Bruckner's Abbey

[Florestan]

If you are interested in a genuinely iconoclastic approach to Bruckner, I wonder if Venzago's cycle (on CPO, with various orchestras) might be a better bet.  His approach starts by rejecting the idea that there is such a thing as a "proper" style of Bruckner performance that applies equally to all the symphonies, and instead tries to find in each case an interpretation appropriate to the merits of that particular symphony. 

This sounds interesting too, thanks.

[Roasted Swan]

Do I correctly infer that Barenboim / CSO cycle is not an overly pious and turgid wade, it's nothing like Jochum or Celibidache and actually it's held in contempt by the door-keepers to the "Temple of Saint Anton"? If yes, this sounds like something that might finally crack the Bruckner nut for me. I might try it.

Barenboim/Chicago is an unfusty/exciting/muscular Bruckner.  For a lithe athletic but still powerful approach try Rogner with the Berlin RSO - I love his (partial) cycle......

[Cato]

Barenboim/Chicago is an unfusty/exciting/muscular Bruckner.  For a lithe athletic but still powerful approach try Rogner with the Berlin RSO - I love his (partial) cycle......

Here is a rave review with some deatils:

...All the symphonies are infused with rhythmic vitality. Barenboim keeps tempos moving but nothing ever sounds rushed. Even the massive 8th Adagio, which can be dragged out interminably, moves at a good pace.

But within these faster tempos, solos, which are incredibly distinguished, never sound rushed. The consistency is really quite remarkable. I think Barenboim, always a serious musician, took these recordings very seriously.

Bruckner is de rigueur, the Staatskapelle is his wunderkind orchestra, giving its neighbour a run for its money as top Berlin band, and on his label. Thus, no inconsistencies. 

The famous moments, the highlights if you will, all sound terrific. You won't find better on record. Let's see, my TDF list - 4th opening horn call, 4th opening movement brass fanfares, 4th Scherzo, 4th closing horns, 5th opening, 5th Adagio, 7th Symphony opening, 7th opening movement brass fanfares, 7th Adagio coda, 7th Scherzo, 8th Adagio, 8th Finale opening strings and timpani, 9th opening, 9th Scherzo, 9th last movement.

That'll do to start. And each excerpt sounds brilliant. And so does all the connective musical tissue. You can't go wrong, I tried. I mixed and matched, played the whole set through and backwards, nothing fazed Barenboim's interpretation or his orchestra's playing. ...

See:

https://www.audiophilia.com/reviews/2017/1/6/anton-bruckner-the-complete-symphonies-daniel-barenboim-staatskapelle-berlin

[Cato]

I noticed that Professor John Phillips has written an essay about a week ago on the question of finding the missing pages of the Finale to Bruckner's Symphony #9.

From YouTube:

Yes, it is Bruckner's greatest Finale, despite the mutilated state in which it has come down to us. This is, of course, an interesting question, but I'm not sanguine about the likelihood of any of the score bifolios turning up.

The autograph MSS market is a very dark and murky world. Back in December 1999, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, at the premiere of my "Documentation of the Fragments" of the Finale in Vienna - the first time any orchestra had ever performed the movement in Vienna, only 103 years after its composition - even told the audience to "go look in your old aunt's attic" in case any of the lost MSS are hidden there. Nothing has eventuated, although the publication in the 1990s of my research in the Bruckner Complete Edition, in the words of my publisher, "hit like a bomb."

We know from the present widespread distribution of the MSS, among about 30 different library shelf marks and many different libraries, just how checkered their transmission has been. The main material, however, remained together in official hands since 1896. No new orchestral bifolios have reappeared since the 1930s. There are two single-folio fragments, one of which is now in the Austrian National Library (both of them initial particello sketches, not missing orchestral bifolios, alas), that were still in private possession in the 1990s.

Is the possibility that something might still turn up any reason whatsoever to discount the current score, however? No, of course not. Let us be happy that we have what we have, and that the motivic design and formal structure of this movement itself is so closely argued, so compelling, that we could reconstruct it with such a high level of credibility and conclusiveness, that quite literally no greater likelihood for alternative reconstructions of any of the missing bifolios exists.

This now extends to the coda, where after 30 years I am now utterly convinced Bruckner had virtually drafted the harmonic continuity of the movement up to the final D major peroration and the "Allelujah" theme Bruckner prefigured so clearly in the Adagio.

Paring down the possibilities, arguing this or that version, might have taken 30 years, but it is now unquestionably as accurate as we can make it. I can also not imagine that any of the missing bifolios are at all likely to contain anything radically different.

