Recorded January 20 and 21, 1991 – Severance Hall, Cleveland, Ohio
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ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:
There are reasons why many people and critics are not fans of Bruckner’s 5thSymphony, this performance by the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Christoph Von Dohnanyi is not one them.
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ORIGINAL LINER NOTES by Mark Audus
The Fifth is at once the most compelling and forbidding of Bruckner’s symphonies. The Finaleis 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.
Anton Bruckner at the piano
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.
Anton Bruckner – Statue – Vienna, Austria
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 Scherzoand Trio, and the Finale(May 1877). Subsequent revisions brought Bruckner full-circle to complete the Adagioby 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 Allegroseem 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!
I mean, it’s Bruckner’s Seventh – who can screw this up – certainly not Herbert Von K!
Anton Bruckner
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 Scherzoin 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’secstatic 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.
Herbert Von Karajan
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 Parsifaland the mysteries of the Grail.
Anton Bruckner – Statue – Vienna, Austria
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 Adagiobegins 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.
Anton Bruckner
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 Scherzois 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’sopening 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.
Berliner Philharmoniker
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.
Recorded 1970, Jesus Christus Kirche, Berlin, Germany; Remastered 1987
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ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:
I mean, it’s Bruckner, it’s von Karajan, and it’s the Berliner Philharmoniker… what could go wrong? Not much.
Anton Bruckner
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.
Anton Bruckner – Statue – Vienna, Austria
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.
Anton Bruckner
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.
Herbert von Karajan
III. Scherzo – Bewegt: There is no precedent for the splendid ‘hunting’ Scherzowhich – 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 Scherzois an exciting moment.
Berliner Philharmoniker
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 Scherzoand 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.
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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.
Recording Location: Dorothy Chandler Pavillion, Los Angeles, May 12-13, 1997
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ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:
A great performance by a great orchestra with a great conductor of an ALMOST great symphony.
Anton Bruckner
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.
Anton Bruckner
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.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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.
Los Angeles Philharmonic
The first movementis 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 Scherzois based on hunting calls, although there is a calm central section that harkens back to minuet form. The finalestarts 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.
Recording Location: Het Concertgebouw, December 1994 – Live Recording
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ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:
Now we’re talking!
Anton Bruckner
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES – “Anton Bruckner: An Antenna Pointing Into The 20th Century” – Nikolaus Harnoncourt In Conversation With Walter Dobner
W.D.: According to one 19th-Century review of the Third Symphony, “Bruckner has his moments -flashes of imagination of a kind found only with great men on genius – but they are soon past.” I don’t suppose you share this view, Herr Harnoncourt?
N.H.: Not for a moment. But nor do I share the view of contemporary critics of Beethoven’s Second Symphony. None the less, there’s some truth in the suggestion that a transcendent genius like Bruckner – or any other great composer for that matter – positively invites disapproval and criticism. You can’t expect people to agree completely with such music.
The whole meaning of a work is revealed only by contradiction. It’s only when you ask what happens between these flashes of genius that you may find a lot happening that may not appear so brilliant after all.
There was a time when I myself saw Bruckner in this light. I felt I was returning home from a Bruckner symphony with a relatively small number of very important discoveries. But the symphonies were too great for that.
Today, I’ve changed my mind completely, since I now understand much better what this music is all about.
Anton Bruckner
W.D.: Can you say in a few words what you mean by that?
N.H.: The experience I had with Bruckner was similar to the one I had with Beethoven. I initially had great problems with the finale of both the Ninth Symphony and Fidelio. They struck me as too distended and, in consequence, as seriously lacking in substance. Only later did it become clear to me that I was approaching this music with the wrong standard.
In the case of the Missa solemnis I suddenly saw that it was simply absurd to judge Beethoven by Mozart’s standards. Beethoven makes other demands , asks other questions and so he got other answers. As soon as I set aside my “Mozart” yardstick and found one that seemed to me better suited to Beethoven, I suddenly discovered a whole new approach to his works.
