Your musical homeland

[kernelbogey]

Bruckner. I love so much music but Bruckner is the composer whose work now means more to me than any other. Not that long ago I would have said Mahler but as I've got older it is Bruckner who has taken his place. I seem to have developed an obsession recently with the 7th and 9th symphonies over the others and play them often.

In the challenging times we face right now, Bruckner is a calming and reassuring presence.

[MrGongGong]

I thought it was going to be about this place ?

[antongould]

Bruckner. I love so much music but Bruckner is the composer whose work now means more to me than any other. Not that long ago I would have said Mahler but as I've got older it is Bruckner who has taken his place. I seem to have developed an obsession recently with the 7th and 9th symphonies over the others and play them often.

In the challenging times we face right now, Bruckner is a calming and reassuring presence.

He is indeed IMVVHO ....

[Serial_Apologist]

Bruckner. I love so much music but Bruckner is the composer whose work now means more to me than any other. Not that long ago I would have said Mahler but as I've got older it is Bruckner who has taken his place. I seem to have developed an obsession recently with the 7th and 9th symphonies over the others and play them often.

In the challenging times we face right now, Bruckner is a calming and reassuring presence.

I wonder what the composer of Petrushka would think about your love of Bruckner!

[Pulcinella]

I wonder what the composer of Petrushka would think about your love of Bruckner!

I was wondering that, too!

The next (i.e., May) issue of BBC MM has as its cover CD a performance of Bruckner 8 by the BBCSSO under Runnicles (no version details given), according to the April issue that arrived this morning.

[gradus]

My homelands? Schumann, Elgar and Ravel always thus I suppose, Germany, England and France.

[Padraig]

Briefly, I always return to Bach or Louis Armstrong.
Why? Although I'm not much good it was playing Bach's March in D as a learner that impressed my little ear.
Similarly attempting to play trombone in a jazz band stranded me in New Orleans.
Finally, now that I'm old and grey and nodding by the fire I return to my youthful comfort zones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v-P-KE-Hw0

[silvestrione]

Try also Phantasm's CD of Purcell's In Nomines, Fantasias, etc. Heartwarming that Purcell should have deliberately paid homage to this earlier age.

Yes I have that. Extraordinary works from a young man. I go back to them a lot, especially the C minor, the In Nomine a 6, and of course the Fantasia Upon One Note. But all of them really.

[cloughie]

I wonder what the composer of Petrushka would think about your love of Bruckner!

How did Igor rate Anton?

[antongould]

How did Igor rate Anton?

Premier League IMVVHO cloughers

[Serial_Apologist]

Having gone through successive 20th century stylistic passions, eg for the musics of Debussy, Bartok, Szymanowsky, Schoenberg, Eisler, Bridge, Varèse, Malipiero, Lutoslawsky, Berio and Henze, I suppose I always end up falling back on composers broadly of the kind mentioned by jayne in her OP - middle of the road composers who were broadly modernists of their times who availed themselves of resources from both avant-garde and tradition. They themselves may at one time or another have been avant-garde; at any rate their own music would not have been as it was without its innovations - the later Zemlinsky would be one such example - or, at the opposite pole, without the experience of long tradition from which to draw, endowing their music with a special rich all-round inclusiveness.

[Serial_Apologist]

How did Igor rate Anton?

While admitting I don't actually know, my intuition tells me he would not have thought much of Bruckner as he was so much a part of that Austro-German tradition Stravinsky's forbears and youthful musical models had been so keen on escaping, with its formal Teutonic heaviness and thick orchestration. And, lovers of Bruckner's oft-decried scoring, it IS thick in comparison with, say, Borodin's, Rimsky Korsakov's or Balakirev's. Be that as maybe, Stravinsky would tend to nab from composers whose music he liked in matters possibly incidental to their main preoccupations: he loved Tchaikovsky for his melodic gifts but would have deplored his emotionalism - similarly with Mahler, whose orchestral skills Igor is said to have greatly admired.

Oh, and Stravinsky greatly admired Anton Webern - or did eventually!

[Pulcinella]

How did Igor rate Anton?

Premier League IMVVHO cloughers

Good to know he's high up in your ranks, Anton.
But the comma wasn't in the question.
I think you read this as:
How did Igor rate, Anton?

[jayne lee wilson]

While admitting I don't actually know, my intuition tells me he would not have thought much of Bruckner as he was so much a part of that Austro-German tradition Stravinsky's forbears and youthful musical models had been so keen on escaping, with its formal Teutonic heaviness and thick orchestration. And, lovers of Bruckner's oft-decried scoring, it IS thick in comparison with, say, Borodin's, Rimsky Korsakov's or Balakirev's. Be that as maybe, Stravinsky would tend to nab from composers whose music he liked in matters possibly incidental to their main preoccupations: he loved Tchaikovsky for his melodic gifts but would have deplored his emotionalism - similarly with Mahler, whose orchestral skills Igor is said to have greatly admired.

Oh, and Stravinsky greatly admired Anton Webern - or did eventually!

Do remember though, we rarely hear Bruckner played by the orchestras he wrote for. Try the HIPPs Bruckner I've been highlighting recently on the Listening thread, those Bruckner 1sts with the Musica Saeculorum/Steinaecker and Wiener Akademie/Haselbock, the 2nd with the Swedish CO/Dausgaard, the new 6th with the Bergen SO/Dausgaard.....perhaps above all, the remarkable 4th and 7th from Orchestre des Champs-Elysées/Herreweghe.....

Truly, nothing thickened about their sound at all....I don't accept this is a fair characterisation of this composer's sound world. The full orchestral glory is often only implemented in the climaxes. There are many wonderful examples, in the slow movements, of very sparse, transparent and delicate string counterpoints, then a horn solo.... then a few winds.....finally the orchestra reaches quasi-culmination. The andante of the 2nd Symphony is a perfect example - try Venzago or Dausgaard... the unusual structure has two climaxes, like a bridge across the movement's evocative forest, both very restrained.

It is all about traditions of performance..... with Andreae in the 50s and Venzago recently, you hear a very different palette of texture and orchestration...

[Serial_Apologist]

Do remember though, we rarely hear Bruckner played by the orchestras he wrote for. Try the HIPPs Bruckner I've been highlighting recently on the Listening thread, those Bruckner 1sts with the Musica Saeculorum/Steinaecker and Wiener Akademie/Haselbock, the 2nd with the Swedish CO/Dausgaard, the new 6th with the Bergen SO/Dausgaard.....perhaps above all, the remarkable 4th and 7th from Orchestre des Champs-Elysées/Herreweghe.....

Truly, nothing thickened about their sound at all....I don't accept this is a fair characterisation of this composer's sound world.

It is all about traditions of performance..... with Andreae in the 50s and Venzago recently, you hear a very different palette of texture and orchestration...

I take your word for it, jayne. Seriously, not sarcastically! 2 metres ->