Customer Reviews

Bruckner: Symphony no. 9 - Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra/Yoav Talmi

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Sonically excellent, interpretively adequate, the great virtue of this 2-disc set is its inclusion of the fourth movement, pieced together from Bruckner's sketches by American harpsichordist William Carragan. For anyone curious as to where the dying Bruckner would take this, his most disturbing, confident and forward-looking symphony, this is absolutely essential and riveting listening. Of course it remains a "what if" proposition, but of other completed versions (Elihu Inbal offers one on Teldec, as a fill-up to the 5th; Kurt Eichhorn another, with the Bruckner Orchestra Linz), this is the most convincing. One reservation: Carragan, in the coda, apes the climax of the 8th rather too closely. Bruckner, had he lived, would undoubtedly have forged an entirely new path.

Anton Bruckner died in 1896, his ninth and final symphony completed only as far as the third movement, with some sketches for a finale. For most of the twentieth century, it has been customary to perform the symphony as a three movement work, ending with that sublime Adagio movement. However, harpsichordist and musicologist William Carrigan has done an admirable job realizing the sketches into a workable finale. He really knows Bruckner's style and it it is obvious in the way he pieces together the last movement. While he does tend to ape the conclusion of the Eighth Symphony in the final moments, to me this is not a bad thing. What Bruckner would have done is another story which we will never know for sure, but taken all in all, this reconstruction is a magnificent effort. It has the nobility, sense of architecture and monumentality characteristic of the composer at his best. In terms of recording, you couldn't ask for a better production. The Oslo Philharmonic is on excellent form,and Yoav Talmi thoroughly understands the idiom. The first three movements get an excellent performance here, preparing the listener for the finale. I particularly liked his reading of the Adagio...noble, broad and fully in keeping with Bruckner's musical idiom. The Wagner tuba quartet (led at that time by hornist Froydis Ree Wekre) is splendid. In addition, one gets a bonus....a recording of the sketches of the finale as they stand without reconstruction. It is interesting to hear just how much Bruckner did manage to sketch out before the pen dropped from his hand. All in all, a most praiseworthy effort. One final note: This recording was produced by the late James Burnett for the Chandos label. This is one of his finest efforts.

If I had not already known that Gunter Wand was a superb Bruckner conductor, most especially from his performances of the Eighth Symphony, I would know it now from this exhilarating, titanic, visionary interpretation of the Ninth. The surprisingly good recording comes from a live performance of a concert in the Basilica of Ottobeuren in Austria on June 24, 1979. This is its first release (PH 04058), part of Profil's posthumous Gunter Wand Edition. Apparently, there were some 3,000 people in attendance, but one would not know it because the silence of the audience was close to complete. In fact, newspaper reports of the event said that the audience neither spoke nor moved for ten minutes after the end of the performance. When you listen to this, you will know why. A profound spiritual communion has taken place soli Deo gloria, as Bruckner wrote on the score's manuscript. This is art serving its highest hieratic purpose - to make the transcendent perceptible.

The Profil booklet notes tell of a young female rocker who wrote to Wand about her first terrifying experience of Bruckner. The emotions it aroused made her fear falling into a bottomless abyss. Wand wrote back: "Just let yourself fall - with Bruckner, you always fall upwards." That sensation is exactly what Wand captures with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra in this performance, which Wand called "one of the most memorable in my life." You will be gripped and shaken to the roots of your being by it. It is many ways a shattering experience. Few things I have heard or experienced in my life have brought me closer to the awesome sense that God in all his majesty and power is very near than has this music in this performance. After it is over, you will not be able to move for ten minutes - or longer.

Even without the completed Fourth Movement, this would be a winning Bruckner Ninth.

Talmi has a clear understanding of the dichotomy of Bruckner's austere intellect coupled with his opulant compositional ramanticism.

Is the Finale what Bruckner would have composed? Well, of course not. Only Bruckner himself could have done that. However, the argument for a Finale of this type is quite clear. Bruckner had obviously, from the fairly extensive fragments that exist, planned a Finale of life affirming optimism, and that is exactly what Carragan and Talmi offer here. One can only imagine what Bruckner would have done with those same fragments. But since that is not to be, it seems to me this Bruckner Ninth, with its' exciting Final Movement, is an offering not to be missed.

And if you just can't get enough of a good thing, also give the completed Ninth conducted by Kurt Eichhorn a try. A very different, though no less valid, conjuring of a Final Movement to crown another great performance.

