Bruckner 8 and that great coda

[Guest]

Im currently going through my first long Bruckner period in life at the age of 37, his music just seems to have clicked all of a sudden after playing a friend the 9th, i had not listened to the 9th in a few years and i had only really listened to it maybe 3 times, but it prompted me to order the new Rattle recording which now with the finale makes complete sense. I guess im coming very new to that symphony so i havent had years of listening to the first 3 movements and then all of a sudden this 4th just jumps out of nowhere.

But changing to the 8th, i was wondering if anyone feels the same as me as regards the 8th's coda, why oh why does Bruckner just halt it when its beginning to get overwhelmingly brilliant. I can hear where the music is going and can hear the next great big chord that crashes in but oh no Bruckner just halts it, and in comes a quiet small section before blazing out a fanfare ending. That quiet moment in there just takes all the momentum thats been built up. Now of course it could be that i will need to listen to it more. Ive just ordered the Haitink recording with the Staatskapelle Dresden to compare with my Wand Berlin Phil recording. Ive listened to bits of the Haitink on the naxos music library site so it sounds more cohesive to me than the Wand, at least i feel Haitink gives a sense of structure to the piece thats slightly missing from the Wand.

Would also live to hear what people's favourite 8th's are and in particular if anyone has any of the newer recordings. Plus any thoughts on the 9th would be good to hear.

[Barbirollians]

Barbirolli on BBC legends only weeks before his death - magnificent forward momentum throughout

Giulini on Testament - unfolds wonderfully throughout

Jochum on DG - Nowak and lots of gearchanges but he is celestial in the Adagio.

[Tony Halstead]

Would also live to hear what people's favourite 8th's are

Horenstein / LSO / BBC Proms 1970 on BBC Legends.
Confession time: I am biased because I was playing 1st Wagner Tuba / 5th horn in that performance... however, I am still, to this day, awestruck by the memory of Horenstein's overall, visionary mastery of tempo, balance and RHYTHM. In pursuit of the 'long line' many Bruckner 'interpreters' totally neglect his underlying, driving rhythms so that the whole thing becomes sloppy and unfocussed.
It's a very humbling experience to sit there at the start of the performance, waiting to play, waiting for the downbeat and to gaze at the face of the conductor whose countenance immediately tells you that he simply KNOWS exactly, inevitably, how the coda of the symphony is going to 'go' as well as all the wealth of detail during that long journey.
I will always remember that concert, to my dying day.

[Richard Tarleton]

Thanks for that Waldhorn, what a great memory. You have tempted me to look out that recording. I heard 8 at the Proms a couple of years later - LPO/Haitink, a highly charged performance. (I'd heard the same orchestra play it under Josef Krips in the RFH a few months earlier, a less involving performance as I remember it).

I heard Horenstein conduct Bruckner live twice - 3 and 6. But he had his back to me of course.

My CD 8's - Karajan and Boulez, both VPO, the latter recorded in St Florian's. Listened to CoW and that coda in the car this evening

[Petrushka]

Im currently going through my first long Bruckner period in life at the age of 37, his music just seems to have clicked all of a sudden after playing a friend the 9th, i had not listened to the 9th in a few years and i had only really listened to it maybe 3 times, but it prompted me to order the new Rattle recording which now with the finale makes complete sense. I guess im coming very new to that symphony so i havent had years of listening to the first 3 movements and then all of a sudden this 4th just jumps out of nowhere.

But changing to the 8th, i was wondering if anyone feels the same as me as regards the 8th's coda, why oh why does Bruckner just halt it when its beginning to get overwhelmingly brilliant. I can hear where the music is going and can hear the next great big chord that crashes in but oh no Bruckner just halts it, and in comes a quiet small section before blazing out a fanfare ending. That quiet moment in there just takes all the momentum thats been built up. Now of course it could be that i will need to listen to it more. Ive just ordered the Haitink recording with the Staatskapelle Dresden to compare with my Wand Berlin Phil recording. Ive listened to bits of the Haitink on the naxos music library site so it sounds more cohesive to me than the Wand, at least i feel Haitink gives a sense of structure to the piece thats slightly missing from the Wand.

