Bruckner: Symphony no. 9 (Radio 3 in Concert - 3.06.18)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

21:20

Kate Molleson presents an innovative performance of Bruckner's 9th Symphony, without the finale, but followed immediately by LIgeti's Lontano. This performance was recorded by SWR Symphony Orchestra and conductor Teodor Currentzis in January this year. Plus Voces8 at the Ludwigsburg Castle Festival from July 2017.

Bruckner
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, WAB 109
Lontano (1967) Sostenuto espressivo

SWR Symphony Orchestra
Teodor Currentzis (conductor).

[Beef Oven!]

Does immediately mean with no break/applause?

When Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducted the 9th sans finale a few years back with the Te Deum concluding it, he asked the audience not to applaud at the end of the third movement as he would go straight into the Te Deum.

[Richard Barrett]

Could be a nice idea.

[Beef Oven!]

Could be a nice idea.

I'm going to put it on my Walkman like that!

[Serial_Apologist]

Does immediately mean with no break/applause?

When Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducted the 9th sans finale a few years back with the Te Deum concluding it, he asked the audience not to applaud at the end of the third movement as he would go straight into the Te Deum.

That would be Te Deus...

(pun intended)

[BBMmk2]

That was what the composer himself thought could end the 9th but I think the third movement is justice for the end in itself.

[Bryn]

That was what the composer himself thought could end the 9th but I think the third movement is justice for the end in itself.

But he got pretty close to completing the first draft of the final movement (and let's bear in mind the first three movements are also essentially first drafts). I am much happier hearing the most recent SMPC or Schaller 'completions' of the finale, based on what has so far been found of what Bruckner drafted.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Does immediately mean with no break/applause?

When Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducted the 9th sans finale a few years back with the Te Deum concluding it, he asked the audience not to applaud at the end of the third movement as he would go straight into the Te Deum.

Well, I suppose the end of the 3rd movement is not the end of the work, so ...

[ahinton]

But he got pretty close to completing the first draft of the final movement (and let's bear in mind the first three movements are also essentially first drafts). I am much happier hearing the most recent SMPC or Schaller 'completions' of the finale, based on what has so far been found of what Bruckner drafted.

Hear, hear!

https://www.abruckner.com/articles/a...vandermeijden/ .

Quite a lot more of the material for the finale in Bruckner's hand is now known (albeit nothing from the Coda) but wasn't decades ago.

[Richard Barrett]

But he got pretty close to completing the first draft of the final movement (and let's bear in mind the first three movements are also essentially first drafts). I am much happier hearing the most recent SMPC or Schaller 'completions' of the finale, based on what has so far been found of what Bruckner drafted.

But I much prefer Lontano to any of the Finale completions I've heard so far! The more I think about it the more I think it's an inspired idea. Here's another one: replace the choral finale of Beethoven 9 with Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Photoptosis (which quotes from it, in a rather unjoyful way).

[jayne lee wilson]

Given the essentially tragic, questing, musically far-flung nature of the 9th, I always felt that the suggestion to use the Te Deum as, well, some kind of substitute for a finale was a despairing one on Bruckner's part: the Te Deum's triumphal, faithfully confident all-to-the-greater-glory-of-God character is totally at odds with the first three movements, riven with self-doubt and defiance, taunting demons and fantastical angels offering will-o-the-wisps of hope; gazing upon shining, distant peaks; yearning for consolation. The Te Deum can't be any kind of an answer, It doesn't belong there.

The finale itself - what we have of it, which is a great deal - sounds to me like a new adventure: a door opening into something unknown and unseen, the journey beyond death into - what? Even Bruckner couldn't know that, but seems in the finale to achieve some restoration in his faith that it will be, finally, some kind of reward for all his strivings. Or perhaps only to find something new in the depths of the unknown, would be reward enough. To slip the sultry bonds of Earth....and touch the face of God...

http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/poetry/john-magee.html

But if you listen to and experience the work as a 3-movement piece, surely it has to be sufficient unto itself: the adagio's coda can indeed feel like resolution enough, and very profoundly too, after the terrifying conflicts of that last climactic sequence, and the serene recall of the 7th and 8th symphonies in the coda. There is a final, or almost-final, coming-to-terms going on here, surely. What could possibly follow?

As for Lontano.. well, why not, as a one-off concert offering; but also - why? As a devoted Brucknerian, it's not for me. It seems redundant after the adagio's coda. You might just as easily slot in the Lux Aeterna.. with a similarly provisional, transitory effect.
I'm never keen on this kind of programming anyway. I recall Rattle doing Sibelius 4 at the Proms and in Berlin, in a continuous sequence after Atmosphères and the Lohengrin Act 1 Prelude.... intriguing yes, but none of the works really seemed to speak to, or prepare for, each other in a way that seemed to me truly enlightening.

