BaL 20.02.21 - Bruckner: Symphony no. 6

[jayne lee wilson]

Here's the Qobuz link.....

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/bruckner-symphony-no-6-in-a-major-wab-106-bbc-philharmonic-orchestra-juanjo-mena/z8kvgba1tu6uc

Do seek out my link to the Proms Review discussion above (#268).... Mena also did a beautiful Macmillan Premiere in that Prom...a very fine concert.

I'll try and grab a listen to the Chandos, bit obsessed with Arnold Symphonies right now, adventuring through both Chandos/Naxos cycles...but I think The Sparrow is right, there have been noticeably fewer orchestral releases all-around across 2020-21...

Don't forget the latest, the Bergen/Dausgaard 6th, released early 2020, comments here....http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...176#post834176

Outstanding reading....(their 1873 3rd just out now.....sensational...!)...

[Dave2002]

Ah, but its all about the finale isn’t it? Jochum supposedly in the Furtwänglerisch tradition of "wild and chaotic"

Interesting comment about Jochum. I only heard him live once - conducting Brahms symphony 1 - and that was one of the most amazing and exciting performances I've ever heard. It was indeed wild - though maybe not quite chaotic. He pushed the orchestra (LPO?) harder than anyone else - to the point that some instruments were sounding harsh - but appropriately so in the circumstances.

I also have a recording of him doing Bach's B minor mass - which was at one time recommended. Unfortunately there are glitches in the recording, and I'm really not sure if the overall performance/recording is that exciting.

Does Jochum generally have this description of wild and chaotic, or only in Bruckner?

[Alison]

Snapped up the CD only £10.50 direct from Chandos.

[jayne lee wilson]

Interesting comment about Jochum. I only heard him live once - conducting Brahms symphony 1 - and that was one of the most amazing and exciting performances I've ever heard. It was indeed wild - though maybe not quite chaotic. He pushed the orchestra (LPO?) harder than anyone else - to the point that some instruments were sounding harsh - but appropriately so in the circumstances.

I also have a recording of him doing Bach's B minor mass - which was at one time recommended. Unfortunately there are glitches in the recording, and I'm really not sure if the overall performance/recording is that exciting.

Does Jochum generally have this description of wild and chaotic, or only in Bruckner?

Er, no....as I indicated "(TS)", "wild and chaotic" was Tom Service's subjective characterisation of his chosen BaL winner for the Bruckner 6th....he felt the Symphony, in the finale especially, should fully express the extraordinary rapid switches of mood, thematic and rhythmic character, and that in his view, Jochum's swerves of phrase and tempi were very apt to this.

See my #243 for more, but I would suggest such as Dausgaard, Venzago or even all the way back to Andreae do something similar and at least as well. No, they don't have the Dresden Staatskapelle, but in this fleetest, most volatile and least-responsive-to-grandiose-assumptions of Bruckner Symphonies, that might even be heard as an advantage.....

[Bryn]

Currently importing from QOBUZ (48/24). Wow, what gigantic cover artwork on the Chandos site! Just what is going on with that decidedly non-Stubbsian horse?

[jayne lee wilson]

So the snowball rolls...I guess I better grab a listen to Mena/Chandos now.....

Still, I'm no Wagnerian, so looking good for tonight, if The Cats don't wear me out...

(Shame I just heard again on the 1700 the news about Geronimo.... terribly cruel and unscientific....the pictures earlier were appalling...
Bruckner will help. Bruckner always helps.)

[jayne lee wilson]

Currently importing from QOBUZ (48/24). Wow, what gigantic cover artwork on the Chandos site! Just what is going on with that decidedly non-Stubbsian horse?

Given as Morning Exercise in Hofreitschule, Josephsplatz, Vienna (1890) by Julius von Blaas.....
With some very excitable mules.....must be something in the water...

Mind you there is something of a gallop, as opposed to a galop, going on in the first movement....

[Petrushka]

Interesting comment about Jochum. I only heard him live once - conducting Brahms symphony 1 - and that was one of the most amazing and exciting performances I've ever heard. It was indeed wild - though maybe not quite chaotic. He pushed the orchestra (LPO?) harder than anyone else - to the point that some instruments were sounding harsh - but appropriately so in the circumstances.

I also have a recording of him doing Bach's B minor mass - which was at one time recommended. Unfortunately there are glitches in the recording, and I'm really not sure if the overall performance/recording is that exciting.

Does Jochum generally have this description of wild and chaotic, or only in Bruckner?

I was lucky to see Jochum twice in the same week, with the Vienna Philharmonic in London in March 1982. The first concert (at the RFH) included the Bruckner 7, a wonderful performance and certainly nothing wild or chaotic about it. The second concert (at the RAH) included the Mozart 41 and Beethoven 3. I met him backstage after the Albert Hall concert.

You might wish to investigate Jochum's 1950s Brahms cycle on DG which is very fiery and one I like a lot.