Would also live to hear what people's favourite 8th's are and in particular if anyone has any of the newer recordings. Plus any thoughts on the 9th would be good to hear.

I'm afraid I don't hear that at all, BQ. Wagner's oft-quoted remark is relevant here: 'Composition is the art of transition'. It is a final transition, the last drawing together of all the threads before the mighty summation. I played the Haitink last night and it is a truly wonderful performance. You won't be disappointed.

[BeethovensQuill]

That sounds like a great memory to have Waldhorn.

Petrushka, i think as i mentioned its because i havent listened to it that often that i just want that section to go on for longer before he cuts it down so quickly. Sounds like ive made a good choice in the Haitink. I think Wand maybe doesnt time the coda that well so that when it cuts off into the quiet section, the build up into the fanfare doesnt really take off.

[Nick Armstrong]

Horenstein / LSO / BBC Proms 1970 on BBC Legends.
....
I will always remember that concert, to my dying day.

FoR3 Forum gold, waldo!

Another CD I need to get ...

[Nick Armstrong]

Horenstein / LSO / BBC Proms 1970 on BBC Legends.

Extraordinary review of that disc on amazon...

"Forget all what you know about Bruckner's 8th great symphony.
... What you will hear in this recording, is an out of the world experience, a meteor from the heavens hitting you with such force, that your spirit transcends to other realms, out of reality and out of the imaginable.
... I only want to emphasis on where this GREAT HORENSTEIN takes you. He just sweeps you with every note, every phrase, every bar. every note is a living entity in itself. every tone every sound is breathing with undiscribable emotion and life.
...The first time i heard it ( it is not recommendable to hear this MIRACLE often !!! ), as the final EARTH SHATTERING coda cracked the Stratosphere, i just jumped out of my place and bursted in tears and applause, just to notice that all of Royal Albert Hall was going crazy applauding their souls out !!!!! I thought that i was there, among the mesmerized audience of 1970, joining in the grand ovation. i would trade my life just to go into time and actually be there, live those UNREPETABLE moments of history..."

Pretty extraordinary prices for the disc nowadays, too....

[Petrushka]

Extraordinary review of that disc on amazon...

"Forget all what you know about Bruckner's 8th great symphony.
... What you will hear in this recording, is an out of the world experience, a meteor from the heavens hitting you with such force, that your spirit transcends to other realms, out of reality and out of the imaginable.
... I only want to emphasis on where this GREAT HORENSTEIN takes you. He just sweeps you with every note, every phrase, every bar. every note is a living entity in itself. every tone every sound is breathing with undiscribable emotion and life.
...The first time i heard it ( it is not recommendable to hear this MIRACLE often !!! ), as the final EARTH SHATTERING coda cracked the Stratosphere, i just jumped out of my place and bursted in tears and applause, just to notice that all of Royal Albert Hall was going crazy applauding their souls out !!!!! I thought that i was there, among the mesmerized audience of 1970, joining in the grand ovation. i would trade my life just to go into time and actually be there, live those UNREPETABLE moments of history..."

Pretty extraordinary prices for the disc nowadays, too....

That's pretty much how I felt about the live Tennstedt Mahler 2 except that I was there.

Haven't heard this Horenstein disc for several years. Must dig it out and listen especially for the 5th horn/1st wagner tuba Must indeed be a great memory, Waldhorn.

[Flay]

When exactly does the coda begin? I've not looked at the score. At a guess a good 10 minutes from the end...

I love it all, but especially from the bing bang bong bang from the timps... it builds up in surges, ebbing and flowing at first then in waves cascading into a mighty flood.

I was listening to it on CoTW this evening as I was driving. I was stuck behind a minor accident, then a slow lorry, then a car inexplicably moving at 15mph with its hazard lights on. None of this mattered a jot. Bruckner compelled me onwards...

[jayne lee wilson]

Flay - if you have the 1975 HvK/Berlin PO version, the coda begins at 21'35 (out of 24'06). Or with Jochum/Dresden State (all too abruptly the Novak score), at 18'10 (out of 20'46). With Wand in Cologne (1979 Sendesaal - one of the greatest of all!) it's 21'26 (24'24). It starts just after the near-silence where all you hear is a couple of quiet taps on the timpani. In most performances the coda will take up the last 2.5 or 3 minutes.