Exactly the same thing happened with Bruckner. The more I got to know Brahms, the more precious Bruckner became. It was presumably the great effort and seriousness of Brahm’s writing that produced such wonderful results after years of polishing and honing and that led me to his antithetical opposite, Bruckner, bringing him closer and closer to me.
W.D.: Is Bruckner not also so difficult to understand because there are so many different links? Although his music speaks the language of the 19th century, it is also deeply indebted on a formal level to the Classical 18th century, to say, nothing of the gestures – and mysticism – of the Middle Ages.
N.H.: Curiously enough, Bruckner strikes me – far more than any other composer of his generation – as someone with an antenna pointing into the 20th century. When people claim that it was Mahler who laid the foundation of the Second Viennese School, I have to say that this seems to me to have been even more true of Bruckner – not that I would want to disagree with any of the criteria you’ve listed.
Those aspects that go back to the Middle Ages are presumably tied up in some way with Bruckner’s markedly rustic character. But I don’t think it’s possible to approach his works from a biographical standpoint. If you were to start out from Bruckner’s personality, you’d expect to find extreme conservatism in his works. But his visions really can’t be squared with his simplicity as a person. In this respect, he is unique as a genius.
W.D.: But is it really possible to draw a total distinction between Bruckner as a person and Bruckner as a composer? Shouldn’t the thematic triality of his symphonic movements be seen not only as a symbol of the Trinity but also as evidence of Bruckner’s personal faith? What are your thoughts on this and on the theory that only a believer can interpret Bruckner?
N.H.: I don’t think faith comes into it. Anyone who performs Bruckner needs to be familiar with Austrian music, with Schubert, with peasant music and the whole ländler thing. I wouldn’t dare try to find evidence of Bruckner’s religious beliefs in the symbols of his music.
It may well be that these signs of personal belief does exist, but biographers, exegetes and musicologists who explain this only on the basis of the works, without the composer’s say so, are guilty, I believe, of venturing into a highly dangerous and highly speculative area.
For me, Brucker’s symphonies are couched in a language of musical sounds that is his very own, personal language. That his personality was very strongly influenced by his faith is sufficiently well attested. Whether his music would sound different without this pronounced religious influence, I don’t think any of us can say. But I think it’s far too simple as an explanation to derive this thematic triality from the Trinity.
W.D.: The ‘Musician of God,’ is only one of many Brucknerian cliches. Bruckner is also sometimes regarded as a typically Austrian composer. It’s argued that he takes his place in a line beginning with Schubert and leading to Mahler and, finally, to Schoenberg.
N.H.: I’d describe only highly concrete details of his music as typically Austrian, for example, the Triosin his Scherzosand a few melodic ideas that I associate with Bruckner’s rustic origins or with elements of Austrian folk music.
With Schubert, it’s totally different – he could only be Austrian, his music speaks Viennese dialect. The line of development that starts out with Schubert certainly leads in Bruckner’s general direction, but it actually goes, rather, to Johann Strauss; that’s pure unadulterated Austrian music for you.
There seems to me a very clear line of development from Bruckner to the Second Viennese School, especially to Alban Berg, rather less so to Schoenberg, although Schoenberg often transcribed Strauss.
I’m happy to leave out Mahler – he’s really not conceivable without Bruckner. I regard Bruckner’s music as absolute. The autobiographical element in his music isn’t all that marked. Unlike Mahler, who uses Bruckner’s vocabulary, Bruckner does not retell his own life in a superficial way. I see a basic difference between a composer who sees himself as the agent of his talent and one who uses the vocabulary of a composer like Bruckner in order to tell us all about his private sufferings.
W.D.: Herr Harnoncourt, you say that Mahler is inconceivable without Bruckner. Is Bruckner conceivable without Wagner?
N.H.: Certainly. The links between Bruckner and Wagner must have been in the air at the time. You can already hear Wagner and Tchaikovsky in a number of Mendelssohn’s works – I’m thinking of Die erste Walpurgisnacht and Die schöne Melusine. Virtually the whole of the 19th century is contained in these works.
