Bruckner 9 BPO/Rattle - the 4 Movement Recording

[Roehre]

It's well worth hearing, though, and I would say the completions to avoid are those by Carragan which sound to me nothing like Bruckner, and that is very curious as William C is a most distinguished Brucknerian!

The discussion regarding the finale -or better: the codas of the finale- of Bruckner 9 is in some respects a rather weird one. Apart from some missing -but easily reconstructable- pages a complete torso exists. For the missing pages (as performed by silences in the Yoav Talmi Chandos Bruckner 9 i.a.) either the sketches can easily be inserted and the missing parts simply taken/copied from the similar stretches of music as we still are talking about an extended sonata form a la Bruckner.

Leaves us with only the problem of the Coda, beginning with that Parsifal like melody in the trumpet.
For that sketches exist, as well as -quite recently discovered/re-interpreted- sketches for the quadruple fugue ending the movement. Only the final bars -still some 60 - 90 seconds of music (see e.g. the difference between the ending of the two versions of the first mvt of 8)- have to be composed. And it is here, and really only here, that the main differences between the versions have developed.

Whatever, a Finale 9 consists of some 85% Bruckner as he has orchestrated it himself, a further 10 % of what he sketched, and not more than 5% of invented/newly composed material. The latter concluding the movement and the symphony.

This IMO means that completions of Finale 9 so far are more judged on their interpretation, than on their own intrinsic virtues.

And whatever: this torso comes much nearer to the composer's original intensions than Mozart's Requiem. It is comparable with Puccini's Turandot, Bartok's 3rd piano concerto or his Viola concerto, or Berg's Lulu.

[ahinton]

Three complete movements of some of Bruckner's most glorious music consigned to the dust in favour of a four movement version with an added cobbled-together finale?

More than a little extreme, I would say.

"Cobbled", Mr Pee? Have you really listened to this? The team of four editors have laboured long over this, revising and improving it as each new page of Bruckner's own score miraculously turned up - and the've not even been on their own doing this work! Bruckner did far more work on this finale than was previouysly appreciated; would you seriously describe that work as "cobbled"?...

[ahinton]

The discussion regarding the finale -or better: the codas of the finale- of Bruckner 9 is in some respects a rather weird one. Apart from ge missing -but easily reconstructable- pages a complete torso exists. For the missing pages (as performed by silences in the Yoav Talmi Chandos Bruckner 9 i.a.) either the sketches can easily inserted or the missing parts simply taken from the similar stretches of music as we still are talking about an extended sonata form a la Bruckner.

Leaves us with only the problem of the Coda, beginning with that Parsifal like melody in the trumpet.
For that sketches exist, as well as -quite recently discovered/re-interpreted- sketches for the quadruple fugue ending the movement. Only the final bars -still some 60 - 90 seconds of music (see e.g. the difference between the ending of the two versions of the first mvt of 8)- have to be composed. And it is here, and really only here, that the main differences between the versions have developed.

Whatever, a Finale 9 consists of some 85% Bruckner as he has orchestrated it himself, a further 10 % of what he sketched, and not more than 5% of invented/newly composed material. The latter concluding the movement and the symphony.

This IMO means that completions of Finale 9 so far are more judged on their interpretation, than on their own intrinsic virtues.

And whatever: this torso comes much nearer to the composer's original intensions than Mozart's Requiem. It is comparable with Puccini's Turandot, Bartok's 3rd piano concerto or his Viola concerto, or Berg's Lulu.

Mr Pee (and perhaps others) please note...

[ahinton]

... but the obvious riposte is that, alas, he didn't. And the incomplete torso as it stands can make a sublime and convincing ending to the work that the completions don't. For me. Yet.

(Amazon have the Rattle on MP3 Download for a fiver [if you buy it with another similarly priced]: I feel the temptation!)

The "torso" isn't really a "torso", of course - at least not in and on its own terms - but it is three-quarters of the symphony the Bruckner intended his Ninth to be; whatever we may think of any of the editors' work on its finale, they are all attempts to bring to us the nearest that one could hope to get of what the composer intended and, now that we know just how much work he himself did on it, this is what should happen!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

And the incomplete torso as it stands can make a sublime and convincing ending to the work that the completions don't. For me. Yet.

This is a viewpoint that should never be taken lightly, and it applies to other works that the composer did not, or may not have completed.
However, imagine any great 4-movement work that you know, then remove its finale. Could what remains still be "a sublime and convincing ending"?

