Emily's Music Dump – The Personal Music Collection of Emily Sachs

October 1, 2025

Chopin: Artur Rubinsten – The Chopin Collection – Nocturnes

Frederic Chopin (1810 – 1849)

The Chopin Collection – Nocturnes (Track Breackdown Below)

Artur Rubinstein, Piano

Recorded at RCA Italiana Studios, Rome – August 30 and 31 and September 1 and 2, 1965

Produced By: Max Wilcox

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ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

I mean, it’s Artur Rubinstein playing Chopin Noctures – no notes.

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LINER NOTES – Alan Rich

There is a romantic image connected with the piano music of Chopin, and especially with his nocturnes. A candlelit, elegant salon filled with ladies of all ages, fashionably dressed. Many are swooning, or about to. At the piano, Chopin, his delicate features lit by some inner vision as his lean, aesthetic fingers draw from the kays the most ephemeral tracery, while George Sand stands nearby puffing on a cigar.

The scene may be somewhat fanciful and overdrawn, but it is part of the Chopin legend, and it has rubbed off on a number of pianists since the composer’s time who have sought to rekindle his image in the concert hall. There is a great temptation to turn this wonderful music into a kind of romantic mush, to linger languidly over every turn of phrase until the music falls apart into a series of fleeting wisps of pink clouds.

Artur Rubinstein was one of the great figures in putting that portion of the legend to rest. His playing of Chopin was a revelation. Most of all, it revealed the strength, the richness of imagination, the sheer genius that lies embedded in the music itself. He gave Chopin stature, made him not merely the beloved panderer to the romantic tastes of the salon but a composer whose every measure was full of daring and powerful musical thrust.

When Rubinstein played a Chopin nocturne, he played it primarily as a piece of music, a logical and powerful progression of ideas shaped into a large and controlled musical design. Yet, the uniqueness of his playing is that it was never cold, ever drained of the human essence that is embedded in this music. Under his magical fingers, Chopin speaks to the mind, but also to the heart.

Why does this happen? Part of the explanation may be that Rubinstein was a Pole, like Chopin, whaterver it is in a particular country that gets into one’s artistic bloodstream is a shared commodity between the two spirits. But that kind of explanation is often pat and without meaning, and it is especially so here. For one thing, Chopin’s father was of purely French stock. And for another, Rubinstein was also a phenomenal exponent of the music of Spanish composers, whose backgrounds have nothing whatever to do with us.

No, the answer lies in the realm of the unexplainable, in the fact that Rubinstein was a musician whose sense of color, of logic, of communication, of wit and fantasy, and that Chopin a century ago was also that kind of musician. Somehow, for reasons have to do with a chemistry not to be analyzed in any existing laboratory, their spirits blended in a perfect unity.

Chopin’s nocturnes span practically his entire career as a mature musician. The earliest of them, the E Minor (Op. 72, No. 1, published after his death), dates from 1827, three years before he left Warsaw for Paris; the last, the two of Op. 62, were written in 1846, when he was indeed the darling of the Paris salons, lionized and musically respected.

Much has been made of the influence upon these works of the Irish composer John Field, 30 years Chopin’s senior. Field was, like Chopin, a much sought-after piano virtuoso and composer, his experiments in seeking out a romantic, hazy sound from the piano, achieved largely through a subtle and complex use of the pedals, did point out the pathway for the young Pole. Field himself heard Chopin in Paris in 1832 and found him ‘a sickroom talent.’

Jealousy no doubt shaped that opinion, Field, sick and drink-ridden, was understandably taken aback to see the young Pole reaping the adulation that was once his.

Field’s nocturnes are undeniably pretty, and some of them are somewhat more than that. Actually, the motivating influence for both his works and those of Chopin came not from the piano at all but from the kind of romantic Italian opera that was sweeking through European tastes in the first two decades of the 19th century.

Look at such an ardent love song as Almaviva’s ‘Ecco ridente’ in Rossini’s ‘The Barber of Seville,’ or at the first part of Norma’s ‘Casta diva,’ and you will find the genesis of the piano nocturne in the long, sinuous, sighing melody with its gently dissonant points of punctuation, supported on an undulating orchestra accompaniment.

Both Field and Chopin had been exposed to a lot of this music, and they were both clearly out to seek ways of making this kind of immediate, romantic outpouring work on the piano.

The best of Field’s nocturnes are, indeed, extremely imaginative translations of the bel canto style into pianoese. But Chopin was not content to stop there. He created a new bel canto, conceived from its very beginning as a pianistic entity: a language in itself translated from nothing else. The piano sings as no diva ever could, and it takes upon itself a dramatic personality that needs no libretto to illuminate.

Take, for example, the most popular by far of the nocturnes, the E-flat, Op. 9, No. 2. It is one of the simpler pieces, and its beginning might, indeed, be out of a Bellini opera. But as the two alternating strains of melody make their successive returns, each is dramatically deepened by a darkening of the harmony and an intensification of the figuration. Even in this ‘easy’ piece the subtlety of the changes of key, the chromatic alterations, far exceeds the boundaries of the vocal style.

What was simple and straightforward at first sweeps to a huge emotional climax, resolved by a cadenza that is no mere virtuosic display but rather an integral part of the drama.

Then look at the piece that is probably the most complex, and quite possibly the greatest, of the series, the C-sharp Minor, Op. 27, No. 1. Here we have a piece whose relationship to the vocal manner, to the style of the Field nocturnes, is as meager as its resemblance to the familiar salon image. It is a powerful, virile outcry, one of the most personal utterances in the entire realm of piano music.

The very opening measures, with the E-sharp in the right hand clashing against the C-sharp Minor accompaniment, set the tone. And the middle section, with its rumbling, menacing bass line and the building-up to huge chordal sonorities above, brings the listener face-to-face with passion at its most elemental. Romantic, moonlit vista? Hardly.

Each of these works, in fact, creates its own mood, and the variety within each set is remarkable. Some (Op. 9, No. 1; Op. 15, No. 2; Op. 48, No. 2; and Op. 72, No. 1) do resemble in general layout and mood the simpler moonlit pieces of Field. But others (Op. 15, No. 1; Op. 48, No. 1; Op. 62, No. 1) are full of clouds and turbulence. Appearances are often deceptive; a quiet, muted beginning can lead the listener to expect calm reverie, whereupon the storm will burst forst with utmost dramatic suddenness.

Some are of a strangeness and mystery that defies any easy description. What, for example, are we to make of the rhapsodic piece in G Minor, Op. 15, No. 3? Here is a muted, slow waltz in which the characteristic; rolling accompaniment figures make no appearance at all.

Then there comes an even sparer section marked religioso, a chordal, hymn-like melody entirely unrelated to what has gone before, and the piece ends thus. Something special is obviously on the composer’s mind here, but we must draw our own conclusion as to its nature.

During Chopin’s lifetime his nocturnes were the most popular of his piano compositions. This makes all the more remarkable the fact that they are also by far the most complex of his works. Perhaps the prevailing slow tempos gave him the room to experiment in these works to a greater extent than in any of his others. Or perhaps the very title gave him the incentive to let his imagination rhapsodize, to move freely into strange lands under the cover of darkness.

For whatever reason, they are indeed strange and wonderful pieces. Any one of them has a degree of harmonic daring that sets Chopin far in advance of any composer of his time, with the possible exception of Hector Berlioz.

Without the slightest warning he will dart into some totally unrelated key, hover there for a moment and then return. In examples already cited, and in countless others, he will let his fancy roam through the most astounding kinds of dissonance, bringing out into the open the wild clashes between important melodic notes and their harmonic surroundings.

And his sheer piano sonority remains astounding. Every device of the romantic and contemporary piano language has its origin in Chopin, and especially in the nocturnes; the setting of the melody in some inner voice, framed on both sides by figuration; the stringing-out of long chains of color-chords, which we hear not as harmony at all but rather as a kind of iridescent wash, a stunning range of effect created by the use, or the non-use, of the pedal.

There is no question, of course, that the initial impulse in the creation of these works was sentiment. Chopin, for all his burning originality, wrote for the audience which paid him the highest homage, and that audience could be best reached by music of the highest emotional immediacy.

The wonder is, however, that in these, quite possibly his finest works for the piano, Chopin could accomplish this act of immediate communication and at the same time pull so far ahead of the popular salon manner of the Paris of his day. Many of his nocturnes are relatively east to play, and the ladies to whom most of them are dedicated must have been deeply touched by these agreeable love letters.

But the superior musician will find, beneath the sentiment and the sentimentality of these pieces, an undertone of strength and originality that probably escaped some of the most ardent hearers among Chopin’s immediate audiences. It is for a Rubinstein, rather than for a Comtesse d’Apponyi, or a Mademoiselle de Donneritz or a Laure Duperre, to unlock the inner secrets of these incredible compositions and reveal their true treasures.

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TRACK LISTING :

Frederic Chopin (1810 – 1849)

The Nocturnes

Compact Disc No. 1

Op. 9 – No. in B-Flat Minor [5:23]
Op. 9 – No. 2 in E-flat Major [4:22]
Op. 9 – No. 3 in B Major [6:45]
Op. 15 – No. 1 in F Major [4:16]
Op. 15 – No. 2 in F-Sharp Major [3:53]
Op. 15 – No. 3 in G Minor [4:59]
Op. 27 – No. 1 in C-Sharp Minor [5:35]
Op. 27 – No. 2 in D-Flat Major [6:10]
Op. 32 – No. 1 in B Major [4:37]
Op. 32 – No. 2 in A-Flat Major

Compact Disc. No. 2

Op. 37 – No. 1 in G Minor [6:16]
Op. 37 – No. 2 in G Major [6:52]
Op. 48 – No. 1 in C Minor [5:50]
Op. 48 – No. 2 in F-Sharp Minor [7:16]
Op. 55 – No. 1 in F Minor [5:37]
Op. 55 – No. 2 in E-Flat Major [5:44]
Op. 62 – No. 1 in B Major [6:47]
Op. 62 – No. 2 in E Major [5:16]
Op. 72 – No. 1 in E Minor (Posth.) [4:40]

FINAL THOUGHT:

It’s just a tremendous record of Artur Rubinstein (and Chopin!) at their best!

Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company

August 13, 2025

Chopin / Servais – Works For Piano and Cello

Frederic Chopin (1810 – 1849)

Adrien-Francois Servais (1807 – 1866)

Chopin – Introduction et Polonaise brillante pour piano et violoncello, Op. 3

Chopin (in co-operation with Auguste Franchomme): Grand duo concertant pour piano et violoncello sur des themes de ‘Robert le Diable’ de Mayerbeer

Servais: Souvenir de Spa pour violoncello et piano, Op. 2

Servais: grande Fantaisie Polonaise sur des air du ballet ‘Le Noce de Cracovie,’ Op. 19

Edmond Baert, Cello

Serge Bemant, Piano

Recorded 1985, Switzerland

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ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

There’s a reason I bought this CD so many years ago – it was two composers from the Romantic era writing for Cello & Piano – and it does not disappoint!

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NO LINER NOTES (BUT HERE’S SOME INFO ABOUT CHOPIN AND SERVAIS):

FREDERIC CHOPIN (1810 – 1849)

Frédéric François Chopin (born March 1, 1810 –October 17, 1949) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading composer of his era whose ‘poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation.’

Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola and grew up in Warsaw, which in 1815 became part of Congress Poland.

A child prodigy, he completed his musical education and composed his early works in Warsaw before leaving Poland at age 20, less than a month before the outbreak of the November 1830 Uprising; at 21, he settled in Paris.

INTRODUCTION AND POLONAISE BRILLANTE IN C MAJOR, OP. 3

Introduce and Polonaise brillante in C major, Op. 3, was one of Chopin’s first published compositions.

The Polonaise was written between October 20 and 28, 1829, during a visit to the estate of Antoni Radziwill in Antonin. In a letter to Chopin’s friend Tytus Woyciechowski, Chopin indicated that he wanted Princess Wanda, the daught of Prince Antoni, to practice it.

The Introduction was written in April 1830. The work was published in 1831 and dedicated to the Austrian cellist Joseph Merk. In a letter, Chopin wrote, ‘On Thursday, there was a soiree at Fuch’s when Limmer introduced some of his own compositions for four violoncellos. Merk, as usual made them more beautiful than they really were by his playing, which is so full of soul. He is the only violoncellist I really respect.’

GRAND DUO CONCERTANT POUR PIANO AND VIOLONCELLO IN E MAJOR, B.70

The Grand Duo concertant in E major, B. 70 is a composition for piano and cello writting jointly by Frederic Chopin and Auguste Franchomme. It was written in 1832 and published in 1833.

Chopin had initally been contracted by his publishers to write a work for piano based on Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera Robert le diable. He had attended a performance and liked the work, but was disinclined to write a ‘fantasia’ (as he put it in a letter to his family) on another composer’s music.

However, his friend Auguste Franchomme persuaded him to jointly write a piece for cello and piano using themes from the opera. Chopin devised the general structure of the piece and wrote the piano part, with Franchomme writing the cello part.

ADRIEN-FRANCOIS SERVAIS (1807 – 1866)

Adrien-Francois Servais (June 6, 1807 – November 26, 1866) was one of the most influential cellists of the nineteenth century. he was born and died in what is now Halle, Belgium. He is one of the founders of the Modern Cellistic Schools of Paris and Madrid which began through collaboration with his friend Auguste Franchomme and his disciple Victor Mirecki Larramat.

His compositions are still studios, performed and recorded all over the world.

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TRACK LISTING :

Frederic Chopin (1810 – 1849)

Adrien-Francois Servais (1807 – 1866)

Chopin: Introduction et Polonaise brillante pour piano et violoncello, Op. 3 [9:40]
Servais: Souvenir de Spa pour violoncello et piano, Op. 2
Chopin (in co-operation with Auguste Franchomme): Grand duo concertant pour piano et violoncello sur des themes de ‘Robert le Diable’ de Meyerbeer [12:44]
Servais: Grande Fantaisie Polonaise sur des airs du ballet ‘Le Noce de Crecovir,’ Op. 19

FINAL THOUGHT:

Look, over the years, these pieces have been played by some of the great pianists and cellists in the world. This recording is great but I have to leave some room in my scale for all those I have not heard (for any haters out there, 82 is a great score).

Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company

July 14, 2025

Chopin – Piano Concertos No. 1 and No. 2 – Garrick Ohlsson, Piano

Frederic Chopin (1810 – 1849)

Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11

Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21

Garrick Ohlsson, Piano

Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra – Jerzy Maksymiuk, Conductor

Recorded 1975 – Katowice, Poland in co-production with Polish Radio & TV

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ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

If you want a great definition of classical music’s Romantic period – pop this baby in your dusty old CD player.

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NO LINER NOTES (BUT HERE’S SOME INFO ABOUT CHOPIN AND THE PIANO CONCERTOS):

FREDERIC CHOPIN (1810 – 1849)

Frédéric François Chopin (born March 1, 1810 –October 17, 1949) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading composer of his era whose “poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation.”

Chopin was born in Żelazowa Wola and grew up in Warsaw, which in 1815 became part of Congress Poland.

PIANO CONCERTO NO. 1 IN E MINOR, OP. 11

The Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11, is a piano concerto written by Frédéric Chopin in 1830, when he was twenty years old. It was first performed on October 12 of that year, at the Teatr Narodowy (the National Theatre) in Warsaw, Poland, with the composer as soloist, during one of his “farewell” concerts before leaving Poland.

It was the first of Chopin’s two piano concertos to be published, and was therefore given the designation of Piano Concerto ‘No. 1’ at the time of publication, even though it was actually written immediately after the premiere of what was later published as Piano Concerto No. 2.

PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2 IN F MINOR, OP. 21

The Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21, is a piano concerto composed by Frédéric Chopin in fall 1829. Chopin composed the piece before he had finished his formal education, at around 20 years of age.

It was first performed on March 17, 1830, in Warsaw, Poland, with the composer as soloist. It was the second of his piano concertos to be published (after the Piano Concerto No. 1), and so was designated as ‘No. 2,’ even though it was written first.

From May 2024, a score from the collection of the National Library of Poland, where a piano part is in Chopin’s own hand, is presented at a permanent exhibition in the Palace of the Commonwealth.

Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra

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TRACK LISTING :

Frederic Chopin (1810 – 1849)

PIANO CONCERTO NO. 1 IN E MINOR, OP. 11

i. Allegro maestoso risoluto [19:58]
II. Romance (Larghetto) [9:56]
III. Rondo (Vivace)

PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2 IN F MINOR, OP. 21

I. Maestoso [13:53]
II. Larghetto [9:30]
III. Allegro vivace [8:18]

FINAL THOUGHT:

Beautiful performance by International Chopin Contest winner Garrick Ohlsson (in 19709) and the Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra proving Chopin a gifted writer of the Piano Concerto form, but I’m glad he stopped at two so he could devote the rest of his time to all that glorious solo music.

Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company

July 3, 2025

Cavalli – La Calisto

Francesco Cavalli (1602-76)

La Calisto (1651)

A Masterpiece of the Venetian Baroque

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Revised & Conducted by Jane Glover

Glimmerglass Opera

BBC Music, 1996

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ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

Dude Cavalli was a big deal in 17th Century Venice and he’s a still a big deal today (in a few – very small – music circles).

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NO LINER NOTES (BUT HERE’S SOME INFO ABOUT CAVALLI & LA CALISTO)

Francesco CavalliFrancesco Cavalli (born Pietro Francesco Caletti-Bruni; (1602-76) was a Venetian composer, organiist and singer of the early Baroque period. He succedded his teacher Claudio Monteverdi as the dominant and leading opera composer of the mid-17th century. A central figure of Venetian musical life, Cavalli wrote more than thirty operas, almost all of whic premiered in the city’s theaters. His best known works include Omindo (1644), Giasone (1649) and La Calisto (1651).

La Calisto is an Italian opera by Francesco Cavalli from a libretto by Giovanni Faustini based on the mythological story of Calisto.

The opera received its first performance on November 28, 1951 at the Teatro Sant’Apollinare, Venice, where it drea limited audiences for its run of eleven performances. In the 20th centire it was successfully revived.

Libretto

The libretto was published in 1651 by Giuliani and Batti. The story combines two myths: Jupiter’s seduction of Calisto, and Diana’s adventure with Endymion. The plot is somewhat formulaic: Jane Glover has commented on how the librettist had to invent complications to meet audience expections in the context of Venetian opera.

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TRACK LISTING:

Francesco Cavalli (1602-76)

LA CALISTO (1651)

Dei foco fulminato [3:17]
Piante ombrose [5:54]
Dunque, che far degg io [1:13]
Non e maggior piacere [1:23]
Chi non ti crederebbe 2:50]
Improvisi stupori [2:05]
Ohime, vedo il mio bene [4:23]
Piacere maggiore havere non puo ;3:12]
Piangete, sospirate, luci dolenti [1:52]
Interprete mal buona son [2:05]
Ninfa bella [2:53]
Numi selvatici [3:57]
Lucidissima face [2:20]
Candidi corridori [7:54]
Da le gelose mie cure [1:21]
Scorgate, anco scorgate [3:26]
Calisto, anima mia? [1:40]
Trar da quelle vaghezze [1:12]
Ululi, frema, e strida [1:27]
Mercurio, chi disfoga [1:01]
Se tu nol credi [=:49]
Fermati, o mobile [2:36]
Restino imbalsamate [2:18]
Da le sponde Tartaree [2:39]
Racconsolata e paga [2:49]
Bella mia [3:52]
Che non l’ami volete? [1:58]
Ti segua questo dardo [2:42]
Arciera mia, discendi [2:27]

Total CD Duration: [77:51]

FINAL THOUGHT:

If it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it.

Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company

June 30, 2025

Wendy Carlos – Digital Moonscapes

John Cage (1939 – )

Digital Moonscapes

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Wendy Carlos and The LSI Philharmonic Orchestra

All Sounds Programmed And Performed On The GDS / Synergy Synthesizers by Wendy Carlos

For The LSI Technology, This Album Is Dedicated To NASA

Produced by Wendy Carlos, 1984

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ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

One of the great early CDs – perfect for the ‘new’ digital format (compact disc) – amazing with headphones and lights out.

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ORIGINAL LINER NOTES by Wendy Carlos

THE SOUNDS

I love the orchestra. In fact, when I switched from physics to music as my major in college, the opportunity to work with and write for orchestra was no small motivation.

When it appeared that the new field of electronic music could give a composer all of the resources of an orchestra and more in a room-sized studio, I jumped at it and enrolled in graduate school of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, then (1962) the only such facility in the United States.

Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center

The crude means of the classic electronic studio of that time, with a splice or two for each note of taped music could produce magical and dramatic musical effects and textures, but they were certainly no substitue for an orchestra.

When I met Bob Moog in the early 1960s and began to work with his synthesizers, then at least I could interpret music with real performance values, as I attempted to prove with my ‘Switched On’ recordings. Indeed, electronic music had become real music at last ! For a while I thought that we were getting close to the ‘orchestra in a box.’