One has the feeling that if Mendelssohn had had a normal lifespan, Wagner would have been inhibited by such proximity. I don’t think there is anything in Wagner’s musical language that wasn’t already part of the spirit of the times. Wagner had to exist in the 19th century. Bruckner had to exist as a writer of symphonies, not as a music dramatist. The fact that Bruckner revered Wagner I see as a sign of his modesty.
W.D.: Herr Harnoncourt, you’re beginning your explanation of the world of Bruckner’s symphonies with his Third Symphony, of which there are three different versions. Why did you opt for the second version?
N.H.: The final version was ruled out for me on account of its excessive cuts and excisions that almost destroy the work’s organic unity. For me, it’s a makeshift solution designed to keep the symphony in the running, as it were.
The first version is very complex and rambling, with a lot of Wagnerian quotations. I could well imagine conducting this first version after extensive preparation. I see the second version as the result of Bruckner’s wrestling with the first one. Also, I think that the coda to the Scherzoprovides a very interesting and convincing ending here. I think Brucker knew perfectly well how he imagined his works would sound and that he set this down quite clearly.
He said: “My work is in the score.” But although he worked on the score, he did not – so to speak – prepare it in bite-sized morsels. The versions that various friends and conductors forced out of him were concessions to these friends and to audiences, prompted by the wish to be performed at all.
W.D.: And which edition of this symphony did you decide to use for your own performance?
N.H.: I’m conducting the second version in Nowak’s edition, since it’s the one I find most convincing. You must never forget that fashion plays an important part here, too. Now that we’re familiar with Nowak’s versions, we know how he arrived at his findings. The sources are available.
Of course, one could now try reaching one’s own conclusions and results on the strength of the sources. That’s the prerogative of every generation. I trusted Nowak more than I normally trust editors and haven’t reexamined every question on the basis of the sources in order to make my own decisions, but compared the various findings of the individual editions.
I also consulted an edition from the Concergebouw Orchestra, with whom I made this recording, since I also wanted to learn more about this orchestra’s tradition.
W.D.: Not only the Royal Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra can look back on a long tradition of performing Bruckner, so, too, can the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, with whom you began your career as a musician. They, too, have considerable experience of playing Bruckner’s works. To what extent was this knowledge of the performing tradition of use to you during your present involvement with Bruckner, or did you fell inhibited by it?
N.H.: These experiences were of great use to me and certainly didn’t inhibit me. The older I get, the more natural Bruckner’s musical language seems to me. I feel at home here, it’s the element in which I live and breathe. I can recall some very great performances of Bruckner while I was a cellist with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.
I’m thinking in particular of Karajan during the 1950s. I’d be interested to hear those performances again and would like to know whether my experience at that time – I’d not yet turned thirty – would stand up to my present understanding. But they left an indelible impression on me.
In the case of the present performance, it was important for me to work with an orchestra that knows and understands Bruckner’s language. At the same time, of course, I had to fight against this experience at rehearsals, since there are certain passages that are interpreted in identical ways by virtually every conductor.
I’m thinking, for example, of the decelerandos, especially in the slow movement of the Third Symphony; the answers in the orchestra are almost always taken twice as slowly as the questions. There isn’t the slightest indication in the score that this is how these passages should be taken. And yet orchestras are used to playing them like this.
But when a composer like Bruckner writes even the tiniest change of tempo into the score and when he prescribes even the least expressive nuance by means of footnotes and explanations, I’m tempted to agree with him and included to clear away all this ballast.
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Within twenty-four hours of his meeting with Wagner in Bayreuth in September 1873, Anton Bruckner could no longer remember whether the Master had accepted the dedication of his Secondor Third Symphony.
Remarkable though this lapse must seem, contemporary accounts make it plain that Bruckner’s uncertainty was due not so much to his awesome encounter with a man whom he revered as “the master of all masters” as to the vast amounts of beer that he and Wagner had consumed.
