Bruckner Symphony no. 2

[Bryn]

Shame Schoenberg didn't do one

My weak pun notwithstanding, I reckon AP did a pretty good job.

[ahinton]

My weak pun notwithstanding, I reckon AP did a pretty good job.

So do I, although I remain less than convinced of the need for it - or at least why No. 2 rather than any of the other earler ones...

[jayne lee wilson]

That would be a Payne:

The problem here is that, as the Gramophone feature made clear at the time, Pinnock high-handedly made his own choices as to which revisions to incorporate and which to leave out...... excusable with Kna or Andreae in the 1950s perhaps, even forgivable with Karajan, but unnecessarily confusing now.

Berky only lists it under "transcriptions" as it can't be under any authentic version.

[verismissimo]

I know that everyone knows this, but …

Such an enormous step from S1 to S2. :)

[Barbirollians]

Listened to Solti in No 1 last night and the Giulini this afternoon and was thinking exactly the same thing.

[jayne lee wilson]

I know that everyone knows this, but …

Such an enormous step from S1 to S2. :)

Care to elaborate.....?

Both are toweringly original masterpieces (and not just "for me"), but with No.2, especially in its original version, there are more Brucknerian beginnings than endings really....No.1 much more self-contained in its own perfectly-achieved way. But then No.3 sets off on yet another far-flung direction....

Or you can see 1,5 (a sort of symphonic Laputa) and 9 standing apart, and 2-4 and 6-8 as the continuous process of refinement, of both compression and expansion, of Bruckner's most favoured, obsessive forms and models....

***
As for No.2, just a reminder of the recent, wonderful Mozarteum/Bolton recording of 1872 Carragan, one of the best ever of the loveliest, certainly the most formally/symphonically coherent, version of the symphony. On OEHMS.