The Bruckner 9th finale has at the very least the merit of showing us where Bruckner was headed: somewhere very new, almost alien to all that had gone before in his previous life-and-faith studies, the great 8; perhaps beyond our mortal grasp....
So either take it on, wrestle with what it has to say, or don't.
All else is playing musical games. Novelties of concert-programming.

[ahinton]

Given the essentially tragic, questing, musically far-flung nature of the 9th, I always felt that the suggestion to use the Te Deum as, well, some kind of substitute for a finale was a despairing one on Bruckner's part: the Te Deum's triumphal, faithfully confident all-to-the-greater-glory-of-God character is totally at odds with the first three movements, riven with self-doubt and defiance, taunting demons and fantastical angels offering will-o-the-wisps of hope; gazing upon shining, distant peaks; yearning for consolation. The Te Deum can't be any kind of an answer, It doesn't belong there.

The finale itself - what we have of it, which is a great deal - sounds to me like a new adventure: a door opening into something unknown and unseen, the journey beyond death into - what? Even Bruckner couldn't know that, but seems in the finale to achieve some restoration in his faith that it will be, finally, some kind of reward for all his strivings. Or perhaps only to find something new in the depths of the unknown, would be reward enough. To slip the sultry bonds of Earth....and touch the face of God...

http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/poetry/john-magee.html

But if you listen to and experience the work as a 3-movement piece, surely it has to be sufficient unto itself: the adagio's coda can indeed feel like resolution enough, and very profoundly too, after the terrifying conflicts of that last climactic sequence, and the serene recall of the 7th and 8th symphonies in the coda. There is a final, or almost-final, coming-to-terms going on here, surely. What could possibly follow?

As for Lontano.. well, why not, as a one-off concert offering; but also - why? As a devoted Brucknerian, it's not for me. It seems redundant after the adagio's coda. You might just as easily slot in the Lux Aeterna.. with a similarly provisional, transitory effect.
I'm never keen on this kind of programming anyway. I recall Rattle doing Sibelius 4 at the Proms and in Berlin, in a continuous sequence after Atmosphères and the Lohengrin Act 1 Prelude.... intriguing yes, but none of the works really seemed to speak to, or prepare for, each other in a way that seemed to me truly enlightening.

The Bruckner 9th finale has at the very least the merit of showing us where Bruckner was headed: somewhere very new, almost alien to all that had gone before in his previous life-and-faith studies, the great 8; perhaps beyond our mortal grasp....
So either take it on, wrestle with what it has to say, or don't.
All else is playing musical games. Novelties of concert-programming.

How wonderfully expressed, Jayne!

The only thing that I'd take issue with (as doubtless you'd expect me to!) is
"But if you listen to and experience the work as a 3-movement piece, surely it has to be sufficient unto itself: the adagio's coda can indeed feel like resolution enough, and very profoundly too, after the terrifying conflicts of that last climactic sequence, and the serene recall of the 7th and 8th symphonies in the coda. There is a final, or almost-final, coming-to-terms going on here, surely. What could possibly follow?"
I've never been able to listen to itas a three movement piece. All of Bruckner's symphonies - even including "00" and "0" - are cast in four movements and, in fact, so distressing is the experience of listening to the first three movements alone and being short-changed thereafter is so powerful for me that I've listened to the work far less frequently than any of the others until relatively recently when it's been possible to listen to what the four movement whole might have been.

I agree about Te Deum for the very reason that you do.

Yes, there remains the frustration that, of the various folios in Bruckner's hand that have come to light over the years, not a note of the Coda is there - almost certainly because Bruckner didn't get around even to starting it - but at least the map of the journey to the symphony's final peroration is more or less intact and a fair amount of the details of the terrain and the direction of travel are also present.

Placing anything else after the third movement strikes me as perverse!

[Richard Barrett]

As for Lontano.. well, why not, as a one-off concert offering; but also - why?

Quite so, although I would put the "why?" and the "why not?" the other way round. Nobody's pretending this is the way it should be done from this moment onwards, or even that it necessarily ought to be done often, or indeed ever again. The fact that it's a "novelty of concert programming" doesn't make it either a good or a bad thing. One person's lack of enlightenment is another person's inspiration!

[BBMmk2]

JLW, Completely agree with you on your post above. Thre three Movt format is quite complete in itself. I changed my mind yesterday after listening to Haitink.

[Beef Oven!]

The Te Deum can't sensibly be considered as a conclusion for the reasons Jayne gives. Like Jayne and BBM, my preference is for the 3 movements on their own, for the same reason why ahinton prefers 4 movements - custom, convention. Like ahinton, I can't make any technical case for my preference (nice to agree with AH from time to time!)

But I must say that I enjoyed the 9th followed by Lontano and Jayne's idea about Lux Aeterna is for me, too fascinating to resist!

Experimenting, or even tinkering is a very positive human trait. Throughout history we've done well out of people who have been curious.