[jayne lee wilson]

I was lucky to see Jochum twice in the same week, with the Vienna Philharmonic in London in March 1982. The first concert (at the RFH) included the Bruckner 7, a wonderful performance and certainly nothing wild or chaotic about it. The second concert (at the RAH) included the Mozart 41 and Beethoven 3. I met him backstage after the Albert Hall concert.

You might wish to investigate Jochum's 1950s Brahms cycle on DG which is very fiery and one I like a lot.

That live B7 was one of the very few concerts I ever saw in London, travelling down from UEA.
Robert Simpson gave the pre-concert talk and, knowing the recordings, warned us of the interpretive manoeuvres Jochum would make - which Simpson disapproved of. And which, of course, Jochum proceeded to do...

I remember the night more for talking to Robert Simpson after the Green Room crowd had dispersed...asking him about his own music (the 6th had recently been premiered). Though I tried to deny it to myself, I couldn't avoid the feeling that the RFH had come between me and the VPO's Bruckner......

In any case, the 7th isn't really amenable to the volatile approach to tempi or dynamics that suits the finale of the 6th so well...even Venzago, in a really beautiful 7th, is relatively reserved. (By his unique standards, at least...).

****
I heard the Bruckner 6th from the BBCPO and Mena this evening on QOBUZ 24/48.....of high interpretive interest on every level, it will take me some time to make sense of my copious notes...

Suffice to say - it is outstanding, a very distinctive yet very idiomatic reading from a true, utterly natural Brucknerian. The BBC PO play wonderfully for him. I so hope he records more Bruckner one day (Mena absolutely has it) but - as this recording shows, Juanjo understands that Bruckner takes time, and he will take his own path toward that noble goal.

But the MediaCity recorded sound really surprised me: it doesn't sound like a studio at all - spacious and atmospheric, warm and evocative, with vanishing-point softness in the pianissimos and thrilling brasses...horn solos sound as if lost in the forest mists....meticulously balanced to match Mena's own wide-ranging Brucknerian conception.

More later...I hope.....

[Bryn]

So the snowball rolls...I guess I better grab a listen to Mena/Chandos now.....

Still, I'm no Wagnerian, so looking good for tonight, if The Cats don't wear me out...

(Shame I just heard again on the 1700 the news about Geronimo.... terribly cruel and unscientific....the pictures earlier were appalling...
Bruckner will help. Bruckner always helps.)

Phew. Given pretty short shrift by Misha Donat in the latest BBCMM. Just 3 stars for performance, though 5 for the recording quality.

[jayne lee wilson]

Phew. Given pretty short shrift by Misha Donat in the latest BBCMM. Just 3 stars for performance, though 5 for the recording quality.

More from me soon....inspired to get the CD after hearing the 24/48..... with which, a still greater 6th for me (yes, even with a 20' adagio.....Celi is only a stone's throw away at a mere 22').... I hope for many others...may make it a dedicated thread...awaiting yet another GP call now though so....patience....

Possibly do a John Crace digested-read-digested on the Donat please? He isn't stuck in the one-basic-tempo museum-of-bruckner-misapprehensions is he...?
Any touchstones mentioned?

[Bryn]

More from me soon....inspired to get the CD after hearing the 24/48..... with which, a still greater 6th for me (yes, even with a 20' adagio.....Celi is only a stone's throw away at a mere 22').... I hope for many others...may make it a dedicated thread...awaiting yet another GP call now though so....patience....

Possibly do a John Crace digested-read-digested on the Donat please? He isn't stuck in the one-basic-tempo museum-of-bruckner-misapprehensions is he...?
Any touchstones mentioned?

His principal moan was the tempo of the Scherzo (too fast) and the Adagio (too slow) plus pp and ppp too quiet. Strangely, though given the performance only 3 stars, he concludes "the performance as a whole leaves a strong and positive impression". Computer says, "it does not compute".

[jayne lee wilson]

His principal moan was the tempo of the Scherzo (too fast) and the Adagio (too slow) plus pp and ppp too quiet. Strangely, though given the performance only 3 stars, he concludes "the performance as a whole leaves a strong and positive impression". Computer says, "it does not compute".

Thanks Bryn.... more or less what I expected - bit of fence-sittin' goin' on there, right?..... (Turn it up, Misha....! If your amp can cope at the other extreme.......)
We need a moratorium in "Tempi in Bruckner: Complaints and their Justifications"

Against my current tastes, the adagio is one of the greatest I've heard on record...
Scherzo - so instinctively & devotedly Brucknerian...point is, the contrast from that profound adagio....

Review soon, hope for other views....

[jayne lee wilson]

Hot on the heels of the stunning Mena 6th http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...xceptional-6th .

...this has been announced..... starting a three-year project climaxing in 2024, Bruckner's 200th Birthday...

https://www.qobuz.com/gb-en/album/bruckner-symphony-no-6-in-a-major-wab-106-markus-poschner-bruckner-orchester-linz/gj7e88l8znm7b

[Alison]

The whole of the 2012 Prom including the Mena 6th is available here:

https://youtu.be/-IMR3knAPso