued the box on the right (I'm 93% sure, but I can ascertain if to 100, if necessary), into which they poured much more effort and which is of a much higher quality built.

The Amazon date is incorrect for, I think, the Oehms version on the left which may never have been imported and/or distributed in the US before 2004... which may explain that.


A Survey of Bruckner Cycles

[Octave]

Thanks for that info, Jens...that's just what I needed

[jlaurson]

FYI: Skrowa is still conducting, and awesome at it.

Ionarts-at-Large: The Admirable, Adorable Stanisław Skrowaczewski
http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2012/05/ionarts-at-large-admirable-adorable.html

[trung224]

 Skrowaczewski is my favorite alive Bruckner conductor. Many people compare him with Günter Wand, but I think  Skrowaczewski has the same conducting style with Carl Schuricht, both are not a type of push-and-pull conductors like Furtwängler, Abendroth, Knappertsbusch, but unlike literal conductors like Wand, they favor flexible rhythm, and both are the masters of using legato. I am very impressed with his slow movement in the last three symphonies, very personal and heartfelt.

[Karl Henning]

Karl, you're setting a terrible example. How dare you keep listening with an open mind!

(* chortle *)

[Karl Henning]

A logical assumption!    

I have always found the Mahler First Symphony to be a descendant of Bruckner's Third.

Recently a high-school friend (who is no fan of Mahler) remarked that Mahler's first 4 symphonies do not quite approach the Ultima Thule found in Bruckner's last 3 or 4 symphonies: cf. e.g. Mahler's First Symphony (c. 1888) with Bruckner's Eighth Symphony from around the same year.

I commented that the Mahler does indeed enter terra incognita, especially with the third movement, and with smaller things in the finale like the final transition ( the triplet in the violas).  To be sure, the Bruckner Eighth may be more monumental, the Mahler spunkier...

Which is quite fine, of course, since they are both barn-burners!   

Let the farmers look to their barns, then!

To echo what may be a Japanese proverb cited in Kill Bill: "Music is a forest, not a straight line."  And actually I was reconciled to the Mahler symphonies (— and Das Lied von der Erde, for instance, I have enjoyed practically forever —) even before those of Bruckner.

One of the other roundabout aspects of this is, by now I have given at least a single attentive listen to the Bruckner symphonies n^os. 1-9, but there are still a few of the Mahler symphonies to which I've not yet given proper ear. (And that, even though I've got the DG assorti box.)

[mszczuj]

I have Bruckner #1 BLARING and twinkling away around me, and I'm surprised to find it - well, it's a wee bit messy, sounds unattractively patched together in some way, etc.  It seems rife with an inconsistency I can't quite put my finger on.  Anyone agree with this shocking revelation about my favorite composer?   Even Hans Rotts first and only symphony was better than this!  It's Chailly with the RCO I'm listening to.  I will play Haitink with the same band, the same piece, in a wee while, see if I can figure it out.  Or Wand.  Something must be wrong... 

Don't know Chailly but both Haitink (which is strange, but he is in fact is not the very inspired Bruckner conductor) and Wand (which is not strange, as he is extremely overrated) didn't find what this symphony is about, I'm afraid. For this symphony I do not recommend Skrowaczewski (whose whole set is probably the best of all I know), Dresden Jochum (who is the best in the last three symphonies). Tintner (as he is always absolutely uninteresting), Berlin Barenboim (the only his Bruckner I have heard - but I'm not interested in hearing any Barenboim), Rozhdestvensky (at least in Vienna redaction - I do not reccomend Vienna redaction at all).

Try Inbal who is great in this symphony or Leipzig Masur who is quite acceptable.

The problem is that playing this symphony as if it was "Bruckner symphony" is killing it.

This is all I know about it.

[mc ukrneal]

Don't know Chailly but both Haitink (which is strange, but he is in fact is not the very inspired Bruckner conductor) [snip]

Really?!? He's my favorite Bruckner conductor by far. His 9th with the Concertgebouw (second one) is outstanding! His 6th on Profil is excellent too. I'd get his cycle if I was ever to buy any more Bruckner.

[Cato]

The 6th is one of my favorite symphonies of the cycle. I always felt it was underrated compared to say the 5th, 7th, or 8th.

Agreed, underrated is quite correct!

Bruckner supposedly said that "Die Sechste is die Keckste" i.e. "The Sixth is the sassiest."  Not only in the thematic material but also in its treatment contrapuntally and harmonically there is an edge-pushing "sassiness" throughout. 

Listen for instance to the final minutes of the slow movement, where the sad little funeral march has returned, which then gives away to an ascension and a farewell of hopefulness.  For me these few minutes are a blissful shattering, especially as the decades tick away.

[Karl Henning]

Agreed, underrated is quite correct!

