BBC Phil/Bruckner 5/Simone Young

[Steerpike]

Excellent performance last night. More at the flexible end of the flexible-monumental continuum.

One oddity though, the timpanist didn't play his roll across the last two orchestral chords of the last movement. Is this a textual variation? I've never heard it before. If it was a mistake then the least said the better, we all make them. Still an excellent performance.

[richardfinegold]

Isn’t Young known for performing “Original Versions “ of most Bruckner scores? (I claim no expertise on the minutiae of Brucknerian editions).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The sustained Timp roll is there in Bruckner's manuscript of the full score, dated 18th May, 1877, as can be seen if you scroll forwards to 1hr 12mins 25secs here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhxH_mtU2Cs

I do not know of any earlier/later changes that might account for their absence in a performance - but it seems a very odd mistake for a Timpanist to have made!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... it seems a very odd mistake for a Timpanist to have made!

But nonetheless, one the player here does make! (It sounds as if s/he's having trouble sustaining a smooth roll in the four bars before, and then it just peeters out - as Steerpike says, we're all human. (Scroll forward to 2h 3m 35s to [not] hear it here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000b5xp )

[Petrushka]

Something very similar happens in a live 1948 Furtwängler performance of the Beethoven Leonore No 3 Overture with the Stockholm Philharmonic.

To get the full startling effect start from around 14'21'' here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tqh0pOZavAY

[Alison]

But nonetheless, one the player here does make! (It sounds as if s/he's having trouble sustaining a smooth roll in the four bars before, and then it just peeters out - as Steerpike says, we're all human. (Scroll forward to 2h 3m 35s to [not] hear it here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000b5xp )

Gosh, that does rather spoil the ending and a good performance overall.