However, it did not take long for me to learn that this common belief was really a misconception. By 1968, when I was finishing my second album (The Well-Tempered Synthesizer), I had already discovered that the ‘infinite possibilities’ of the synthesizer were actually very narrow – to the point of boredom, if one were honest about it. It was all too easy to sound thick and turgid, even with only two or three tracks of this presumably wonderful new sound.

Somehow the sounds of the older acoustic instruments were still much better. I began to understand that it was the utter simplicity of the synthesizer’s sounds that was their downfall. Acoustic instruments evolved over the ages to satisfy the human desire for subtly complex sounds. The synthesizer, as it evolved over only a few decades, produced sounds that were neither subtle nor complex and became boring with repetition, once the novelty wore off.

Even the most refined of today’s analog synthesizers generate timbres that are far removed from physical reality, with their pure sine, sawtooth and square waves, plus a bit of filtering and modulation – all very easy to describe in words or pictures or numbers. Just try to describe the waveshapes from a (well-played) violin, horn or timpani!

Technology now exists that can digitally sample or record a few notes of rich acoustic sources and then play them back from a keyboard (at different speeds to produce other pitches) like the old Mellotron. While this does have its usefulness, a few minutes spent with one of these machines will show you the limitations of the Xerox copy approach, if subtlety or flexibility is desired.

Even many of the wonderful new digital synthesizers made available over the past few years in a variety of forms, including a lot of bells and whistles and special convenience features, are still unable to control sounds much past the simple stage of the original modular Moog machines. The basic design of each presupposes this or that kind of sound variation to be ‘unimportant’ or “‘naudible,’ thus limiting the possibility of control.

Finally, what I consider to be the prime departure from the previous limitations was developed a few years ago by Hal Alles at Bell Labs. He modestly avoided making sweeping simplifications in his designs, which evolved to be open-ended enough, yet controllable, to permit subtle complexities in sounds akin to the best acoustic instruments. His series of prototypes eventually resulted in the GDS and Synergy digital synthesizers from Digital Keyboards. Their first task was to assemble a user-friendly software and control package for the Alles generator card.

The next step, which I undertook in 1982, was building a library of voices (nearly 500 by now, many were also made available on cartridges from Digital Keyboards) replicating as closely as possible the features of acoustic instruments. Album notes are not the place to describe the complexities of the several hundred details that must be programmed for each note of each instrument with various dynamic levels and performing methods. It is intimidating, yet ultimately fascinating. I recommend the exercise to any of you with a love of sound and some background in acoustics and computers. Expect it to take some years, but I promise you will learn a lot!

The results may not be perfect; mine are perhaps only something like 70-95% successful as replicas that sound just the way those ‘real’ instruments do. (I like that term: ‘replicas.’) But perform and record several dozen of these replicas together in an ensemble and you can produce what this recording demonstrates: the world’s first digitally synthesized orchestra, thanks to the miracles of LSI technology (‘Large Scale Integration’ circuits, i.e., computer chips).

All sounds on this recording were digitally synthesized and fine-tuned by ear. No digital sampling techniques were employed. No microphones were used at any stage, thus eliminating one of the weakest links in audio. It was not necessary to disguise sounds with a lot of echo and phasing to hide their inadequacies.

With digital delay and time processing, it was possible to achieve a balance between natural room-sound ambience and three dimensional stereo placement, resulting in an uncanny sense of ‘scrim free’ orchestral transparency on the digitally mastered recording.

But why do all this? Do we now have the ‘orchestra in a box’? Not really, considering the time and effort required to produce an orchestral recording in this manner. Rather we should consider the reality of replication as only a measure of the quality of the synthesis, not as the ultimate goal. The goal ought to be providing the base on which to build new sounds with orchestral qualities that have not been heard before but are equally satisfying to the ear.

This album represents my attempt to provide that base; look for the next steps using the experimental hybrid and imaginary sounds which have grown out of this work.

So the LSI Philharmonic is born. This recording celebrates itself within the bounds of the initial library of orchestral replicas I created. I present it to you as my encomium to the orchestra. After all, imitation is a high form of flattery. (But in most ways I still prefer the original.)

THE MUSIC

I have long had an idea as to the reason there is so small an audience for serious contemporary music. As Tom Wolfe pointed out in ‘From Bauhaus To Our House,’ since about World War 1, architects (and fine artists, too) have become more afraid of appearing ‘bourgeois’ from wanting to give delight to their audience. In so doing they have moved in smaller and smaller concentric circles until all stand on the same square inch of safely non-bourgeois style.

I believe this applies as much to modern music as to the other arts. So, is it any wonder that the audience at large has fled to the decidedly more human pop culture? My hunch is that they don’t hate music that is ‘modern,’ only music that is ‘boring’!

Consiering that the music composed for this album is no less important to me than the sounds. Written as for orchestra, it is based on astronomical subjects.

‘COSMOLOGICAL IMPRESSSIONS’ is a suite of three movements. The first ‘Genisis’ portrays a wide-angle view of the universe. Sounds grow out of the void and crystalize into a high fifth in bassoons and cellos. This builds slowly and deliberately with increasing complexity into a ‘dawn of life’ theme over swirling impressionistic arpeggios. trumpet and then pipe organ join in crescendo at the broad climax followed by a reposeful ending.

‘Eden,’ the second movement, is a peaceful combination of diatonic tune over simple harmonic chaconne. Three main themes and three sub-themes are woven into a continuous contrapuntal fabric in moderate 3/4 meter to depict the straightforward elegance of the legendary garden.

The distances between galaxies are incomprehensibly vast, unbearably lonely in the third movement, ‘IC’ (for ‘Intergalactic Communications’), we try a radio signal ‘Hello, we exist!’ Not wanting to appear to square or dull, we probably avoid 4/4 and choose something more subtle, like the intricate 13/8 used here. An allegro theme is repeated over and over, first in bassoon, then clarinet. Above it floats the melancholy adagio counter-theme in violins and horns as the message continues over lightyears and parsecs, until eternity meets infinity…

‘MOONSCAPES’ is a nine movement suite, a larger work in the spirit of Holst’s ‘The Planets.’ The topic here is the major moons of the solar system for which we have at last, thanks to NASA, real images of real worlds, each with its own personality. (Appropriate, these are images reconstructed by computer from digital information!) Working outwards from the sun, we encounter:

‘Luna,’ for Earth’s moon, the most familiar one in the solar system, is the longest movement. From traditional associations with ‘love’ and ‘lunacy,’ it takes the form of a concerto for schizophrenic soloist. Two main themes, one dramatic, the other romantic; alternate between soloist and orchestra. The solo begins as a violin, becomes a violoncello, and then nervously retreats to become a trumpet, a clarinet and a bass clarinet, before returning as a violin just in time for a variation on the romantic theme. All five personalities alternate freely through the cheery coda. There a sixth personality, combining violin timbre with the percussive envelope of a piano, is momentarliy disclosed. (This is the only sound on the record that cannot be made with a traditional orchestra!)

‘Phobos and Deimos’ are the two tiny moons of Mars. They move the fastest and are probably the least attractive moons in the system. Here they are given musical voice as a rondo / scherzo with two gnome-like themes tied together with three contrasting sub-themes. The first theme, for Phobos, is a sort of shouting match between horns and trombones. The second, for Deimos, is a dour dance. The harmonies explore stacked major thirds and stacked fifths.

‘Ganymede,’ the largest moon in the solar system (even bigger than Mercury), is one of Jupiter’s satellites. Its size and varied, attractive surface features suggested bouyant, happy and generous music, which brought to mind a jazz waltz. Three main and two seccondary themes contrapuntally weave in and out over a ten-bar chord progression, occasionally shortened to create asymetrical interest in both harmony and rhythm. Solos in horn, flute, alto sax and bassoon highlight the entrance of each new theme.

‘Europa,’ another of Jupiter’s moons, projects a slow impressionistic mood. Two angular themes float over an accompaniment that undulates in varying ostinati. The ending is hopeful; beneath the cracked-ice surface there may be life waiting to be thawed from its frozen prison as in Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘2010.’ (This is the only movement to employ processing. Subtle phasing was added to the string tracks.)

‘Io’ is a tempestuous scherzo, a perpetuum mobile, in keeping with Jupiter’s red-orange volcanic moon. The surface is constantly changing, yet appears the same, and the music bubbles along as a passacoglio with eleven varied repetitions. The relentless theme and harmony are built in fourths and major seconds.

‘Callisto,’ the last of Jupiter’s moons in the Suite, is a heavily cratered, desolate body. The music has a simple ABA form, with a sad, lyrical theme for each A, and a 5/4 ostinato in B over which nonsynchronous orchestral textures wax and wane. Harmonies are bitonal and quartal, the meter is frequently surprisingly complex despite the gentle nature of the melancholy mood.

‘Rhea,’ the second-largest moon of Saturn, is the briefest movement. It features clusters and tri-tonality, but at a more spirited tempo than usual for cluster-music, and a simple theme over the cluster harmonies. (The ‘electronic’ sound quality is totaly an artifact of the clusters used; the effect would sound nearly the same with acoustic instruments.) The meter is a compound 4 + 3/4 but the music flows gracefully and lightly over this with an uncomplicated sound not unlike the attractive appearance of the moon.

‘Titan,’ Saturn’s largest moon (also larger than Mercury), has been thought likely to contain life. But Voyager’s photos revealed that the thick rust-colored, hydrocarbon-rich atmosphere that makes life possible totally obscures the surface. The music reflects this enigma. It is dark and brooding, with pre-dominant use of the low instruments, a tuba solo, soft bass drum and tom-tom. The adagio in 3/4 with constantly shifting downbeat sits on an unvarying pedal harmony of E-flat minor over A minor.

”Iapetus,’ the third largest of Saturn’s moons, has an appearance unique in the solar system. One side is nearly charcoal black, while the other is bright and reflective, although the surface itself is not particularly complex. This most contrasting movement of the Suite is composed with only two main themes, each of which takes on several moods and styles. The ending, with an extended coda, also exploresa quiet aleatoric impressionism, a fat tutti / recapitulation, and an unusual solo percussion toccato, which brings the Suite to an energetic conclusion. (For now anyway – NASA may yet bring us images of the moons of Uranus and Neptune…)

Wendy Carlos

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TRACK LISTING:

Wendy Carlos (1939 – )

COSMOLOGICAL IMPRESSIONS

Genesis [7:10]
Eden [4:25]
I.C. (Intergalactic Communications) [3:40]

MOONSCAPES

Luna [8:40]
Phobus and Deimos [2:45]
Ganymede [4:22]
Europa [4:15]
Io [4:28]
Callisto [4:28]
Rhea [1:50]
Titan [3:43]
Iapetus [5:48]

No video of a performance of ‘Digital Moonscapes’ – so here is a short documentary about Wendy Carlos.