Bruckner supposedly said that "Die Sechste is die Keckste" i.e. "The Sixth is the sassiest."  Not only in the thematic material but also in its treatment contrapuntally and harmonically there is an edge-pushing "sassiness" throughout. 

Listen for instance to the final minutes of the slow movement, where the sad little funeral march has returned, which then gives away to an ascension and a farewell of hopefulness.  For me these few minutes are a blissful shattering, especially as the decades tick away.

Well, my listening this morning is now indicated . . . .

:-)

[TheGSMoeller]

Agreed, underrated is quite correct!

Bruckner supposedly said that "Die Sechste is die Keckste" i.e. "The Sixth is the sassiest."  Not only in the thematic material but also in its treatment contrapuntally and harmonically there is an edge-pushing "sassiness" throughout. 

Listen for instance to the final minutes of the slow movement, where the sad little funeral march has returned, which then gives away to an ascension and a farewell of hopefulness.  For me these few minutes are a blissful shattering, especially as the decades tick away.

I've always found the final minutes of 6th Symphony's first movement to contain the very best of Bruckner. Such glorious music.

[jlaurson]

Really?!? He's my favorite Bruckner conductor by far. His 9th with the Concertgebouw (second one) is outstanding! His 6th on Profil is excellent too. I'd get his cycle if I was ever to buy any more Bruckner.

I think it's a fair assessment (or at least an understandable one) to not think of Haitink as a great Bruckner conductor if one doesn't know the late recordings. If you compare his unofficial, scattered SACD semi-cycle (4-8, currently, with five different orchestras on five different labels, 5, 6, and 7 of which are out of this world) to his first integrale, there's a tremendous improvement in spirit and certainty and the inherently compelling quality. Compared to that, the OOP Philips cycle is just solid.

A Survey of Bruckner Cycles
http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-survey-of-bruckner-cycles.html

The idea the Sixth is an underrated favorite, I've been pushing since I've been writing about it. Happy to see that I'm hardly alone in that assessment.

http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2007/05/dip-your-ears-no-80b-bruckner-6.html
http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2013/01/ionarts-at-large-youthful-bruckner-with.html

... I just can't think of the Fourth as quite as great as it is always made out to be. Come to think of it – and given the right recording – I like any of the other 'core' Bruckner symphonies (counting from the Third onward) better than the Fourth. Certainly the Sixth, rarely played and the least recorded of the "mature" Symphonies...

...James Gaffigan got to work on the Sixth, not the most performed, but the loveliest of Bruckner Symphonies. It's perhaps less "Brucknerian", which is to say: conforms less to loved stereotypes about the 'cathedral-of-sound', slightly lumbering, humbly portentous Bruckner. Our loss, but luckily not that night...

[Karl Henning]

I think it's a fair assessment (or at least an understandable one) to not think of Haitink as a great Bruckner conductor if one doesn't know the late recordings. If you compare his unofficial, scattered SACD semi-cycle (4-8, currently, with five different orchestras on five different labels, 5, 6, and 7 of which are out of this world) . . . .

An Abbey should not be so dangerous a place. (Just sayin'.)

[mszczuj]

I think it's a fair assessment (or at least an understandable one) to not think of Haitink as a great Bruckner conductor if one doesn't know the late recordings. If you compare his unofficial, scattered SACD semi-cycle (4-8, currently, with five different orchestras on five different labels, 5, 6, and 7 of which are out of this world) to his first integrale, there's a tremendous improvement in spirit and certainty and the inherently compelling quality. Compared to that, the OOP Philips cycle is just solid.

This is exactly my case. To find that interpretation is just solid is rather disappointing for me when I listen to my favorite non-HIP conductor.

But reading of Inbal gives all the justice to this ultra romantic work. I was really shocked how good it is when I heard it because I had heard Nos 3-5 in his interpretation before and hadn't been very impressed. Last year I listened to the completes of Haitink, Skrowaczewski, Dresden Jochum, Inbal, Cologne Wand and Tintner one after another and the Inbal No.1 was for me the greatest plesure in the whole this experience.

[mahler10th]

Well, last night I totally hammered myself with various Bruckner Symphony number ones.  I heard versions by Tintner, Wand, Haitink, Jochum, Chailly, Maazel, and another one which I can't remember right now...also some snippets and patches of it by different conductors from an 'unusual source' (the Internet)...anyway, it seems Chailly was not to blame for an uneven performance, it is the Symphony itself which is uneven to my ears.  I paid particular attention to Tintners, which admittedly was given a far more consistent treatment than many others, but still I found myself mildly irritated at my goings on with it. 
The symphony itself is still wondrous, and if it's upbeats could be visualized, you would see something like this....

http://www.youtube.com/v/eakKfY5aHmY

In the same way that I hear clocks ticking in Bruckners 9th, I can hear birds flying in Bruckners 1st.