Bruckner's compositional technique, after 9 (or 10) preceding symphonies, was honed down to such a fine degree. This is not only Bruckner's Finale to the Ninth, it is the Finale of the rest of his output as well.

My emphasis above!  Quite a confident statement!



See:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGnoOhHLWUE&lc=UgxdrqyARj3GXkh67DV4AaABAg.9j21WHt1dSz9jGJFQUd75z

[Cato]

This rarity came to me today via email:

[Cato]

I came across this article today: a conductor named Eckart Preu (Spokane Symphony in Washington State) on "Ecstasy" in Bruckner and Wagner.

"...Preu has paired Bruckner's colossal Third Symphony with music from just one other work: Wagner's Tristan und Isolde....

"... "What's interesting about Wagner and Bruckner is that they are so different personality-wise, but they have certain similarities. And one of the similarities is ecstasy. In Tristan, it's basically a composed orgasm. And this forward motion, this drive to a climax is very strong in Wagner and is also very strong in Bruckner," Preu says,

In Bruckner in particular, "there's a lot of emotional, sexual unfulfillment, which he poured into his music." That creates a sense of longing, yearning and ultimately release that lends the music its potency.

"Now, it can be played very straight and very Teutonic, and that's going to be incredibly boring," he admits.

" So, to counter that, Preu is drawing on the close relationship that he cultivated with the musicians of the Spokane Symphony to showcase what he believes to be the latent, overlooked qualities of Bruckner's work.

"There's stuff that I can do with this orchestra that I can't do with other orchestras. The whole point of conducting is nonverbal communication, and so after 15 years, the orchestra knows exactly what I'm going for, what I want with my motions. It's like reading each other's mind, and I hope," he chuckles, "that there's some memory left."


 

Hmmm!    Well, some "interesting phrases" there!   

[LKB]

' " Now, it can be played very straight and very Teutonic, and that's going to be incredibly boring," he admits. '

The words of someone with little understanding of Bruckner, imho.

[Roasted Swan]

Do you think Mr Preu is projecting perchance!?!?

[Cato]

' " Now, it can be played very straight and very Teutonic, and that's going to be incredibly boring," he admits. '

The words of someone with little understanding of Bruckner, imho.

Do you think Mr Preu is projecting perchance!?!?

Amen to both of those!

The article is unintentionally funny in a Freudian way!        

[Cato]

I happened across a review of a recent concert by The Minnesota Orchestra with the Bruckner Symphony #6.

The reviewer did not like the performance, but made an interesting comment about the Adagio:

While the Minnesota Orchestra has delivered some memorable Bruckner symphonies — they were a specialty of former music director Stanislaw Skrowaczewski — rarely has this orchestra explored the composer's Sixth. In fact, this weekend's concerts mark just the fourth time in the orchestra's 120 years that it's found its way onto a program.

Why? Well, perhaps because the Sixth can be quite enigmatic. Bruckner has never been regarded as a master of melody, his music more about textures and flow than delivering catchy earworms. If Beethoven is a composer whose genius largely involved assembling fragments into astounding wholes, Bruckner is even more deeply committed to that method of making music. At their most transporting, his symphonies can be mesmerizing.

Alas, Mena and the orchestra didn't take me on the journey I desired. This version of the Sixth blared and bellowed too often, dipping down to whispers before inevitably erupting again. Only the Adagio could be called an unqualified success, a hypnotic funeral march that exposed the stylistic thread connecting Bruckner to Richard Wagner before him and Gustav Mahler after.

My emphasis above.

[Roasted Swan]

I happened across a review of a recent concert by The Minnesota Orchestra with the Bruckner Symphony #6.

The reviewer did not like the performance, but made an interesting comment about the Adagio:

My emphasis above.

I assume it is Juanjo Mena as conductor - his Chandos/BBC PO/Bruckner 6 has been very widely praised (I've not heard it) - I can't imagine his Minnesota performance would differ vastly in interpretative terms so that's an interesting little divergence of opinions......!

[Cato]

I assume it is Juanjo Mena as conductor - his Chandos/BBC PO/Bruckner 6 has been very widely praised (I've not heard it) - I can't imagine his Minnesota performance would differ vastly in interpretative terms so that's an interesting little divergence of opinions......!

Here is a performance by the BBC Philharmonic with Juanjo Mena: there is a comment that Mena has been influenced by S. Celibidache.

