Six great 8th symphonies.

[jochanaan]

Again, some formidable competition here, but in the long run [looks around room] I'll have to go with Mahler. [ducks] 

[Brian]

Personal preference order!
1. Dvorak
2. Schubert "Great" C Major
3. Beethoven
4. Atterberg
5. Shostakovich
6. Bruckner (adagio only)

I don't understand the fast movements from Bruckner's Eighth yet. Need to re-listen to the Holmboe piece and get through the complete RVW cycle.

[Karl Henning]

The RVW Eighth was one of the first of his symphonies to win me over.

[vandermolen]

Personal preference order!
1. Dvorak
2. Schubert "Great" C Major
3. Beethoven
4. Atterberg
5. Shostakovich
6. Bruckner (adagio only)

I don't understand the fast movements from Bruckner's Eighth yet. Need to re-listen to the Holmboe piece and get through the complete RVW cycle.

The Atterberg is very fine, especially the wonderful tune in the slow movement.

[Karl Henning]

6. Bruckner (adagio only)

I don't understand the fast movements from Bruckner's Eighth yet.

You've prompted me to listen to the HvK recording of that Adagio (though I have no difficulty with the entire symphony).

[vandermolen]

The RVW Eighth was one of the first of his symphonies to win me over.

Glad you like it Karl. I have increasingly come to appreciate it. The moving slow movement is the last manifestation in the composer's work of the spirit of the Tallis Fantasia.

[Karl Henning]

Aye, that lovely Cavatina.

[Brian]

Hmm. Then I'd hate to know your least favorite (I'm American and spell like one). To me it sounds like a moderately clever child playing with fingerpaints, and using every color in the box to make a mess of the paper, the house, his clothes, and himself.

I haven't really enjoyed any of the other Havergal Brian symphonies I've heard, but will go to bat in support of No. 1 "Gothic". There are certainly several decisions/passages that don't make sense, but there are also several passages that don't make sense unless you experience them live. I'm very lucky that my first exposure was a live concert performance, and am constantly amazed that people with only that old Slovak recording to go on, still spent the 90s and 00s learning to like HB.

The fifth movement "Iudex" is a great example of both. I'm pretty mystified by the neo-Gregorian choral stuff in the first five minutes (as I am by the wandering choral passages of the prior movement), and there are rolls of fat to be trimmed. But the final climax, which sounds on the Naxos disc like a slightly underwhelming gear-turning payoff to a very long setup, in person is one of the most tremendous physical experiences I've had. Those brass band fanfares throughout the movement are, in person, the kind of spatial play that H.I. von Biber and Stockhausen are more known for, since they're stationed around the hall. And the payoff of that is that at the end of the movement, the calls and echoes finally come together. I felt like I was swimming in an ocean of music, waves crashing onto me from every direction.

Of course, if you want to talk thick scoring, it doesn't get any thicker than scoring which my ears/brain can't even process. And there are moments in the symphony which fried my mental circuit board - I just couldn't hear all the things in my ears. That's never happened to me any other time in life, so it's hard to describe.

[Mirror Image]

The RVW Eighth was one of the first of his symphonies to win me over.

+1

[vandermolen]

I haven't really enjoyed any of the other Havergal Brian symphonies I've heard, but will go to bat in support of No. 1 "Gothic". There are certainly several decisions/passages that don't make sense, but there are also several passages that don't make sense unless you experience them live. I'm very lucky that my first exposure was a live concert performance, and am constantly amazed that people with only that old Slovak recording to go on, still spent the 90s and 00s learning to like HB.

The fifth movement "Iudex" is a great example of both. I'm pretty mystified by the neo-Gregorian choral stuff in the first five minutes (as I am by the wandering choral passages of the prior movement), and there are rolls of fat to be trimmed. But the final climax, which sounds on the Naxos disc like a slightly underwhelming gear-turning payoff to a very long setup, in person is one of the most tremendous physical experiences I've had. Those brass band fanfares throughout the movement are, in person, the kind of spatial play that H.I. von Biber and Stockhausen are more known for, since they're stationed around the hall. And the payoff of that is that at the end of the movement, the calls and echoes finally come together. I felt like I was swimming in an ocean of music, waves crashing onto me from every direction.