FINAL THOUGHT:

A groundbreaking electronic soundscape from the 1980s that holds up as music and not something to be filed away in a music museum. Plus, the liner notes are basically Carlos reviewing herself and giving herself the highest of marks!

Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company

June 23, 2025June 23, 2025

John Cage – Roaratorio – An Irish Circus On Finnegans Wake

John Cage (1912 – 1992)

Roaratorio – An Irish Circus On Finnegans Wake

Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake

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Recorded In Stuttgart, Germany and Ireland – 1979

Ars Acustica

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ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

I bet very few (if any) Classical Music bloggers are reviewing this piece – I don’t know why – it’s awesome if you’re pulling an all nighter and the sun is about to rise! (Sorry, not actually one sentence – but I used dashes to make it look like it.)

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ORIGINAL LINER NOTES by Klaus Schoning (English translation by John Patrick Thomas and W. Richard Rieves)

John Cage, who died in New York on August 12, 1992 just short of his 80th birthday, stands as one of the greatest and most pioneering artists of the 20th Century.

In addition to his musical works and closely tied to them is a body of extensive poetic philosophical work which he published successively in his books Silence (1961), A Year From Monday (1968), M (1970), Writings Through ‘Finnegans Wake’ (1978, together with Alison Knowles), Empty Words (1979), Themes & Variations (1982), Roaratorio, An Irish Circus on ‘Finnegans Wake (1982), Laus Schoning, editor), X (1982), and the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (1988).

Many of these poetic texts were written to be read aloud, an oral literature, which John Cage with his extraordinary voice often recited himself. A kind of sound poetry whose character may be recognized in the variety of pitches and inflections, of movement and rest, of tempi and rhythms, of breathing and silence. As John Cage put it: Poetry is ambiguous, it lets musical elements such as time and sound enter the world of words.

A productive and continuous collaboration between John Cage, the poet, and the medium of radio developed from the end of the 1970s when the Studio Acoustic Art at the WDR in Cologne invited Cate to realize a large number of his poetic works as radio pieces and sound compositions thereby making them available to a wider public.

The results works are: Roaratorio, An Irish Circus on ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ (1979), James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet (1982), Themes & Variations (1983), Muoyce (1984), HMCIEX (1984), Mushrooms et Variationes (1985), Diary (1) (1987), Writing Through The Essay ‘On The Duty of Civil Disobedience’ (1988), The First Meeting of the Satie Society (1987), Mirage Verbal, Writing through Marcel Duchamp, Notes (1989), Erik Satie: An Imaginary Conversation (1990), and h-WDR (1987).

In 1992 WERGO released on 8-part CD edition of John Cage reading his Diary: How To Improve The World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse).

Beginning in the 1940s, Cage was occupied with the epochal work of James Joyce, particularly with the hermetic and difficult ‘Finnegans Wake.’ In 1942, Cage set a passage from the ‘Wake’ which he titled ‘The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs’ and in 1984 ‘Nowth upon Nacht’ in memory of Cathy Berberian.

In his radio piece, ‘An Alphabet,’ Cage himself plays the role of James Joyce, speaking texts from ‘Finnegans Wake.’ In the 1970s and 80s, Cage composed his five ‘Writings through ‘Finnegans Wake,’ a kind of ‘writing through,’ as opposed to reading through, Joyce’s work using different literary methods.

The resulting five poetic texts were designed to be read aloud in the manner of oral, meditative poetry whose sense is contained in the sound: a kind of ‘soundsense’ as James Joyce once characterized ‘Finnegans Wake.’

With Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on ‘Finnegans Wake,’ Cage realized a work which within months of its premiere in 1979 at the WDR in Cologne became an international sensation and must be ranked as one of the key works of Ars Acustica in the 20th century.

As an exceptional example of poetry for the radio, it was awarded the Karl Sczuko Prize in 1979 and was presented during the Donaueschigen Festival. The prize citation read, ‘Cage opens up on endlessly rich acoustic world, althought it is strongly rooted in literary and musical ideas. It is a world made up of sounds, text and music, one in which the listener is able at will to experience and at the same time be exposed to sounds which the normally one-dimensional medium of radio cannot customerily offer.’

In ‘Roaratorio,’ Cage’s experiences with music and poetry, oral recitation and tape montage, and his close association with Zen Buddhism, lead to an all-inclusive cosmology built out of human voices, natural sounds, sounds coming out of the immediate environment, noises, singing, and music.

His ‘Writing for the Second Time Through ‘Finnegans Wake,’ which consists of quotations from ‘Finnegans Wake,’ forms the verbal component for ‘Roaratorio.’ The steadily repeated name of James Joyce forms the central axis for the mesostic text. John Cage recites this meditative oral poem himself. The beginning of the recording Cage made is presented on this WERGO CD.

For the composition of the music, a complex sound and noise ambience, the Joyce text was again diassembled. With the help of the ancient Chinese oracle book, the ‘I Ching,’ Cage used chance operation to determine 2293 sounds depicting locations and noises that appear in ‘Finnegans Wake.’

Cage formed all this into a polyphonic collage. The montage is expanded by the inclusion of Irish ballads, jigs, and instrumental music which he recorded in Ireland. Cage considered this piece also as an opportunity to transpose works from the world of literature into an acoustical situation in which the language is accessible to all: ‘I think more and more we need a language which doesn’t require translation.’

Numerous radio stations in Europe, America, and Australia have broadcast this work which has become a classic of acoustical art. It has been presented by the WDR at international festivals as a live-performance with John Cage and Irish musicians. Merce Cunningham choreographed a ballet to ‘Roaratorio’ for his Dance Comapny, which has been performed in Lille, London, Frankfurt, Avignon, and New York with great success.

Heinrich Vormweg on the presentation of the Karl Sczuka Prize to John Cage for ‘Roaratorio’ at Donoueschingen in 1979: ‘Roaratorio’ equates Joyce with Everyman, and it equates Everyman with every meaning and every sound, and it equates every sound, every note, every word with the one word, allowing all this to co-exist in a kind of universal music which – and this is the most surprising thing – gives one an overwhelming feeling of openness and hope. ‘Roaratorio’ is one large tablet of contemporary cuneiform, full of clues and messaages yet undecipherable; it is an act of devotion and of laughter, an apotheosis of agreement with this world and at the same a vast utopian scheme, a radio challenge to a different life in this world. A scheme of equality and of peace attained with it. Here is art demonstrating a step into the future, into a future deserving of this name.’

Klaus Schoning (English translation by John Patrick Thomas and W. Richard Rieves)

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TRACK LISTING:

John Cage (1912-1992)

Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on ‘Finnegans Wake’ [60:09]
Writing for the Second Time Through ‘Finnegans Wake’ [14:14]

FINAL THOUGHT:

I mean, yeah, impressive work – but I wouldn’t want to hear it over and over on a loop.

Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company

May 6, 2025May 6, 2025

Bruckner – Mass In E Minor – Matthew Best, Conductor

Bruckner – Mass in E Minor – Libera Me – Zwei Aequale

Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896)

Mass In E Minor

Libera Me

Zwei Aequale

———————

Matthew Best, Conductor

English Chamber Orchestra Wind Ensemble

Corydon Singers

Recorded In The Churck of St. Alban, Holburn, London – March 29, 30 – April 1, 1985

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ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

I bet very few (if any) Classical Music bloggers are reviewing this piece – I don’t know why – it’s awesome if you’re pulling an all nighter and the sun is about to rise! (Sorry, not actually one sentence – but I used dashes to make it look like it.)

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ORIGINAL LINER NOTES by Robert Simpson

BRUCKNER – MASS IN E MINOR // LIBERA ME // ZWEI ACQUALE

Bruckner’s three mature masses, in D minor, E minor, and F minor, were written between 1864 and 1868, after his seven year period of grinding study with Simon Sechter, during which he composed very little. When he eventually plunged into composition again (he was no in his forties), he had consolidated his skills, and the D minor and F minor masses show a maturity based on the Austrian classical tradition.

The E minor stands apart; it uses a windband instead of the classical orchestra, and it is clearly influeneced by a study of early counterpoint, especially Palestrina’s. Of the three masses it is the ‘purest.’ It also looks to both past and future in a way the others do not.

At this time of his career Bruckner’s sense of movement in his large-scale music reflected the classical era; the masses in D minor and F minor (as well as a less characteristic earlier one in B flat) are modelled on the symphonic masses of Haydn and Mozart, with Beethoven and Schubert looking on.

Anton Bruckner – Statue – Vienna, Austria

Bruckner had not yet explored the vast, slow time-scale of his later symphonies. He had begun to discover Wagner, who found a way to create musical processes slow enough to accomodate stage drama, and he was to become the first and greatest composer to apply such a time-scale to purely instrumental music (this is the only respect in which Bruckner is a ‘Wagnerian’ compsoer).

But in their sense of movement the works of the eighteen-sexities, two symphonies (No. ‘0’ and No. 1) and the three great masses, do no more than hint at a new road, though they all have potent individuality.

The E minor mass of 1866 was revised in 1882, the version recorded here. Bruckner’s lifelong addiction to revision under pressure from his well-meaning but mistaken Wagnerian friends is one of the sadder stories of music, but the masses did not suffer seriously from it; although there are unauthentic scores, Bruckner’s own revisions are plainly advantageous.

The E minor mass received improvements that cannot be compared with the disastrous meddling inflicted by the distracted composer on its contemporary the First Symphony in 1890-91.

In his symphonies Bruckner had entered a world few people (and sometimes not even his own great mind housed in a naive personality) fully understood, while the masses could be related to familiar norms.

The revisions of detail in the E minor mass do not alter its nature, its fine balance between forward and backward views. Its concern with slow floating counterpoint, while it refers to Palestrina, yet anticipates the deliberation of to its companions in D minor and F minor, admirable though they are.

This can be felt at once in the opening Kyrie, largely unaccompanies except for the intermittent use of horns and trombones. Long suspensions and clear harmony create a sense of space. In the central section (Christe eleison) there is more movement, and a climax, then the Kyrie returns, this time to make its own climax before fading into vaulted heights.

The Gloria and Credo, on the other hand, are essentially classical allegros with the contrasts of tempo and style dictated by the text. For the most part, Bruckner is revelling in the athletic energy familiar to his great predecessors Haydn and Beethoven, but with textures simpler and more spare anbd rhythms blunter and more naive.