[brewski]

I happened across a review of a recent concert by The Minnesota Orchestra with the Bruckner Symphony #6.

The reviewer did not like the performance, but made an interesting comment about the Adagio:

Thanks for this! I listened to the performance live, online, and (diverging from the writer above) thought it was magnificent. But then, we probably disagree on a few points:

"Bruckner has never been regarded as a master of melody, his music more about textures and flow than delivering catchy earworms."

DISAGREE. His melodic sense might be more "motifs" than long breaths, but I hum Bruckner all the time.

"This version of the Sixth blared and bellowed too often, dipping down to whispers before inevitably erupting again."

But...but...but...that's what Bruckner does! And the contrast between those whispers and the blares are what make the scores so fascinating—among many other things, of course. Maybe the sound actually in the hall sounded harsher than it did online, but I had no complaints at all, and the orchestra was playing magnificently. Glad the writer at least liked the Adagio, which is one of Bruckner's finest.

Ah well, agree to disagree and all that. I had a great time listening. And yes, with Juanjo Mena, whom I haven't heard that often.

Meanwhile, I'm planning to hear this concert twice, tomorrow afternoon and Saturday night. All-Bruckner programs don't show up that often, and I haven't heard the Te Deum live since the 1980s, when Muti did it with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

https://www.philorch.org/performances/our-season/events-and-tickets/2022-23-season/verizon-hall/yannick-and-bruckner/

-Bruce

[Cato]

Thanks for this! I listened to the performance live, online, and (diverging from the writer above) thought it was magnificent. But then, we probably disagree on a few points:

"Bruckner has never been regarded as a master of melody, his music more about textures and flow than delivering catchy earworms."

DISAGREE. His melodic sense might be more "motifs" than long breaths, but I hum Bruckner all the time.

"This version of the Sixth blared and bellowed too often, dipping down to whispers before inevitably erupting again."

But...but...but...that's what Bruckner does! And the contrast between those whispers and the blares are what make the scores so fascinating—among many other things, of course. Maybe the sound actually in the hall sounded harsher than it did online, but I had no complaints at all, and the orchestra was playing magnificently. Glad the writer at least liked the Adagio, which is one of Bruckner's finest.

Ah well, agree to disagree and all that. I had a great time listening. And yes, with Juanjo Mena, whom I haven't heard that often.

Meanwhile, I'm planning to hear this concert twice, tomorrow afternoon and Saturday night. All-Bruckner programs don't show up that often, and I haven't heard the Te Deum live since the 1980s, when Muti did it with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

https://www.philorch.org/performances/our-season/events-and-tickets/2022-23-season/verizon-hall/yannick-and-bruckner/

-Bruce

You are quite welcome: I am happy that you liked the link!

Yes, those comments by the reviewer in Minnesota are really off-target.

e.g. I believe the opening melody of the Seventh Symphony runs for 27 bars!

Best Wishes for the concert in Philadelphia!

[brewski]

e.g. I believe the opening melody of the Seventh Symphony runs for 27 bars!

Best Wishes for the concert in Philadelphia!

That opening of the Seventh might be the best example possible, with one of the most beautiful cello lines ever penned. I don't know how someone could hear that and think Bruckner isn't about melody.

And thanks, between the Te Deum and the Ninth (either of which I would hear without much else on the program), "Christus factus est" seems like a lovely bonus. PS, I'm going to try to sit in two totally different places in the hall, too.

Excellent!  N-S conducted the LPO in that same program here some years ago.  Would be very interested to hear what you make of it.

It is obviously a program that he believes in. I find it interesting to have the Ninth in between the two choral pieces, rather than at the end.

-Bruce

[Wanderer]

That opening of the Seventh might be the best example possible, with one of the most beautiful cello lines ever penned. I don't know how someone could hear that and think Bruckner isn't about melody.

And thanks, between the Te Deum and the Ninth (either of which I would hear without much else on the program), "Christus factus est" seems like a lovely bonus. PS, I'm going to try to sit in two totally different places in the hall, too.

It is obviously a program that he believes in. I find it interesting to have the Ninth in between the two choral pieces, rather than at the end.

-Bruce

Absent the reconstituted/reconstructed finale available nowadays, performing the Te Deum immediately after the Ninth is the next best thing (and what Bruckner himself instructed). Personally, I never found the three-movement torso of the Ninth satisfying. Only with the finale the work gets its true meaning and shape. I have already seen Rattle performing the Ninth with the finale in Vienna and would also love to listen to this program you'll be attending live someday (I have tried it at home, it works!). Enjoy and let us know of your thoughts. 😎

Off-topic, but speaking of attending the same concert program twice, a few days ago I booked tickets for the two-out-of-three concerts of Staatskapelle Dresden/Chung performing Turangalîla-Symphonie (Semperoper, June 2024). Something to look forward to!