BeethovensQuill - yes, you just need to hear it more...

I THINK the quiet passage you refer to is just after the coda's beginning, where the music almost reaches a brass-led climax on the finale's 1st theme, then drops back to tense string figures, and the winds have the basic dotted rhythm of the finale, also of the very first idea of the symphony. But the music of that quasi-climax is still minor-key and unresolved - it would be terrifying for it to end this way! So Bruckner creates the maximum possible tension, dynamically and harmonically, by dropping back to pp again, leaning on all those minor-key chromatics before that blazing release into the final C major, where all the main ideas of the symphony are superimposed.

Think back to what happens just before this coda. There's a string-dominated passage based on tertiary thematic material, but at its climax, the very first theme of the whole symphony returns in the brasses, "grimmer than ever" as Robert Simpson says, in C minor! The string figures sink sadly down to a last, hesitant lament. Then silence. This is a crisis, and that is why the great drama has to unfold in the coda as it does, to utterly overcome that negation (so close to the end!) The coda has to face that potential tragedy and overcome it, answering the question that the grim return of the very first theme has asked, within its own microcosmic span - a mere 2 and a half minutes or so.
(You DON'T need to identify keys etc. by name, I'm not much good at that myself. Just listen closely and often.
...I trust fhg will correct any harmonic misconceptions of mine...)

It might help you to listen to the original 1887 version of the 8th, and compare the differences in the coda there. Inbal or Tintner are both very good.
But yes, just hear as many performances as you can, and you'll start to "get it" about Bruckner's momentum, why it so often seems deferred, and why it needs time to evolve the way it does.

[Bryn]

Pretty extraordinary prices for the disc nowadays, too....

That quoted for a "Used - Very Good" copy (ClassicalBird) at amazon.co.uk at the moment is not that unreasonable. Only about 50% more than I paid for it when it was 'in print'.

[mathias broucek]

BeethovensQuill - if you want to hear every strand in that coda, try one of Celi's Munich recordings: either the EMI one or, better still, the live Japanese performance on Sony DVD (poor picture but good sound) or Altus CD from HMV Japan. His finale is s-l-o-w (30 mins +) but that's because he takes a tempo where you can here all the contrapuntal detail. All too often the final bars of the 8th become congested and B's contrapuntal triumph of combining themes from each movement is lost.

BTW if your getting interested in Bruckner's codas, try Celi's Munich 4th - again on EMI or a staggering live performance from Vienna on CD in the same Sony set as the 8th above. Celi's goes half-speed and suddenly everything makes far more sense and has much greater power - Robert Simpson (in the book JLW refers to above) reckoned that Celi got this right and in doing so solved one of the performing difficulties in the 4th.

[Richard Tarleton]

Slightly off thread, but a question for Waldhorn if you're still following the thread - what did Wagner base his Wagner tuba design on? It's just that, walking in southern Slovenia in 2007 we were staying in the little town of Novo Mesto and were there for their annual music festival. The town band were rehearsing just under our window and a group of them were playing brass instruments the same size and shape, as far as I could tell, as Wagner tubas.....

Hornspieler gave us a powerful description of the coda of the adagio in Bruckner 7 from the horns' point of view last year. all round for horn players.

[BeethovensQuill]

Jayne Lee - Can i hire you to become my theory music tutor? I was getting into trouble with my OU music tutor for writing in dreaded consecutive octaves and 5ths, although only in a few bars, and also for not sticking to proper musical grammer, just think i was placing a B in the melody and harmonising it with a C major chord, i think the world may end if i do that again.

Mathias Broucek - Thanks for the Celi recommendations, i think before i sample Celi in Bruckner i'll get to know him at normal speed, then i'll be ready for a slower spacious recording.

Speaking of the 4th i was listening to sections of Bohm's 1970's recording on Decca with the Vienna Phil, which is a recording i must add, i have Wand's Berlin Phil recording which i think is his best out of his late Bruckner recordings. It would be interesting to compare the 2.