Symphonies 1-9

Bruckner (Artist), Jochum (Artist), Brs (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 13, 1990)
• SPARS Code: ADD
• Number of Discs: 9
• Label: Polygram Records
• ASIN: B000001GBS
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #457,059 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

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38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eugen Jochum's Bruckner, February 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Symphonies 1-9 (Audio CD)

This set is rightly regarded as a classic. Jochum's approach to Bruckner is uniquely refreshing compared to much of what we hear today -- dragging and monotonous tempi under the guise of a "monumental" approach. Jochum's tempi are flexible and rarely drag. He stresses the lyrical aspects of Bruckner's symphonies, without ever losing sight of their architecture. Jochum's approach to orchestral sonority in Bruckner is also special. Like Bruckner, he started out as an organist, and he understands Bruckner's (often unique) musical markings from an organist's perspective. He draws wonderfully sonorous sounds out of the Berlin Philharmonic and Bavarian Radio Symphony strings without ever sacrificing linear clarity. The set comes with reasonably good notes, the high point of which is an abridged version of Jochum's article on interpreting Bruckner, primarily centering on the 5th Symphony, in which Jochum was famous. (He left us 3 studio recordings and 2 recorded live performances of this work.) The only drawback is that Jochum uses the 1889 version of the 3rd Symphony, which is that work's weakest version. However, I would whole-heartedly recommend this set, supplemented by a recording of the 1873 version of the 3rd (such as that conducted by Georg Tintner on Naxos, to be issued in 1999).

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bruckner by Jochum -- best set for classic Bruckner values, August 28, 2003

By 

Larry VanDeSande - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Symphonies 1-9 (Audio CD)

The passage of time has hardly depreciated this set of Bruckner symphonies, recorded during the late 1950s and 1960s, which has been reissued at full price (see ASIN: B00006YXOX). Jochum is a reliable guide through the peaks and valleys of Anton Bruckner and has influenced many later Bruckner conductors including Petri Sakari.

We does this with a magical approach to the composer's granitic music; unpredicatable and always appropriate is the way to describe Eugen Jochum's Bruckner.

Unlike Gunther Wand, he does not always project Bruckner's beloved Alps in this music. Unlike Georg Solti, he senses the inate beauty and religious fervor of the music. Unlike Georg Tintner, he does not concern himself with scores, even though Jochum was a close friend of a Bruckner annotator.

Unlike Karajan, he is not wedded to a traditional German approach to the symphonic edifices. Only Furtwangler, in recordings that stress the 21st Century ear, compares to Jochum as a Bruckner interpreter.

Jochum recorded the complete symphonies of Bruckner again later in life. While Jochum's second set on EMI enjoys better sound and a better Symphony 8, the playing is inferior and the overall concept less well defined. The early German set is the one to live with.

In the four decades since he recorded these titanic symphonies, no record, tape or CD has equalled the majesty and mystery Jochum finds in the Symphonies 1 and 2. An unerring sense of pace, anticipation and freed musical pulse characterize these early symphonies, which are often not well served by even the greatest conductors.

Few conductors sense the Bruckner architecture Jochum constructs in Symphonies 6 and 8. And since Furtwangler's death in 1954, no conductor has compared to the universal truths he projects in Symphony 5, a Jochum specialty that he recorded a half-dozen times.

What makes Jochum special? While many conductors turn Bruckner's symphonic ascensions into repetitive blather, Jochum always finds something new to say in repeating phrases, not unlike the drawers of a cabinet, each appearing exactly the same outside but containing something very different on the inside.

There have been two fine low-priced sets of Bruckner symphonies in recent years, those conducted by the late Georg Tintner and the one conducted by Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. The Tintner version enjoys special status with many critics because it uses a newer edition of the score by William Carragan, who has written extensively about the composer in American Record Guide.

Even with competition like this in sterling DDD sound, the Jochum set on DG remains your top choice in this wonderful music about birth, life, travails, death and afterlife. If you are dedicated to acquiring a uniform set of Bruckner symphonies and you find the sound of Furtwangler's 1950s recordings inadequate, you will never hear better than Jochum in this set (it has returned to circulation: ASIN: B00006YXOX.)

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a wonderful set, March 23, 2000

By 

Ray Barnes (Surrey, British Columbia Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Symphonies 1-9 (Audio CD)

I concur wholeheartedly with the first reviewer's very favourable comments about this cycle, and would like to add a few personal observations of my own. Both the Berlin Philharmonic and Bavarian Radio Symphony played very well for Jochum and I could not make a clear choice as to which of the two was better. That in itself says much for the Bav. RSO, who also had the benefit of recording in the Herkulesaal in Munich. At around the same time Rafael Kubelik recorded a complete Mahler symphony cycle with the same orchestra and venue, for the same company too. Almost unbelievably, the 5th Symphony was recorded in 1958, in very early stereo, yet the sound is rich and atmospheric. Jochum allows himself free variation of tempo within a movement and given the composer's rather heavy style of writing, this interpretative approach gives the performances a bit of extra vigour and excitement without sacrificing the music's spiritual virtues. The question of which editions to perform cannot be resolved to everyone's satisfaction, but suffice to say Jochum's judgment is eminently reasonable. Those who would like to supplement the highly original performance of the Nowak edition of the 8th Symphony in this cycle could perhaps turn to the Haas edition recordings by Karajan - particularly the Viennese one - or Tennstedt or Haitink.

The 9th Symphony in this cycle deserves special praise, the Berlin Philharmonic really outdo themselves here, more so than usual. There is not one bad performance in this set. His second cycle for EMI, from what I have heard of it, has somewhat more forward sound but very similar interpretations and comparable playing.