I've never joined the cult that called Gunter Wand a master, but I can set my general opinion aside in assessing this live Bruckner Ninth from Stuttgart. It's in good broadcast stereo, fairly up close, and despite the occasional technical fluffs that Mr. Morrison warns against, the standard of performance is certainly good enough to convey what Wand wants to do.

I must say that I like his interpretation. It's flowing and lyrical; there's no attempt to sound holier than thou. Tempos may be slower than in his RCA Ninth from Berlin, but they aren't sluggish by the standards of Celibidache or Giulini. As he aged, Wand took less care about dynamic markings, so most of the time the music hovers around a moderate mezzo forte. As it happens, that's agreeable here -- too many conductors err in the other direction, blasting us out of our chairs with thunderous fff's and straining our hearing with nearly inaudible ppp's. There's something natural and exuberant about this reading that I don't hear in any studio recording from Wand. Indeed, I'd rank this as my favorite recording from a conductor I rarely like.

Bruckner's 9th can plod; this recording does not. It also uses the best completion of the unfinished finale. The one on Eichhorn's recording is terrible, lumbering and inapporpriate. Bruckner's later symphonies set an established pattern. Actually, there are two. He was a deeply religious man. The later symphonies travel a path from religious doubt to transcendance, but his later symphonies also have a second layer of meaning. He was a deeply insecure man. When the conductor, I believe it was Nikisch, rejected the 8th symphony, Bruckner came close to committing suicide, but instead he rewrote the work. So the second layer of meaning runs from insecurity to, again, transcendance, this time over what limits us all. The symphony should end in a blaze of sound and does not fade away.

The problems some have with the end of the last movement is it is in format just a little too much like the 8th and sounds Wagnerian, but face it, Bruckner is dead and it would be hard to tell exactly how he would have written the last minute or two. Would you really want to terminate Puccini's Turandot at the point where the throat cancer got to him, or would you want the love duet and the technicolor finale? How many people would buy tickets for a truncated version?

The very beginning of Carragan's completion of the finale Bruckner's 9th needs a little trimming, and the rest needs a few connecting passages, but including a dramatic final movement is closer to Bruckner's intentions than performing just the first three movements. Hopefully this Chandos recording will be back in circulation again.

When Anton Bruckner died on October 11, 1896, he was busy orchestrating the Finale of his Symphony #9 in d (actually his 11th as he had composed an early Symphony in f, the "Student" Symphony and a Symphony in d, "#0") and might have finished it had it not been for the composition of a pair of secular choral works, Helgoland and Tafellied (both from 1893) and Psalm 150 (1892), not to mention revising earlier works (particularly Symphonies) following Hermann Levi's criticism of the original version (1887) of the Symphony #8 in c. There are a number of performing versions of the Finale but this has got to be the best. If only Eugen Jochum could have lived to record the Symphony with this version of the Finale ... but Talmi's job is nothing to sneeze at either. Like Jochum, he knows exactly how to lead the orchestra through the most exacting passages and the result is a spectacular display of Brucknerian sound at its best. If you love Bruckner, do not leave this out of your collection. Accept no "truncated" versions as substitutes. This is "it." Echt Bruckner.

I will be short and to the point. This Bruckner Ninth is quite convincing and is a must have for the collector. Anyone needing their first recording of this symphony - I highly recommend it. The added completed finale is something I leave to anyone in regards to if it is agreeable that it is a good completion. This CD, to my knowledge, has a good completed finale compared to others. I'd have to say that the intent is meaningful, but listen to the symphony in three movements to get the more realistic effect. This recording offers the best that there is to offer. A is the grade.

All the reviews here are for a version by Gunther Wand, not Furtwangler. Who conducted the recording being sold under Furtwangler's name on MP3, Wand or Furtwangler?

I honestly don't know why anyone would want to buy this rather high-priced issue from Günter Hänssler's Wand Edition on the Profil label when they could have at least three other Wand-conducted performances of Bruckner's transcendental Ninth Symphony with better orchestras. My own favorite (by a wide margin) is the one with the Berlin Philharmonic, and it's now available at bargain price. Much as I admire what Mr Hänssler is doing with his new label (just wait for my upcoming rave of the Profil issue of two Mozart string quartets with the fabulous Klenke Quartet), I have to suggest you give this one a pass. In this live performance the orchestra has some intonation problems, the important first horn part has its share of bobbles in crucial exposed passages, and frankly the strings mistune that achingly beautiful upward minor ninth that is part of the opening (and further on) in the last movement. Tempi are also slower than one might wish, although that might just be my personal taste in this situation.

Scott Morrison