Bruckner 9 BPO/Rattle - the 4 Movement Recording

[ahinton]

I totally agree.

As do I - yet I think that it's also important not to "separate out" the questing in the finale from that in ther remainder of the symphony because it's pretty certain that, although he probably spent more time working at the Ninth than on any of his other symphonies, he must have had a good many thoughts about the finale right from the outset of work on the symphony as a whole - in which case he "lived with" that finale for several years.

[BBMmk2]

Whatever Norrington does, he is a complete anathma to me.

[Barbirollians]

As the dust has settled what is the considered opinion of forumites on this . I do find the finale compelling but not so much that when I listened the other day to Wand and the BPO in the three movement version I did not feel shortchanged .

[scottycelt]

As the dust has settled what is the considered opinion of forumites on this . I do find the finale compelling but not so much that when I listened the other day to Wand and the BPO in the three movement version I did not feel shortchanged .

I still hold the view that there is a definite place for both, though I fear that I may in future feel short-changed by only hearing the three movements!

[hafod]

As the dust has settled what is the considered opinion of forumites on this . I do find the finale compelling but not so much that when I listened the other day to Wand and the BPO in the three movement version I did not feel shortchanged .

I remain ambivalent about this mainly because of the lack of familiarity with movement IV. As soon as it is reached my listening mode (mood?) changes as I move from the familiar to the unfamiliar. In a crude attempt to try and combat this I have listened to movement IV by itself several times and am quite taken with it. For me it works as a standalone piece but my difficulty in encountering more music following the conclusion of movement III still persists. But I am persevering.

Ask me again in a year.

[PJPJ]

I use Elgar's Coronation Ode as a fourth movement - works wonderfully well.

[antongould]

I still hold the view that there is a definite place for both, though I fear that I may in future feel short-changed by only hearing the three movements!

My view exactly scotty........

[BBMmk2]

My view exactly scotty........

I second this motion as well. If, like as in the incomplete Mahler 10th although, on a different level, a scholarly transcription has been made, and it sounds truthful to what the composer intended,m then there should be room for both versions.

[antongould]

I don't know if it's been mentioned elsewhere but Chairman Rattle has a very interesting analysis of the completion in the September issue of Gramophone.

[Bryn]

I don't know if it's been mentioned elsewhere but Chairman Rattle has a very interesting analysis of the completion in the September issue of Gramophone.

I will have to check if the local library still takes it.

[Barbirollians]

I did not buy that edition antongould - any chance of giving us the gist .

I have to admit to be being more and more convinced by it whenever I play it but so far I have not felt shortchanged e,g when recently becoming acquainted with Walter's lovely recording and reacquainting myself with Wand's 2001 breathtaking Proms performance -

[antongould]

I will try - if I was wonderfully technical I'm sure I could copy it as I have an iPad edition rather than the good old hard copy. Like you I become more and more convinced by the 4th movement.

[antongould]

This may or may not be the thrust..........

Rattle's recording is the first conclusive revised edition performance version of Bruckner's finale by Samale, Phillips, Benjiman-Gunnar Cohrs and Mazzuca. This means 22 minutes of new Bruckner and a whole load of shaken certainties about his last symphony. A Ninth Symphony by an Austrian composer ending with a farewell to life ...an Adagio that simultaneously builds and fragments...but Bruckner never intended his 9th symphony to be heard as a 3 movement work. Although he ultimately abandoned the idea he considered repurposing his Te Deum as a finale "homage a Beethoven" and even mapped out a transition that landed him in the right key.
The fascination of this new recording is gauging how with its valedictory flying buttress now fixed in place, Bruckner's architecture shape shifts - the dimensions, the internal relationships of tempo and material - rethought, reshaped and recontextualised. It's not just an emotional feeling...." the Adagio has this profound feeling of a circle being turned but there's also sense that after this huge crisis it wants to carry on to something else which was also the difficulty in making it the end" When you investigate the finale though it becomes obvious, as in the 8th, that all the themes must be played together, they all have to be in the same tempo, or in a related tempo which knocks back on to the first three movements in an alarming manner.
Rattle says there is more Bruckner here than there is Mozart in the Requiem. Of the 650 bars there are only 50 that Bruckner didn't write out in full or sketch his intentions clearly.......Bruckner's operational modus operandi of premeasuring his manuscript paper with phrase lengths before he filled in the notes - means that even if when the notes seem unclear the architectural ground plan is set which in turn helps clarify the notes.
We know that basically every Bruckner symphony finishes with a chorale and there is only one in this symphony which could serve the purpose. The chorale that becomes so much a part of the finale that sounds dogged by death clearly could not work. Chorales at the end of Bruckner symphonies look up towards heaven - it was a stroke of genius by Phillips to realise that the great chorale in the adagio played on the trumpets is surely what Bruckner would have used.

Rattle feels a couple of bars in the adagio remind one of March to the Scaffold from Symphony fantastique . This adagio he feels is full of quotations about death, in a passage for strings there is the outline of a cross.



I realise a lot of this is far from new insight......