Both movements are in C major and contain central contrasts, the Gloria having a quiet secion on ‘Qui tollis peccata mundi’ with typical horn phrases, and the Credo a simple but profound treatment of ‘Et incaratus est’ and ‘Crucifixus,’ a stream of perfectly formed, dignified melody of great beauty.

The Gloria ends with a short but trenchant chromatic fugato on ‘Amen,’ and the Credo (whose main theme anticipates strikingly the sturdy power of the scherzo of the Eighth Symphony of more than twenty years later) reaches its apex in a broad and mighty cadence.

It is the Sanctus that Palestrina’s influence (in the form of a quotation from the Missa brevis of 1570) is clearest. A two-part canon is enveloped in eight-party counterpoint as a great crescendo is built. The whole movement lasts only a few minutes but has a power of suggestion out of all proportion to its dimensions; such a slow crescendo as this beings some of Bruckner’s greatest symphonic movements, and the tribue to Palestrina is also a glance to the future, not only Bruckner’s own, but to such things as the magnificent opening pages of Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony.

The gentle and subtle Benedictus is in full sonata form, its development deeply modulated and its coda a bright burst on ‘Hosanna in excelsis.’ The final Agnus Dei delivers the customary threefold prayer, each time as a crescendo, the last quietened to make way for teh hushed ‘Dona nobis pacem,’ perhaps the most beautiful music in the whole work, which is without doubt the deepest and most concentrated of Bruckner’s masses.

LIBERA ME

The fine motet, Libera me, for choir with three trombones, was written in 1854. Although this was before his lon gperiod of study with Sechter, Bruckner was no beginner; he was thirty, with plenty of experience of church music behind him, and the story that he did not become a proper composer until he was forty is a myth.

As early as 1849 he had produced a beutiful and individual little Requiem that ought to be better know than it is, and his talents had already been recognized in his own environment.

This Libera me is simple and clear; it contains no elaborate counterpoint, but its part-writing is excellent, as is the calculation of sonorities. It has the solemn dignity befitting a funeral piece, and its middle section expresses the fear of judgment with considerable power and economy.

ROBERT SIMPSON

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TRACK LISTING:

Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896) – Mass in E Minor, etc.

Aequalis No. 1 [1:50]
Libera me [9:04]
Aequalis No. 2 [1:55]

Mass in E Minor

4. Kyrie [7:45]
5. Gloria [6:32]
6. Credo [10:34]
7. Sanctus [3:32]
8. Benedictus [6:27]
9. Agnus Dei [5:45]

FINAL THOUGHT:

This piece holds a special place in my heart. It’s from the 1980s and I was staying up late trying to finish a writing piece and this one popped through my 5 CD CHANGER and hit right around sunrise as I was completing my piece. The timing was perfect and I’ll never hate this disc (or really criticize it).

Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company

February 26, 2025July 23, 2025

Bruckner – Symphony No. 9 in D Minor – Bruno Walter

Bruckner – Symphony No. 9 – Bruno WalterAnton Bruckner (1824 – 1896)

Symphony No. 9 in D Minor

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Bruno Walter, Conductor

Columbia Symphony Orchestra

Recorded 1959, CBS Studios, New York

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ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

You gotta love Bruno Walter: “Brass, play as loud as you can – and THEN PLAY LOUDER!” – love it!

ORIGINAL LINER NOTES by Uwe Kraemer

BRUCKNER – SYMPHONY NO. 9 IN D MINOR

Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) considered himself Beethoven’s successor in the realm of the symphony, and there are those who feel that he was justified.

These protagonists of Bruckner’s music point out his expansion of the symphonic form, his intensification of a poetic idea, and the grandeur and nobility of his musical speech. But there are others – and they are equally articulate – who feel that Bruckner’s gradeur is only bombast, his poetry only overwritten prose, his expansive style and form only so much pomposity.

And so, the battle over Bruckner has been waged for many years – and for that matter is being waged – making him one of the most provocative figures in music.

Born in a the small Austrian town of Ansfelden, Bruckner spent most of his life in his native country. For a while he taught music at the St. Florian secular music school, which he had formerly attended as a pupil; it was in this post that, in 1849, he wrote his first talented work, a Requiem.

In 1853, he settled in Vienna, with whose musical life he was henceforth to be intimately associated. For a while he served as a choral director; then, in 1868, he was appointed Professor at the Vienna Conservatory, filling this position with great honor for many years.

Meanwhile, he heard Wagner’s Tannhauser, an experience that overwhelmed him and henceforth made him a passionate disciple of the master. Wagnerian influences are frequently in evidence in his music, while his Third Symphony is openly dedicated to Wagner.

The controversy over Bruckner’s music began early – indeed, with the very first performances of his first symphonies. One of the officials at the Conservatory, studying his early manuscripts, advised him to throw his symphonies in a trash basket. The first performance of the Third Symphony was an outright fiasco. The critics were savage in their denunciation; and famous musicians, among them Brahms, were undisguisedly hostile to him.

Toward the close of his life, Bruckner found a certain measure of recognition and appreciation. Performances of his later symphonies by Nikisch, Hans Richter, Mottl, Hermann Levi, and Karl Muck were comparatively successful.

In 1891 Bruckner received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Vienna and a few years later the Empereor presented him with a stipend and a decoration. His seventieth birthday was the occasion for a nationwide celebration. However – despite the increasing favor – Bruckner still had his hostile critics. And, after his death in 1896, his symphonies still continued to arouse controversy outside of Austria.

Of all his symphonies, Bruckner’s Ninth suffered most, perhaps from editing. Bruckner died without completing it, and Ferdinand Loewe had a free hand in revision. He went at it with a will, and it was not until 1934 and the publication of the original manuscript that the real stature of this symphony, Bruckner’s last will and testament, was revealed.

The composer had struggled with his gigantic Eighth Symphony for six years and had begun the Ninth while the Eighth as being revised, working on it from September 21, 1887, until the day of his death, October 11, 1896.

Brucknerites tend to rejoince that the Ninth was never finished, contending that the great Adagio is a farewell to life and that anything following it would be anticlimactic. Nonethless, Bruckner wrestled with a finale for two years and finished the greater part of it in full score.

But he was haunted by the fear that he would not have time to complete the symphony. The physician who attended him in his final illness (in the luxury of the Belvedere Palace, where the Emperor had belatedly granted him an apartment) once discovered him on his knees praying ‘Dear God, let me get well soon. You see, I need my health to finish the Ninth.’

The Symphony is indeed dedicated to ‘Dear God’ (‘Dem lieben Gott’).

TRACK LISTING:

Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896) – Symphony No. 9 in D Minor

Feierlich (misterioso) [23:53]
Scherzo (bewegt lebhaft) [ 11:32]
Sehr langsam (feierlich) [23:17]

FINAL THOUGHT:

I don’t want to say it’s the definiitive performance – but damn – it’s pretty close. Bruckner seemed to hate strings and love brass – and Bruno Walter is a brother in arms. Considering so many people hated the symphony (and Bruckner) – I must disagree. I think this is awesome.

Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company

February 19, 2025July 23, 2025

Bruckner – Symphony No. 9 in D Minor – Yevgeny Mravinsky

Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896)

Symphony No. 9 in D Minor

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Yevgeny Mravinsky, Conductor

Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra

Leningrad Master Archive Recording from 1980

———————

ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

Boom! A great recording from the Soviet era, this one tees up Mahler nicely

ORIGINAL LINER NOTES by Soviet Archivist (translated by Someone Who Didn’t Know Russian Very Well)

BRUCKNER – SYMPHONY NO. 9 IN D MINOR

Born in St. Petersburg on June 4, 1903 and died in Leningrad on January 20, 1988, Yevgeny Mravinsky is one of the greatst musicians Russia has produced in the last century.

He completed his training at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire. His teachers were Sherbachov, Gauk and Malko until 1931. At the same time, Mravinsky occupied the post of pianist at the ballet school in his home city.

After being appointed conductor at the Kirov Theatre Orchestra, the Russian artist, as a prize in the national competition, was awarded the post of principal conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra in 1938.

Thanks to the hard work and the artistry of Mravinsky, the Symphony Group become one of the best in the world.

His love for the music of his contemporary colleagues prompted him to concentrate his repertoire on composers such as Tchaikovsky and, in particular, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich, many of whose works Mravinsky premiered.

This recording gives us the opportunity to listen to Mravsinky interpreting the music of a composer not considered to be one of his specialties: Anton Bruckner.

The composer began writing the first outlines of his Symphony No. 9 in 1887. His death occurred in the October 1896, leaving behind an unfinished work of three magnificent movements.

Bruckner first encountered the music of Wagner in 1863, the year in which he composed his first and unnumbered symphony. Thereafter, days on end of working obsessively, as well as romantic and professional misfortune, led to a deterioration in his health almost to the point of losing his sanity.

All of this suffering is heard in the magnificent music of the Ninth Symphony.

TRACK LISTING:

Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896) – Symphony No. 9 in D Minor

Feierlich (misterioso) [23:24]
Scherzo (bewegt lebhaft) [ 10:04]
Sehr langsam (feierlich) [26:11]

FINAL THOUGHT:

Regardless of the poor audio on these Leningrad Masters recordings, the performance of the Leningrad Philharmonic and Mravinsky’s conducting shines through – and Brucker definitely goes out with a bang.

Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company

January 6, 2025July 23, 2025

Bruckner – Symphony No. 8 in C Minor – Pierre Boulez

Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896)

Symphony No. 8 in C Minor

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Pierre Boulez, Conductor

Vienna Philharmonic

Recorded live at St. Florian, near Linz at the International Bruckner Festival 1996

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ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

Sorry, Anton, this bloated bore of a Symphony is about as boring as it can get – and it’s not the band (or Pierre Boulez’s fault).

ORIGINAL LINER NOTES by Ewald Mark (translated by Stewart Spencer)

THE PROJECT:

In September 1992, after a magnificent concert in London by the Vienna Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez, the conductor and the orchestra’s then managing director, Walter Blovsky, found themselves sitting next o each other at a reception and doing what conductors and orchestra managers like doing most of all; drawing up plans for the future.

When in the course of their conversation, Blovsky floated the idea of a performance of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony in the Abbey Church at St. Florian in September 1996. Boulez asked for time to think it over. After all, that would mean departing from the preferred practice of performing the work in the concert hall before recording it in the studio.

But the diaries of both the conductor and the orchestra allowed for only a live recording. It was not long, however, before Boulez gave the project his blessing after rehearsing at the Musikverein in Vienna, they would travel to Linz and stay there, with further rehearsals and the concerts themselves at St. Florian on 21 and 22 September. These would be filmed by Euroart and ORF and recorded by Deutsche Grammophon.