[ahinton]

This is a viewpoint that should never be taken lightly, and it applies to other works that the composer did not, or may not have completed.
However, imagine any great 4-movement work that you know, then remove its finale. Could what remains still be "a sublime and convincing ending"?

Precisely! What matters above all is what Bruckner intended - and that was never, but absolutely never, any kind of "three-movement torso", however wonderful those first three movements might be (and indeed are, of course!)...

[Petrushka]

Precisely! What matters anbove all is what Bruckner intended - and that was never, but absolutely never, any kind of "three-movement torso", however wonderful those first three movements might be (and indeed are, of course!)...

ahinton: A serious question if I may. As a composer yourself, supposing that you left one of your own compositions incomplete upon your demise. How would you view a completion (if you could view it!) by hands other than your own?

[Bryn]

Re. SC's comment on the (most recent?) Carragan performing version of Bruckner's drafts for the finale of the 9th, when Rob Cowan spun a recording of it a month or two ago during Essential Classics, he expressed the view that it made the four movement performance of the symphony successful. I will try and dig out his precise wording.

I have now found the relevant introduction and closing comments. I hope Rob Cowan and the BBC will not object too much as I link to a zip of mp3s of those announcements:

https://rapidshare.com/files/2776401592/RC_on_WC_s_AB9F.zip

Turns out the broadcast was back on 28 October last year.

[Mr Pee]

Precisely! What matters anbove all is what Bruckner intended - and that was never, but absolutely never, any kind of "three-movement torso", however wonderful those first three movements might be (and indeed are, of course!)...

Forgive me, but I cannot understand how a "completion", based upon a composer's uncompleted thoughts, can ever

consign to the dust

that composer's final composition. Why is there a need to "complete" a symphony? Does the process serve the composer, the listener- or the musicologist? I have never listened to the three movement Bruckner 9 and thought, "Damn, I wish there was a fourth movement". On the contrary, I have come the end of that great Adagio- and the end of that symphony, as far as I am concerned- more in awe of Bruckner than ever.

[Bryn]

I fully expect that Pee only ever listens to the first three movements of Walton's First, too, and finds them quite enough and fully satisfying as a symphonic argument.

[Petrushka]

Forgive me, but I cannot understand how a "completion", based upon a composer's uncompleted thoughts, can ever that composer's final composition. Why is there a need to "complete" a symphony? Does the process serve the composer, the listener- or the musicologist? I have never listened to the three movement Bruckner 9 and thought, "Damn, I wish there was a fourth movement". On the contrary, I have come the end of that great Adagio- and the end of that symphony, as far as I am concerned- more in awe of Bruckner than ever.

Yes this is precisely my problem with having three movements I've known for over 30 years alongside a finale heard for the first time. I do urge you to get this disc nevertheless as the reading of the three movements is simply terrific.

[scottycelt]

The trouble with trying to judge these completions is that there now appears to be quite a few around, and, as already mentioned, also as many revisions in true Bruckner style!

There's a very poor quality amateur film somewhere on YouTube of a small local American (I think) orchestra performing the last Carragan attempt ... it just doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. I had an Chandos LP copy of his first effort many years ago which also included the original sketches and that was the first time I'd heard them ... I was bowled over with the sketches but not particularly WC's completion, which sounded to my ears a bit lightweight for this famously 'heavy metal' composer.

Maybe I'm being unfair and the last Carragan revision might grow on me after a while, but the four-man team version performed by the Berlin Phil sounds much more like Bruckner to me, whatever its shortcomings.

[Beef Oven]

this famously 'heavy metal' composer.

......

Phew, so long as he's got nothing to do with the new romantics

[Roehre]

ahinton: A serious question if I may. As a composer yourself, supposing that you left one of your own compositions incomplete upon your demise. How would you view a completion (if you could view it!) by hands other than your own?

Petrushka, slightly off thread (only slightly): that other great symphony of which a couple of performing editions exist, Mahler 10, was sketched by a composer who didn't think himself anything of completing (and composing a couple of numbers himself, including the intermezzo) another composer's opera: Von Weber's Drie Pinto's.

[Bryn]

Petrushka, slightly off thread (only slightly): that other great symphony of which a couple of performing editions exist, Mahler 10, was sketched by a composer who didn't think himself anything of completing (and composing a couple of numbers himself, including the intermezzo) another composer's opera: Von Weber's Drie Pinto's.

Or of 'improving' Beethoven.