Of course, if you want to talk thick scoring, it doesn't get any thicker than scoring which my ears/brain can't even process. And there are moments in the symphony which fried my mental circuit board - I just couldn't hear all the things in my ears. That's never happened to me any other time in life, so it's hard to describe.

What a great description of the work's appeal.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I haven't really enjoyed any of the other Havergal Brian symphonies I've heard, but will go to bat in support of No. 1 "Gothic". There are certainly several decisions/passages that don't make sense, but there are also several passages that don't make sense unless you experience them live. I'm very lucky that my first exposure was a live concert performance, and am constantly amazed that people with only that old Slovak recording to go on, still spent the 90s and 00s learning to like HB.

The fifth movement "Iudex" is a great example of both. I'm pretty mystified by the neo-Gregorian choral stuff in the first five minutes (as I am by the wandering choral passages of the prior movement), and there are rolls of fat to be trimmed. But the final climax, which sounds on the Naxos disc like a slightly underwhelming gear-turning payoff to a very long setup, in person is one of the most tremendous physical experiences I've had. Those brass band fanfares throughout the movement are, in person, the kind of spatial play that H.I. von Biber and Stockhausen are more known for, since they're stationed around the hall. And the payoff of that is that at the end of the movement, the calls and echoes finally come together. I felt like I was swimming in an ocean of music, waves crashing onto me from every direction.

Of course, if you want to talk thick scoring, it doesn't get any thicker than scoring which my ears/brain can't even process. And there are moments in the symphony which fried my mental circuit board - I just couldn't hear all the things in my ears. That's never happened to me any other time in life, so it's hard to describe.

Thank you for taking the time to write this, Brian. I have the Slovak recording, and an aircheck of the recent London performance. You make the work sound more like Berlioz (as in the Requiem) than anything else in terms of the spatial organization. If a performance were to come my way, I would certainly seek it out, but your comment leads me to believe the work is simply bombastic, which is what I thought already.

As for the Bruckner 8th, I'm not sure what gives you trouble: the scherzo (which I think someone described as "the mountains dancing") seems to me one of the easiest things to grasp in Bruckner. But the outer movements reveal Bruckner's special sense of musical time; unlike say Beethoven, whose sense of time is always forward-moving, Bruckner constructs great slabs of musical space that break off unresolved and only come together at the end of a movement or the work as a whole. In this symphony, total resolution arrives only at the very end of the finale, where themes from all four movements are combined in a triumphant C major peroration (though truth to tell, the material from the adagio is scored almost inaudibly). I'm not a big lover of the first five Bruckner symphonies, but from 6-9 (even though the last is incomplete), I think his achievement is miraculous.

[Cato]

I'd add KA Hartmann's 8th.

AMEN!!!

As I recall, there were family witnesses to the backyard bonfire where Sibelius burnt his (incomplete?) manuscript for the Eighth Symphony.

[Brian]

Thank you for taking the time to write this, Brian. I have the Slovak recording, and an aircheck of the recent London performance. You make the work sound more like Berlioz (as in the Requiem) than anything else in terms of the spatial organization. If a performance were to come my way, I would certainly seek it out, but your comment leads me to believe the work is simply bombastic, which is what I thought already.

As for the Bruckner 8th, I'm not sure what gives you trouble: the scherzo (which I think someone described as "the mountains dancing") seems to me one of the easiest things to grasp in Bruckner. But the outer movements reveal Bruckner's special sense of musical time; unlike say Beethoven, whose sense of time is always forward-moving, Bruckner constructs great slabs of musical space that break off unresolved and only come together at the end of a movement or the work as a whole. In this symphony, total resolution arrives only at the very end of the finale, where themes from all four movements are combined in a triumphant C major peroration (though truth to tell, the material from the adagio is scored almost inaudibly). I'm not a big lover of the first five Bruckner symphonies, but from 6-9 (even though the last is incomplete), I think his achievement is miraculous.