APPROACHES TO BRUCKNER:

In 1970, Boulez wrote an article for the Bayreuth Festival programme, “Approaches To Parsifal,” an article which, twenty-six years later in Vienna, encouraged me to ask the composer and conductor about his approach to Bruckner.

When Boulez receied his musical training between 1943 and 1946, Bruckner was virtually unknown in France – merely a name in books on the history of music, nothing more. According to Boulez, the general attitude to Bruckner was more or less that “he’s good enough for Central Europe but of no interest to us.”

But, as Boulez goes on, “there are two reasons why I can’t accept this point of view. First, the French have always been fanatical about Wagner, his chromatic language had a profound influence on them.

Secondly, they have always been particularly receptive to this kind of harmonic language – at least from Debussy onwards. So I simply don’t understand why the French weren’t immediately conscious of the wonderful harmonic language, this lacyrinthine harmonic language.”

Charles Munch hailed from Alsace but taught at the Leipzig Conservatory while playing in the Gewandhaus Orchestra under Wilhelm Furtwangler and Bruno Walter. Pierre Montreux worked as guest conductor with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam alongside Willem Mengelberg. And Andrei Ouytens was the first Frenchman to conduct at Bayreuth.

All three men regularly conducted Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner in the concert hall and recording studio, while ignoring Bruckner’s works. It was left to Daniel Barenboim during his years with the Orcestre de Paris to introduce Brucker’s symphonies to French audiences. But for the musicians, too, these scores were terra incognita, and the orchestra even had to acquire a set of Wagner tubas in order to be able to produce the right sound.

The Eight Symphony Under Klemperer That Was The Fifth.

A key experience for the elderly Igor Stravinsky was a gramophone recording of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra under Bruno Walter. Did Boulez have a similarly seminal experience with Bruckner?

The conductor recalls that during the 1960s he was often in London and regularly took the opportunity to hear Otto Klemperer conduct. He heard Beethoven, Mahler and, for the first time, Bruckner. When, in the course of the discussion mentioned at the outset, the question arose as to which of Bruckner’s symphonies he might like to conduct at a concert with the Vienna Philharmonic, he spontaneously chose the Eighth, because this, he said, was the work that had left such a deep impression on him when he had heard it under Klemperer with the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Many years later Klemperer’s daughter Lotta explained that it had in fact been the Fifth that Boulez had heard on that occasion. To this day, Boulez remains uncertain as to whom he owes his introduction to the Eighth. But at least he now knows that ‘memory always counterfeits the very thing one wants to feel.’

A Plea In Favor Of the Haas Edition

Any performance of a Bruckner symphony naturally begs the question as to which edition to prefer. It is a question that Pierre Boulez has had to confront in turn. He decided in favor of the Haas edition, as it seemed to him that the cuts in the Nowak version are unnecessary. ‘They sometimes destroy the symmetry, logic and structure.’

Equally clear-cut was his decision to choose the ‘original version’ in preference to that of 1887: ‘In the 1887 version the first and fourth movements end in the same way, whereas in the ‘original version’ the epilogue of the opening movement dies away ppp.’

Pierre Boulez is also familiar with some of Bruckner’s letters and with the anecdotes that have grown up around the composer. There is a passage, for example, in which Bruckner expresses his ‘deep emotion and gratitude to the highly esteemed Philharmonic Society‘ on the occasion of the first performance of the Eighth Symphony in 1892.

As an example of opportunism, this takes some beating and strikes more or less the same note as Wagner’s letters to King Ludwig II. ‘For me,’ says Boulez, ‘the boundary between a composer’s life and works is uncrossable. Or, to put it another way, the score is always the main thing for me.’

After studying the score in detail, therefore, Boulez can image that the double-dotted rhythms may be played more tautly by the orchestra, very much as ears attuned to Stravinsky and Bartok might expect them to be played. But then, with typically French generosity, he qualifies his remark: ‘From the very outset, I accepted that I would undoubtedly get more from the orchestra than they would get from me.’

Acoustic Problems

Both as a member of the audience and as a conductor, Pierre Boulez has had ample experience of the vagaries of church acoustics. He still clearly remembers a performance of Berlioz’s Symphonie funebre et triomphale at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and the nerve-racking struggle of the solo trombones with the building’s infamous echo.

During the summer of 1975 he conducted Mahler’s Ninth Symphony with the New York Philharmonic in Chartres Cathedral and recalls: ‘The performance of the fourth movement was ideal, but in the second and third movements in particular the audience heard absolutely nothing. Yet is was impossible to play it any slower, otherwise it would have lost all character. Because of this, one is willing to make compromises, but a compromise must not be taken too far.’

When the Vienna Philharmonic performed Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony under Pierre Boulez in the Abbey Church of St. Florian in September 1996 – only weeks before the centanary of Bruckner’s death – it was unnecessary to make any such compromises. This, after all, is the church in whose crypt the composer lies buried in a simple sarcophagus placed beneath the great organ that bears his name.

Or to put it another way; a great 20th Century composer has been paid homage to one of the great composers of the 19th Century.

Ewald Markl (translation: Stewart Spencer)

TRACK LISTING:

Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896) – Symphony No. 8 in C Minor

Allegro Moderato [15:08]
Scherzo: Allegro Moderato – Trio, Langsam, Scherzo Da Capo [ 13:39]
Adagio: Feierlich Langsam, Doch Nicht Schleppend [24:52]
Finale: Feierlich, Nicht Schnell [22:19]

FINAL THOUGHT:

Come at me, Bruckner-ites – but I can’t get behind this one. The work, not the performance. It’s just a bore. Go back to Symphonies 3-6 for the good stuff.

Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company

June 14, 2024July 24, 2025

Bruckner – Symphony No. 6 in A Major – Von Karajan

Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896)

Symphony No. 6 in A Major

———————

Herbert Von Karajan, Conductor

Berliner Philharmonic

Recorded 1980, Berliner Philharmonie – Berlin, West Germany

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ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

One word – ROUSING!

———————

ORIGINAL LINER NOTES by Richard Osborne

“Listen to the music with reverence; for the composer meant what he said, and he was speaking of sacred things,” wrote Sir Donald Tovey of the Sixth Symphony’s slow movement.

It is well said, for this is wise and compassionate music, Sachs-like in its broodings. Tovey’s advocacy of the symphony in the early years of the century was remarkable then and would be remarkable now, for the Sixth – personal, economical, thrillingly shaped and scored – has never been much noticed by the wider musical public.

During Bruckner’s lifetime only the Adagio and Scherzo of the Symphony were known. Wilhelm Jahn, director of the Vienna Hofoper, had conducted these two movements, to considerable acclaim, at a Philharmonic concert in Vienna in February 1883, seventeen months after the work’s completion.

But it was Gustav Mahler who brought the full score to public notice (albeit with cuts in some of the third subject groups and some revised orchestration) at a concert in Vienna in February 1899.

Mahler had long wanted to present a Bruckner symphony to the Philharmonic audience, and his choice was as enterprising as it was inspired. One wonders what Mahler made of the work in performance.

He was himself to write slow movements of omparable beauty, but his dance movements, with their persistent nostalgia, their recurrent irony, and their sophisticated orchestral method rarely, if ever, attempt to re-appropriate and re-fashion the classical scherzo as fascinatingly as Bruckner does.

Bruckner’s Trio, with its woodland horns and haunting sense of an Urwald far distant in time from our own, is a minor masterpiece in itself.

Like the trudging start to the Scherzo (which may or may not have given Mahler a germinal idea for his own Sixth Symphony), Bruckner’s music is rooted in certainties which Mahler all too rarely glimpsed.

Bruckner’s two outer movements are incluctably splendid; but they, too, follow a ground-plan, and an orchestral procedure, radically different from anything we encounter in Mahler.

Spacioius in design, swift in process, without a spare ounce of flesh on the orchestral texturing, the finale searches out the tonic A major – the key briefly burked out by trumpets and horns in bar 23 of the movement across a quietened, minor-key, nocturnal landscape.

During the course of the movement there are many arrivals on precipitate tonal steeps, as well as blander, blanket moments, abortive fermatas marking journey’s end.

“In Bruckner,” Robert Simpson has brilliantly observed, “the unexpected is inevitable, and the inevitable totally unexpected.” This is certainly true of the Sixth’s finale. Its mood is by turns furtive, heroic, feverish, serene and assertive. Never, though, is it despairing. It is a movment marked by a heroic refusal to contemplate victory until all the possibilities of defeat have been squarely faced. Onlly out of doubt is faith born.

The first movement is almost unequivocally splendid! Is there a recapitulation in the history of the symphony between Beethoven and Silelius more unexpected or more thrilling that that at the heart of this particular movment?

The use of the drum is Beethovenian both as an harmonic pivot and as a source of awesome splendor in the orchestral texture; but though the effects are Beethovenian in origin they are entirely Brucknerian in their application.

Earlier, the movement begins with the note of C sharp pulsing like rapid morse high on the violins – though the crucial ideas are held, with typical Brucknerian reticence, low in the cellos and basses.

Here, within a characteristically plain tonic and dominant ambit, an array of highly charged Neopolitan harmoniers give the music its special charisma, just as broad rhythmic formulations are soon to give focus to the exquisite lyrical episodes, the music made magical by the arcane loveliness of the kaleidoscopically changing inner rhythmic fragments.

By the code, as Tovey eloquently observes, the thematic inversions are ‘passing from key to key beneath a tumultuous surface, sparkling like the Homeric seas.’

TRACK LISTING:

Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896) – Symphony No. 6 in A Major

Majestoso [15:16]
Adagio: Sehr feierlich [18:58]
Scherzo: Nicht schnell – Trio, Langsam [7:52]
Finale: Bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell [15:13]

FINAL THOUGHT:

If you’ve decided to listen to some Brucknertoday – start with this one. Your heart rate will rise. Most doctors say Bruckner’s 6th equals one hour of cardio.

Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company

May 6, 2024July 23, 2025

Bruckner – Symphony No. 5 in B flat Major – Christoph Von Dohnanyi

Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896)

Symphony No. 5 in B flat Major

———————

Christoph Von Dohnanyi, Conductor

Cleveland Orchestra

Recorded January 20 and 21, 1991 – Severance Hall, Cleveland, Ohio

———————

ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

There are reasons why many people and critics are not fans of Bruckner’s 5th Symphony, this performance by the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Christoph Von Dohnanyi is not one them.

———————

ORIGINAL LINER NOTES by Mark Audus

The Fifth is at once the most compelling and forbidding of Bruckner’s symphonies. The Finale is one of the crowning glories of symphonic literature, but the road to it is fraught with pitfalls for the weak of heart.