With his memory of this historic encounter decidedly befuddled, Bruckner sent the older composer a note in an attempt to resolve the matter. “Symphony in D minor, where the trumpet begins the theme?,” he asked, to which Wagner appended his reply: “Yes, yes! Best wishes!”
The first draft of the score was completed by the end of the year, and Cosima Wagner confirmed receipt of the dedication copy on June 24, 1874. Shortly afterwards, Brucker offered his new symphony to the Vienna Philharmonic, but the orchestra rejected the piece after a trial run-through in the autumn of 1875.
As with so many of Bruckner’s works, the original version of the score proved only the starting point of a whole series of major revisions.
The ink on the dedication copy was scarcely dry before Bruckner had already set out to make ‘significant improvements to the Wagner Symphony (in D minor),’ to quote from a letter to Moritz von Mayfeld, but the result was not yet an independent version, for this, we have to wait until the thoroughgoing version of 1876/77, when Brucker added the ‘Adagio No. 2′ (1876) and produced an intermediate version that occupies a halfway house between the first and second versions. (As a result, there are a total of four versions of the slow movement – something of a rarity in the history of music – and three different versions of the symphony as a whole.)
On April 28, 1877, Bruckner finally added a note to the concluding movement ‘entirely new revision finished.’ The second version, Bruckner though, was now complete.
The work was premiered in this form in December 1877 and, notoriously, proved a failure. But Bruckner refused to be daunted and in January 1878 made a further series of changes to this second version, including the addition of a coda to the Scherzo. The second major revision dates from 1888/89, when Franz Schalk played a decisive role and incurred the charge of ‘foreign interference’ in the score. In this revised form the work found favor with its audiences.
The question of “failure” and “success” lead us straight to the heart of the problems surrounding the different versions. To a certain extent we are dealing here with “improvements” designed to accommodate the work to audience expectations. There is no doubt that Bruckner craved success and constantly sought recognition, avidly reading reviews. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion, therefore, that it was only those works that had proved an initial failure that were subjected to a process of revision, either by Bruckner himself or by others.
(It is surely significant in this context that the Seventh Symphony, with which the composer made his international breakthrough, was left untouched.) Legion are Bruckner’s remarks reflecting his conformist outlook and his willingness to make concessions.
In consequence, the various versions are assessed in different ways by musicians and scholars. For some, the principal aspect is the process of improvement, whereas others acknowledge the independence of each individual version.
It is important to realize that the changes should not be approached from a purely qualitative standpoint but must be examined in the light of the circumstances that produced them and the period at which they were made. Give the length of time that Bruckner devoted to the Third Symphony – a total of sixteen years – it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a ‘work in progress.’
In what ways do the three versions differ? This question is normally answered by reference to cuts, although this affects only one, albeit important, aspect. A comparison of the overall length of the symphony in all three versions reveals that, whereas the first version is 2056 bars long, the second runs to 1815 bars and the third is 1644 bars in length. But even here we must proceed with caution since the cuts do not affect all the movements equally. The Scherzois the exception to the rule inasmuch as it is eight bars longer in the second and third versions.
Further changes affect the structure of the musical periods, a process that Bruckner himself called ‘rhythmic ordering.’ In the transitions he strove to achieve a greater interweaving of the motifs, with denser textures in the long ascents to climaxes that so often fail to materialize.
He also altered the accompanying figures and instrumentation. In the case of the Third Symphony, there is also the question of Bruckner’s collage-like use of fifteen Wagnerian quotations, the vast majority of which had already disappeared by the time of the second version, a change no doubt dictated by the composer’s wish to reduce the work’s powerfully subjective content and, at the same time, emphasize its autonomy.
The second version is closely tied up wit the Concertgebouw’s Brucknerian tradition; the Third Symphony was the first of the composer’s symphonies to be played by the Amsterdam orchestra, when Willem Kes conducted a performance on October 13, 1892.
In 1897, Willem Mengelberg conducted the local premiere of the Fourth Symphony, and the Ninthwas introduced to Amsterdam audiences in 1908. A period of particularly intense interest in Bruckner began with Eduard van Beinum, who was appointed the Concertgebouw’s second conductor in 1931 and who once said of the composer: ‘Bruckner is my daily bread. I can never get enough of his music.’