Oh, without a doubt, the Gothic is bombastic in the extreme. The conductor Kenneth Woods wrote a very perceptive (but very long) blog post about it, and remarked that he wasn't persuaded by any of it until the very end, when HB finally lets a moment of melodic rest/contemplation onto the scene.

Thanks for your Bruckner 8 post, which I'll definitely be reading the next time I give it a listen. That could be soon, because the past few months have been a boon for my Bruckner appreciation. I'm not keen on 4, but 5 has a "sense of time" similar to what you describe (with the piece really only coming together at the very end), except that the material does not interest me until that ending.

I think my favorite symphonies (6 and 7) least fit that description, so maybe his sense of time just isn't something I've naturalized to. Soon, with luck.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I think my favorite symphonies (6 and 7) least fit that description, so maybe his sense of time just isn't something I've naturalized to. Soon, with luck.

In the sixth, think of how the opening of the first movement is transformed at the end of the finale.

In the seventh, think of the first movement: three primary "slabs" of material in differing tempos. Unfortunately, I have yet to hear a conductor who takes the opening of the first movement at anywhere near Bruckner's prescribed tempo; heard correctly, it should be a flowing 2/2, Allegro moderato, and about twice as fast as it's usually played (a 4/4 Andante).

An interesting footnote regarding the Bruckner 7th is that the first two movements form the soundtrack for Luchino Visconti's totally over the top, quasi-operatic melodrama Senso from 1954, starring Farley Granger (as an Austrian soldier named Mahler!) and Alida Valli. The credits refer to the score as providing a "commentary" on the action. Oh well, that observation belongs in a thread on six great 7th symphonies.

[Sergeant Rock]

In the seventh, think of the first movement: three primary "slabs" of material in differing tempos. Unfortunately, I have yet to hear a conductor who takes the opening of the first movement at anywhere near Bruckner's prescribed tempo; heard correctly, it should be a flowing 2/2, Allegro moderato, and about twice as fast as it's usually played (a 4/4 Andante)

Norrington/Stuttgart does the first movement in 14:56. It might be what you are looking for.

Sarge

[(poco) Sforzando]

Norrington/Stuttgart does the first movement in 14:56. It might be what you are looking for.

Sarge

Norrington has made a specialty of observing composers' metronome markings, even when they don't make much sense (e.g., in some sections of the Beethoven 9th). However, I find his literalistic phrasing (the score, the whole score, and nothing but the score) unappealing.

[amw]

I don't understand the fast movements from Bruckner's Eighth yet.

there are fast movements in Bruckner's 8th?

I feel like the finale should be very relatable (possibly the strongest finale Bruckner ever wrote—also the last one as it happens). Everything's completely integrated and comes together quite satisfyingly. Also the musical substance itself is quite dramatic.

(Also I should hear the 7th at some point. Which one's best?)

[Madiel]

Sigh. All you lot are telling me is that I don't actually have enough 8ths to make this a decent competition.

Holmboe, for sure. Beethoven, for sure. I did like Dvorak's, although I don't think as much as his 7 or 9. Then I listened to Schubert's today (ie the 'Unfinished') because it had been a while, and that's pretty good (especially the first movement).

So that's four. And then after that I appear to only have two more: Simpson, who I've gone off a bit (at least, from the Hyperion box set which is the main source) and I don't think the 8th was a preferred work anyway, and Mahler, for whom (as discussed a few times) the 8th is the one piece that I've disliked and vaguely hope that one day some other recording will show me that it's Rattle's fault rather than Mahler's.

So yeah, there ya go. Mahler's is my 6th-favourtie 8th symphony and so far I can't stand it.

[Sergeant Rock]

there are fast movements in Bruckner's 8th?

Sarge

[Karl Henning]

"... and THIS is how I find out?!"