Passages of blazing glory rub shoulders with others of great austerity: rich sonorities stand next to spare counterpoint, and earthy dance-music next to sublime lyricism. Such antitheses – hallmarks of all Brucker’s mature music – are particularly marked here and perhaps explain why this, one of the greatest of his symphonies, has never been among the best-loved.

The composer himself may have recognized his exceptional achievement in the Fifth; and recounted to Richard Wagner: “Dr. Liszt played through my Fifth Symphony, and ‘proclaimed’ (his own words!) my virtues to [Prince] Hohenlohe, ‘My only consolation in Vienna!'”

Yet even Bruckner’s friends seem to have been daunted by the work, and it received only two performances in Bruckner’s lifetime; the first on April 20, 1887 (almost ten years after its completion) in an arrangement for two pianos by Josef Schalk, and the second on April 9, 1894 in a heavily cut and edited version by Franz Schalk (still to be heard until relatively recently) which the composer was mercifully too ill to attend.

Lying at the center of Bruckner’s symphonic oevre, the Fifth seems both to close the door on the early symphonies and to look forward to the mighty world of the late works. Indeed, a number of writers have described it as Janus-like, a metaphor that can be extended beyond the scope of Bruckner’s own works to that of a wider music history. For it seems as once to look back to the worlds of Classicism and the Baroque and forward to a new kind of music which fuses counterpoint and symphonic form.

The Janus metaphor may be applied on many levels, although the Fifth is full of thematic cross-references between the movements, the most obvious are between the second and third (both of which start with the same motif at different speeds) and the first and last – suggesting a symmetrical layout.

Such an observation is corroborated by the proportions of the of the movements, which are more evenly balanced than the beginning-heavy Seventh and the end-heavy Eighth. We might even suggest that Bruckner composed the work ‘inside out.’

Composition began (on February 14, 1875) with the Adagio, followed by the first movement, the Scherzo and Trio, and the Finale (May 1877). Subsequent revisions brought Bruckner full-circle to complete the Adagio by January 4, 1878.

Bruckner dedicated the Fifth Symphony to ‘his Excellency Herr Carl von Stremayr, Imperial Minister for Culture And Education.’ This is particularly appropriate, for not only did Stremayr help secure Bruckner a professorship in harmony and counterpoint at Vienna University, but this is also the most ‘learned’ of Bruckner’s symphonies.

It is difficult to apply the term ‘programme music’ in the conventional sense to any of these works, the Fourth comes the closest, but the Fifth lays greater claim to the description of ‘absolute music.’

The beginning of the slow introduction – unique in Bruckner’s symphonies and itself a ‘Classical’ feature – can almost be heard in terms of an exercise in species counterpoint. Both the introduction and the following Allegro seem to be ‘about’ avoiding the implied tonic chord, so that even the first subject quickly veers to the minor mode, and though the tonic is finally achieved, the whole movement still has an introductory feel about it.

TRACK LISTING:

Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896) – Symphony No. 5in B Flat Major

Introduction: Adagio – Allegro [19:41]
Sehr langsam [18:10]
Scherzo: Molto vivace – Trio [13:05]
Finale: Allegro molto [22:53]

FINAL THOUGHT:

I mean, definitely not my go to when I have a hankering for Bruckner. That said, it does have some damn fine rousing moments!

Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company

April 4, 2024July 23, 2025

Bruckner – Symphony No. 7 in E Major – Von Karajan

Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896)

Symphony No. 7 in E Major

———————

Herbert Von Karajan, Conductor

Berliner Philharmoniker

Recorded April 1975, Berlin

———————

ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

I mean, it’s Bruckner’s Seventh – who can screw this up – certainly not Herbert Von K!

ORIGINAL LINER NOTES by Richard Osborne, 1975

The Seventh Symphony is perhaps Bruckner’s most perfectly wrought work, his richest, most luminous utterance.

It was begun with the Scherzo in 1881, droll, dancing and humane. Then in 1882, under the spell of Wagner’s Parsifal, Bruckner began work on the beautiful first movement, a movement of aspiring eloquences whose principal theme, the composer tell us, came to him (scored for a viola) in a dream.

The Adagio is said to have been written under the influence of a premonition of Wagner’s death; indeed, its coda, a profound and solemn threnody, was redrafted when news arrived from Venice on February 13, 1883, of the Master’s passing.

Completed later in 1883, the Symphony received its first performance under Arthur Nikisch, in Leipzig on December 30, 1884. The work was dedicated, not to the memory of Wagner (Bruckner invariably chose living dedicates, among whom he numbered Almighty God), but to Wagner’s patron, King Ludwig II of Bavaria.

It was well liked, and as the revised autograph was used by the printers of the first edition, it offers a rare example in the Bruckner canon of a clean text, through the anonymously scrawled phrase ‘gilt nicht’ (not valid) over the timpani, triangle and cymbal at the Adagio’s ecstatic climax has excited controversy. The cymbal was probably Nikisch’s idea; but cymbal clashes are not necessarily banal. They can be emblems of light and divine revelation, as Wagner himself shows in the Prelude to Lohengrin.

Certainly most eminent Bruckner conductors see fit to include the cymbal, ‘valid’ or not. Some editions (but not Robert Haas) also include meddlesome tempo markings which, along with other ‘traditional’ effects, can, if followed, seriously detract from the movement’s single vision. But this is not a problem which need detain us in this set. Karajan’s whole, luminous way with the later Bruckner symphonies is well known – has, indeed, been one of the glories of the European musical scene for four decades.

The theme that launches the Seventh Symphony is one of the loveliest, and longest, Bruckner ever wrote; a glorious, sweeping melody on the cellos spanning two-octaves.

Always longer than one remembered, it sweeps down, up and and across; hill, valley and a whole ample landscape beyond. As one paragraph ended, another begins, even more serene, the eye now travelling upwards and outwards from the earth – one of the most beguiling and characteristic tricks of romantic landscape art, with its love of sweeping vistas and intimations of immortality beyond.

A second them in B major on oboes and clarinet, and recognizable by its discreet ‘Wagnerian’ appoggiatura, intrudes, adding a different kind of radiance, a deeper distance, to the music and it, too, is answered with quiet ecstasy.

But, as so often in Bruckner, a pizzicato figure brings new life; a climax is gestated, itself gestatory, for from it a third and finale theme is born; a naive dancing motive in fustian octaves, not unlike the germ cell of the first movement of Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony, though more home spun.

Climaxes in the Seventh Symphony are rarely climactic as they are in the Eighth. A triple forte arrives, but it strikes no terror in our hearts and leads to one of Bruckner’s most spacious meditations, the page almost bereft of notes.

Only the eye perceives the V-shape of the opening theme spread by the clarinets, while the oboe arches above (a shape which will usher in the movement’s coda) and the trombones cluster beneath, a humped, rock outcrop. Twice the rustic third theme fits across our view high on the flute, until the flute, finding voice, undergoes a symbolic transformation – becomes a a dove descending, ushering in a passage for cellos (soon to be gloriously extended) which recalls Parsifal and the mysteries of the Grail.

The third subject returns, the basses, mocking, inverting it step by step until it steals away in an elfin motion on the solo flute. Another climax bursts, full of striding V-formations. But serenity is the movement’s keynote and the next climax, after an arcane and (for this Symphony) surprisingly long recapitulation-cum-development, rides in, aptly enough, on the dancing third subject.

Out of the ensuing silence part of the movement’s opening theme emerges; then a bridge passage of great harmonic beauty; and finally, the coda peacefully, radiantly ushered in by the chameleon flutes while, beneath, tremolando strings conjure an ecstatic ground swell and the brass prepare to resound the great movement proudly home.

The Adagio begins with a glorious, imposing utterance on violas and Wagner tubas in a key, C sharp minor, skillfully avoided until now. Then, in the fourth bar, a second theme appears in the strings, a deep-throated hymn similar in outline to the ‘non confundar’ of the Te Deum.

A long, undulating, contemplatively beautiful extension of the strings main subject leads to a short climax from which violins and clarinets sweep solemnly down to horns and tubas poised on the second subject’s very edge.

The subject, when it comes, is something of a surprise; one of Bruckner’s most winningly accessible melodies floated off the beat, graciously in 1/4 time in the courtly and chivalrous key of F-sharp.

The opening measures return, still in C-sharp minor and even more massively impressive, until the music, sweeping onwards and upwards, reaches a C major climax and a wonderful series of stark, antiphonal statements – flutes and oboes, horns, sotto voce strings and, finally, trombones erecting keys like royal standards before the regal G major climax is bowed nobly in.

Bruckner’s slow movements could often end halfway through, so marked in the mid-way caesura. But the second subject now returns in fantastic guise, the first violins wreathing laurel leaves in its hair. Again, the music pauses, but a brief transition leads us more swiftly than we dared imagine into a reiteration of the tubas’ solemn theme.

This time, though, the strings’ caressing motion tells of imminent apotheosis. Wave upon wave of sound – as glorious a preparation as Bruckner ever penned – lead us to the disputed climax; C major, triangle, timpani and resounding cymbal giving out, with the full orchestra, a climactic triple forte.

The coda, by contrast, is cavernous and grand; a eulogy to the dead Wagner, with one magnificent horn crescendo and an octave fall of the violins’ C sharp that unburdens the soul. In a sense, this grand movement seems no longer than a slow movement by the mature Mozart – a tribute to the profundity and reach of Mozart’s music; but a tribute, too, to the depth and succinctness of Bruckner himself, who even in this majestic Symphony remains decisively within the pale of the greatest of all symphonic traditions.

The Scherzo is gloriously all of a piece, with its steadily dancing motive rhythm and the proud cock-crow of the trumpets (the familiar description – though whether cocks crow in such exemplary fourths, fifths and octave leaps must be a matter for ornithological verification).

The dipping string theme nine bars in has to English ears, something of an Elgarian feel to it. The Trio, by contrast, is a rich song of summer, quarried from the Scherzo’s opening pulse, beginning in F major but moving radiantly beyond before its nostalgically songful returns.

That the darting opening theme of the Finale is related to the Symphony’s opening is an interesting, if somewhat academic, point. More significant is its terse ‘humorous’ quality (Haydn could have used it). Rather more familiar ground is reached in teh second subject, a lovely broad chorale, complete with Wagnerian appoggiatura and the familiar stalking Bruckner bass. And to these elements a third is joined, for in a series and mock-heroic confrontations.

A minor solemnly vies with C major, and A flat major vies with both, in a quest for tonic status. At one point the violin break cover, soaring imposingly upwards, and it is only with the solemn, schoolmasterly intervention of the Wagner tubas that the debate is temporarily stilled.