Many outstanding performances of Bruckner’s symphonies too place under van Beinum’s baton, although they continued to be based on the seriously deficient first editions of the scores. Only slowly was Robert Haas’s old Bruckner Edition of the 1930s adopted.
In the sixties, Eugen Jochum and Bernard Haitink showed themselves to be Brucknerians of the first rank. While Jochum soon came to prefer Nowak’s new edition, Haitink remained loyal to Haas. Haitink was succeeded in 1988 by Riccardo Chailly, who has continued the Concertgebouw’s longstanding – and outstanding – Bruckner tradition.
Erich W. Partsch
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TRACK LISTING:
Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896) – Symphony No. 3 in D Minor – “Wagner”
Gemäßigt, mehr bewegt, misterioso – 19:29
Andante: Bewegt, feierlich, quasi Adagio – 13:26
Scherzo: Zeimlich schnell – 7:02
Finale: Allegro – 14:37
FINAL THOUGHT:
Insanely long liner notes not withstanding, Bruckner’s Third Symphony is the one that turned the world in favor of Bruckner. And, thank God. If Bruckner’s 6th didn’t exist – it would have really sucked.
Male Voices: Rundfunkchor Berlin and the Ernst-Senff-Chor
Berliner Philharmoniker
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ONE-SENTENCE REVIEW:
A nice performance of a ‘meh’ Symphony (which, I believe, would have been Bruckner’s review as well).
Anton Bruckner
ORIGINAL LINER NOTES – Sebastian Urmoneit (Translation Stewart Spencer)
Dating from 1865/66, Bruckner’s C minor Symphony was the Austrian composer’s first attempt to explore a field which, in the minds of all 19th-century composers of instrumental music, represented the ultimate challenge.
Neither his “Study Symphony” in F Minor, nor his D Minor Symphony which he himself later “nullified,” satisfied the high standards he set himself and that he expected of the genre.
As we know, Brahms, too, hesitated long and hard before publishing a symphony, and by the time that his first contribution to the medium was unveiled, he was already well established as a composer.
Bruckner, by contrast, was barely known outside Linz in the mid-1860s, even though he had already completed two Masses. According to his own later account, it was the local music critic, Moritz von Mayfeld, who encouraged him to explore the world of the symphony, a world to which Bruckner was to remain loyal for the whole of the rest of his life.
Mayfeld ended his review of the first performance of Bruckner’s D minor Mass with the words: “Such is his unusually fertile imagination and his musical and technical knowledge that it is hard to predict where he may go from here. But one thing is certain, namely, that he will very soon cultivate the field of the symphony and to do so, moreover, with the greatest success.”
Anton Bruckner
We know that from at least the time of his studies with the Linz Kappelmeister, Otto Kitzler, Bruckner was not only familiar with the music of Beethoven but had also been introduced to the opera of Wagner through a performance of “Tannhauser” that Kitzler conducted at the theatre in the town.
From Beethoven, Bruckner took over the symphony’s four-movement structure and even left untouched the distinctive character of all four of those movements: First movement Sonataform – Adagio– Scherzo– Finale.
From his First Symphony onwards, however, he based his symphonic expositions not one two subjects but on three; a compositional device previously found to such a clearly developed extent only in Schubert’s “Great” C Major Symphony.
A comparison between the two First Symphonies of Bruckner and Brahms shows certain similarities; not only are both in C Minor, but the sombre tonality of the opening is brightened in their final movements, both of which are in C Major.
In each case, the model is Beethoven’s Fifth. More striking than their similarities, however, are their dissimilarities, not least in their approach to the whole history of the genre.
Daniel Barenboim
In order for it to be fully understood, Brahms’ First Symphony seems to presuppose two whole centuries of music history as a living force, whereas Bruckner approached his task with an almost naïve insouciance, seeming not to suffer from the oppressive weight of tradition.