[brewski]

Off-topic, but speaking of attending the same concert program twice, a few days ago I booked tickets for the two-out-of-three concerts of Staatskapelle Dresden/Chung performing Turangalîla-Symphonie (Semperoper, June 2024). Something to look forward to!

Oh yes, definitely, 100% to seeing this more than once!

-Bruce

[Cato]

Absent the reconstituted/reconstructed finale available nowadays, performing the Te Deum immediately after the Ninth is the next best thing (and what Bruckner himself instructed). Personally, I never found the three-movement torso of the Ninth satisfying. Only with the finale the work gets its true meaning and shape. I have already seen Rattle performing the Ninth with finale in Vienna and would also love to listen to this program you'll be attending live someday (I have tried it at home, it works!). Enjoy and let us know of your thoughts. 😎

Off-topic, but speaking of attending the same concert program twice, a few days ago I booked tickets for the two-out-of-three concerts of Staatskapelle Dresden/Chung performing (Messiaen's) Turangalîla-Symphonie (Semperoper, June 2024). Something to look forward to!

The quartet-of-musicologists-completed Finale on the Rattle/Berlin Philharmonic CD is very exciting.

Professor Phillips has done further tinkering on it and now thinks his solo version is the best, given new realizations, if not quite discoveries.  No recording of it, but there was a performance back in the Autumn.

See:

Concerning Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie: I recall seeing the score, and the score to Chronochromie, at my university's music library.  By chance I had just read one of Stravinsky's books written with (by?      )  Robert Craft, in which the composer offered a "compliment" to Messiaen by saying that Turangalîla contained some excellent movie music, if the movie were Charlie Chan in Indo-China.*


The score to Chronochromie seemed impenetrable, the score for Turangalîla less so.   


* For you youngsters out there: "Charlie Chan" was a detective-character in a very popular series of books and movies in the 1920's-40's.  As I recall, the character was based on a Chinese-American detective in Hawaii.  The character later inspired another series of detective movies, this time about a Japanese-American called "Mr. Moto," which starred...Hungarian-born Peter Lorre!   

[krummholz]

The quartet-of-musicologists-completed Finale on the Rattle/Berlin Philharmonic CD is very exciting.

Professor Phillips has done further tinkering on it and now thinks his solo version is the best, given new realizations, if not quite discoveries.  No recording of it, but there was a performance back in the Autumn.

See:

Until that MIDI rendering was posted, the *only* version I had ever heard of the Finale was the much earlier SPCM performing version that was conducted by Kurt Eichhorn back in the early 2000s. This version seems much more coherent, though I have trouble with the way that final ff D major chord is approached in this version, it doesn't quite work for me. Though the harmonic scheme sounds pretty much the same as in the earlier version, I thought the sudden drop to pp (or maybe ppp, haven't seen the score), and starting on a bare D-A fifth before a long crescendo on the Alleluia theme, worked better.

[brewski]

Meanwhile, I'm planning to hear this concert twice, tomorrow afternoon and Saturday night. All-Bruckner programs don't show up that often, and I haven't heard the Te Deum live since the 1980s, when Muti did it with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

https://www.philorch.org/performances/our-season/events-and-tickets/2022-23-season/verizon-hall/yannick-and-bruckner/

-Bruce

This afternoon was terrific. I did not realize that the entire program—the motet Christus factus est, the Ninth Symphony, and the Te Deum—would be played without pause, for an uninterrupted 1 hour and 45 minutes. Yannick Nézet-Séguin cued everything perfectly, with not a peep of applause until the very end, when all hell broke loose.

The 100-voice chorus was magnificent, as were the four soloists in the Te Deum, and the orchestra sounded terrific. While I'm perfectly happy with the three-movement torso of the Ninth Symphony, adding the Te Deum as a finale is not an unattractive thesis, and at least here, proved overwhelming—perhaps because of the quality of the musicianship. (The Philadelphia horn section was particularly on fire today.)

To top it off, the place was packed. I mean, I'm wearily aware that Bruckner has more detractors than admirers, so to be in a sold-out hall with people cheering afterward was great fun.

I'm hearing the entire thing again on Saturday night (there are only two performances) and honestly, can't wait.

-Bruce