From here, themes are suddenly and surprisingly inverted (a familiar Bruckner device), another battle is joined and an even bigger climax achieved, C major sailing out of the fray, after a suitably pregnant silence, with the lovely chorale (prize booty, indeed) safely stowed.

No doubt Bruckner’s humor, like Wordsworth’s, will strike many by its meagerness alone. But blunt, and quirky and abstruse as it may seem, this finale reconciles dignity and humor in a remarkable way. Brevity, they say, is the soul of wit, and this Finale (gloriously scored) is, by Brucknerian standards, brief to the point of being abrupt. But if its opening theme could indeed have been used by Haydn, and if the joyous repetitions in the coda suggest the Olympian playfulness of Beethoven at the end of his Eight Symphony, the mix as a whole remains indelibly Brucknerian.

For terse and witty as this finale is, it has – once E major reestablishes its hold upon the rock face, which it does soon after the chorale’s return – not only ebullience to its credit but a kind of cosmic sufficiency, hymning us, as only Bruckner can, with an invincible splendor.

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TRACK LISTING:

Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896) – Symphony No. 7 in E Major

Allegro moderato – [20:06]
Adagio, Sehr feierlich und seh langsam – [21.55]
Scherzo, Sehr schnell – [9:50]
Finale: Bewegt, doch nicht schnell – [12:26]

FINAL THOUGHT:

An awesome work and an incredible performance – but, man, those liner notes are so annoying and so overwritten. Still – a top notch, hall of fame worthy recording.

Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company

October 24, 2023July 23, 2025

Bruckner – Symphony No. 4 in E-Flat Major ‘Romantic’ – Von Karajan

Anton Bruckner – Symphony No. 4 ‘Romantic’ – Herbert Von Karajan

Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896)

Symphony No. 4 in E-Flat Minor ‘ Romantic’

———————

Herbert Von Karajan, Conductor

Berliner Philharmoniker

Recorded 1970, Jesus Christus Kirche, Berlin, Germany; Remastered 1987

———————

ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

I mean, it’s Bruckner, it’s von Karajan, and it’s the Berliner Philharmoniker… what could go wrong? Not much.

ORIGINAL LINER NOTES by Peter Branscombe, 1985

Bruckner wrote his Fourth Symphony in 1874, but between 1878 and 1880 he revised it twice, completely replacing the scherzo and finale. In its new form the work was successfully performed at a Vienna Philharmonic concert under Hans Richter on February 20, 1881. The symphony was nevertheless subjected to further reworkings in 1886 and 1887-1888, but it is in the 1878-80 version that it is normally heard.

I. Bewegt, nict zu schnell: Over shimmering ppp strings there rings out the horn-call that will dominate the first movement and return at the end of the finale. With a typical two-plus-three rising figure Bruckner introduces his second thematic complex. A sonorous tutti gives way to a woodbird call in the violins.

The development ranges from the quietest of woodland musings to the full roar of striding tutti and resonant chorale, and the recapitulation creates the impression of a familiar landscape viewed from a new vantage point. Though the coda steals in quietly, even menacingly, this is to be a passage of the utmost splendor.

II. Andante quasi Allegretto: Although the typical Bruckner Adagio lies in the future, there is a solemnity about this lovely movement that on its own terms is quite as impressive.

Cello cantilena, a quiet chorale and a beautiful viola melody prove the principal material for this boldly modulating, questing movement. The principal theme is heard for the last time in the coda. Then, after a powerful climax, the movement dies away with tonic and dominant timpani-taps and pizzicato chords.

III. Scherzo – Bewegt: There is no precedent for the splendid ‘hunting’ Scherzo which – along in Bruckner’s symphonies – is in 2/4 rather than 3/4 time.

In two-plus-three rhythm the horns launch their calls ever more intensely above hazy strings; the heavy brass join in before a gentler string response, but there are also eerie phrases to come. The Trio, Nicht zu schnell, Keinesfalls schleppend, presents a magical period of calm; the sudden shift back to the reprise of the Scherzo is an exciting moment.

IV. Finale: Bewegt, doch nict zu schnell: The movement opens in an ominous B-flat minor, with clarinets and first horn enunciating a falling three-note figure which will become important at the first tutti, where it is answered by the two-plus-three note-pattern that has already been remarked on.

This powerful paragraph (it looks back to the theme of the Scherzo and the rhythm of the opening movement) closes in a firm E-flat; a drop in tempo users in the second subject on the upper strings, in C minor.

The C major theme that comes next is almost vacuous by comparison, and what follows reveals that Bruckner has not yet attained full master of the symphonic finale.

The coda, however, is a wonderful achievement; horns emerge from a wash of woodwind to stride purposefully towards a majestic final peroration.

_______________

TRACK LISTING:

Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896) – Symphony No. 4in E-Flat Minor – ‘Romantic’

Bewegt, nicht zu schnell – 20:37
Andante quasi Allegretto – 15:28
Scherzo: Bewegt – Trio, Nicht zu schnell, Keinesfalls schleppend – 10:33
Finale: Bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell – 23:02

FINAL THOUGHT:

Don’t like the piece? Fine. Don’t really like Bruckner? Okie-dokie. But this performance cannot be denied. A perfect match of music, conductor and orchestra.

Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company

September 21, 2023July 23, 2025

Bruckner – Symphony No. 4 in E-Flat Major ‘Romantic’ – Salonen

Bruckner – Symphony No. 4 ‘Romantic – Salonen – Los Angeles Philharmonic

Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896)

Symphony No. 4 in E-Flat Minor ‘ Romantic’

———————

Esa-Pekka Salonen, Conductor

Los Angeles Philharmonic

Recording Location: Dorothy Chandler Pavillion, Los Angeles, May 12-13, 1997

———————

ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:

A great performance by a great orchestra with a great conductor of an ALMOST great symphony.

ORIGINAL LINER NOTES by Tim Page:

Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) is a decidedly idiosyncratic Olympian. He has never been one of those composers beloved by almost everybody (as might be said of Mozart or Beethoven) and, throughout much of the world, we do not inevitably expect to find a Bruckner work on the schedules of our symphony orchestras. Brucker’s statue might be likened to that of Hector Berlioz or Jean-Philippe Rameau; nobody doubts his greatness, but his work remains relatively unknown to the casual concertgoer.

Still, those listeners who like Bruckner’s music at all usually love it deeply. if he may still be considered something of a ‘cult’ composer, his is among the most passionate of such cults. Watch the audience at a performance of one of Bruckner’s symphonies sometimes. Half of the people in attendance will seem to know every note by heart, submerging themselves in meditation as the work progresses, smiling when a particularly beatific passage for strings shimmers by, sitting up sharply as the timpani usher in yet another vast, churning crescendo. And woe to any critic who presumes to doubt the faith!

The three Bruckner symphonies we hear most often are probably the sweeping and spacious Symphony No. 8, the Symphony No. 9 he left unfinished at his death (one wonders whether anybody could have written music to follow the glorious conclusion of the Adagio, one of the most serenely exalted leavetakings in history) and the Symphony No. 4, which Bruckner himself christened the ‘Romantic.’

Traditionally, Bruckner has been linked with Richard Wagner. While Bruckner undoubtedly worshiped Wagner (going so far as to dedicate his third symphony to him), today, more than a century later, the two men seem less and less alike.

Wagner’s music is restless and charged with tension; we follow it with a near-theatrical curiosity about where it may lead. Bruckner’s work, on the other hand, is often slow-moving and even static; at times, despite the composer’s large orchestral forces, he seems a sort of 19th-century proto-minimalist.

We listen to his symphonies with the pleasing sense that we have already arrived at our destination before the music started and we are now proceeding to immerse ourselves in it, with piety and gratitude. Some lines from T.S. Eliot have always seemed particularly appropriate to Bruckner:

We shall not cease from exploration,

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Bruckner wrote the Symphony No. 4 in 1874, but went on to revise it in 1878 and then to rewrite the finale in 1879-1880. Later, he even went so far as to tinker with it some more (in 1886 and 1887-1888) but it is the 1878-1880 version that is usually heard today.

He gave the work the subtitle ‘Romantic’ in 1876 and even added a literary program to go along with it. And so the opening of the first movement was described thus: ‘A citadel of the Middle Ages. Daybreak. Reveille is sounded from the tower, The gates open. Knights on proud charges leap forth. The magic of nature surrounds them.’

Such effusion has gone out of fashion – and, indeed, it seems that Bruckner himself had mixed emotions about what he was doing. By the finale, he had pretty much given up the effort: ‘In the last movement I’ve forgotten completely what picture I had in mind,’ he wrote, with refreshing candor.

None of this should have mattered to him, of course, for the ‘Romantic’ Symphony works very well indeed as ‘absolute music,’ and we need not concern ourselves with knights and citadels to admire and understand it.

The approximately 70+ minute work is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, three kettledrums, and a large string section.

The first movement is long and grand, with an early emphasis on the horn, and some typically expansive development in the strings and brass. (The range between Bruckner’s loudest and softest passages in this movement is unusually pronounced.) The solemn second movement, marked Andante, includes some unusual modulations, a graceful melody for the viola and a lowing chorale.

The third movement brings the horn back to the center of activity; this Scherzo is based on hunting calls, although there is a calm central section that harkens back to minuet form. The finale starts with some ominous passages for horn and clarinets, with the theme working its way into some noble writing for the trumpets. A long, busy contrapuntal development follows before Bruckner users in a blazing, triumphant and completely successful conclusion to the gigantic work.

Lawrence Gilman, for many years the chief music critic of the New York Herald-Tribune, once summed up the special appeal of Bruckner: ‘For a few, he was, and is, at rare intervals, a seer and a prophet – one who knew the secret of a strangely exalted discourse. Rapt and transfigured, he saw visions and dreamed dreams as colossal, as grandiose, as awful in lonely splendor, as those of William Blake. We know that for Bruckner, too, some ineffable beauty flamed and sank and flamed again across the night.’

And so it does.

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TRACK LISTING:

Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896) – Symphony No. 4in E-Flat Minor – ‘Romantic’

Bewegt, nicht zu schnell – 20:10
Andante quasi Allegretto – 17:01
Scherzo: Bewegt – Trio, Nicht zu schnell, Keinesfalls schleppend – 11:01
Finale: Bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell – 21:30

FINAL THOUGHT:

Until my most recent re-listening of this symphony, I simply remembered it as what absolutely had to be the inspiration for the opening music of ‘Star Trek.’ don’t believe me? Listen to Bruckner’s 4th first – and then to the ”Star Trek’ opening.

Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company