While his First Symphony is far from denying the age in which it was written, no other composer of his stature has been able to animate the elemental forces of rhythm and melody with such unrefracted immediacy and – at least in his First Symphony – to fall back so nonchalantly on Wagner’s harmonic innovations.
The German musicologist Stefan Kuntz has characterized this note of purity in early Bruckner by reference to a remark of Nietzsche’s which, although written with Wagner in mind, is undoubtedly better suited, in Kunze’s view, to Bruckner: “He who desired to liberate art, to restore its desecrated sanctity, would first have to have liberated himself from the modern soul; only when innocent himself could he discover the innocence of art.”(Untimely Meditations: Richard Wagner in Bayreuth.)
This natural simplicity of tone is a feature, above all, of the original Linz version of the symphony, a more elemental account of the piece that Bruckner later revised in 1890/91 to produce the so-called Vienna version of the work.
Rundfunkchor Berlin
The symphonic chorus Helgolandfor male-voice choir and orchestra was Bruckner’s last completed composition. The only other piece on which he worked after 1893 was his Ninth Symphony, which was to remain unfinished at his death.
Although Helgolandis little known today, it is clear from Bruckner’s last will and testament that he himself numbered it among his most important works, worth – in his opinion – of being ranked alongside his nine symphonies, three Masses, String Quintet, Te Deum and his setting of Psalm 150.
Bruckner was happy to accept the commission to write Helgolandand broke off work on his Ninth Symphonyin order to concentrate on a piece that he hoped would increase his standing in musical circles. It was written to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Vienna Male-Voice Choir, a celebration that the Emperor Franz Joseph I was to attend in person.
Its first performance on 8 October 1893 proved one of the great triumphs in Bruckner’s career. It is no longer possible to say with any certainty whether the decision to set the ballad by August Silberstein (1827-1900) was Bruckner’s own or whether that decision was taken by others.
The poem breathes the spirit of German nationalism that typified the educated Austrian bourgeoisie from the mid-19th century onwards and which singing societies – the Liedertafelnof the time – made it their duty to promulgate.
Ernst-Senff-Chor Berlin
Silberstein was numbered among the student dissidents of 1848 and driven into exile, settling in Vienna in 1856 and making his living as a journalist and occasional poet.
Silberstein’s ballade Helgolandis taken from an anthology, Mein Herz in Liedern, first published in 1868 and describes the threat posed to the island of Helgoland by a fleet of Roman warships. The Saxon islanders call on Heaven to help them, and assistance is duly provided in the form of a raging tempest. The pagan invasion is repulsed, and the Germanic people thank God for their deliverance.
The events depicted in the poem are purely fictional: the Romans never reached Helgoland, and the inhabitants of the island had not been converted to Christianity at the time of the Romans‘ wars of conquest.
Bruckner can have had no more time for such historical inaccuracies than for the contradictory claim that Catholicism is incompatible with national interests; in the apotheosis of Christianity in the hymn at the end of the ballad there seems like doubt that he grasped the underlying message.
The setting of the very last line, “O Herrgott, dich prieset frei Helgoland!” (O Lord God, free Helgoland glorifies thee), in which Bruckner modulates from G minor to the higher G major, is the most spacious in the whole work.
Berliner Philharmoniker
TRACK LISTING:
Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896) – Symphony No. 1 in C Minor
Allegro- 12:49
Adagio – 13:36
Scherzo – 9:21
Finale, Bewegt, feurig – 14:00
Anton Bruckner (1824 – 1896) – “Helgoland”
“Helgoland” – 11:14
FINAL THOUGHT:
This is the first disc of Daniel Barenboim and the Berliner Philharmoniker’s massive (and pretty great) Bruckner Symphony Cycle. I have this disc as a one-off and not the entire box – so, going forward, it will be a mix and great (and not so great) performances of the Bruckner symphonies (and other works). I will just say this, I’m glad Anton B.kept writing after Symphony #1!
Emily Sachs – President – Manka Music Group (A division of Manka Bros. Studios – The World’s Largest Media Company
