Segerstam/Bruckner 8 - Barbican, 28.2.15

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... and, indeed, Karajan tried something similar on disk over half-a--century ago. Fortunately he (Karajan) became more 'conservative' in later years and discovered the real Bruckner!

Refreshing as it is to avoid the usual cliché that Karajan's performances were all alike, the suggestion that his 1957 recording of Bruckner's 8th used tempi "something similar" to Segerstam's isn't borne out by the facts

1957 - 87 minutes (a full quarter-of-an-hour shorter than Segerstam)
1975 - 82 mins
1988 - 83 mins

[P. G. Tipps]

'Slow, but not dragging' was Old Anton's instructions for one of his symphonic movements ... heed the master not his servants!!

[Nick Armstrong]

Oh that's because both would not fit in a single room.

Love this thread

I listened to the now completed iPlayer version this evening - or at least, some of it I missed the first movement when it was on live, and having now heard it I would say that it's the least successful of the movements. The scherzo and slow movement work best I think. Need to hear the last movement again, I'll book some time off ...

I find it surprising I'm getting so much out of this performance. I like my Bruckner lithe as a rule - I learnt No 8 from the Tennstedt/LPO version, lots of punch and momentum. The more 'upholstered' or 'architectural' style of performance, I generally don't get on with - I really didn't like the late Karajan/VPO recording for instance.

I think it must be that Brian (as we must now call him ) is doing something SO extremely different with the piece, that I'm willing to forget other ways of doing it and engage in a different kind of experience rather than one that can be compared with anything else...

[Ein Heldenleben]

Agreed - great thread. I don't think I've ever been to a concert which has so radically divided informed opinion . A poor review in the Telegraph and now this from bachtrack which pretty much echoes my enthusiasm from a critic who clearly knows the work much better than me - http://bachtrack.com/review-bruckner...-february-2015
I would particularly underscore the praise for some superb flute playing and also add my own for some really excellent timpani work - though really all were heroes. Also overlooked on this thread so far the wonderful Bruckner motets from the BBC singers .
A three hour concert for £15.00 ! Extraordinary that there were sadly plenty of empty seats on the night.
48 hours on I still can't get the music out of my head . Yes there were moments in the Adagio when I thought this performance is never going to end - now I can't wait to hear it again on I-player. Surely this team is a shoo-in for another Bruckner symphony at the Proms ? Apologies to those who hated it - wish I could you convince you,

[Petrushka]

Thanks for the pointer to the Bachtrack review which also closely resembles my own feelings about this astonishing performance. Listening via Freeview I also was struck by the deep sonority of sound that was like nothing you normally get in the Barbican. Rather spooky to find one or two of my own phrases cropping up in this review from my initial post upthread.

[Beef Oven!]

I'm going to have to get around to listening to this performance

[Nick Armstrong]

Thanks for the pointer to the Bachtrack review which also closely resembles my own feelings about this astonishing performance. Listening via Freeview I also was struck by the deep sonority of sound that was like nothing you normally get in the Barbican. Rather spooky to find one or two of my own phrases cropping up in this review from my initial post upthread.

Yes - and the phrase "Having heard the symphony many times, I have ideas about how it should be done, and Segerstam wilfully offended against nearly all them... but with total conviction" is saying something similar to what I was trying to articulate in the 2nd and 3rd paras of my #78 above.

I'm going to have to get around to listening to this performance

You definitely should!

[P. G. Tipps]

It appears that the main argument here for the downright eccentric performance of Bruckner 8 at the weekend is that it was 'different'. Of that there is absolutely no doubt but "difference" for the sake of it seems pointless and indeed sometimes ruinous.

What on earth is the point of "slowing down' Bruckner's music further than is necessary? It has been said you can hear more of the music but would that not apply to many great composers? It's a bit like admiring the clever use of language on receiving a letter (or email these days) and ignoring the overall message. Furthermore, Bruckner was a famously impassioned and excitable Austrian not a staid, emotionless old German!

Still, I did enjoy hearing the clear divisions in the audience, even if it was only one guy doing the booing. Whist I would never dream myself of booing at a concert (if only out of fear of attracting the disapproving gaze of others), the clearly disgruntled punter(s) vying with the "whoopers and hollerers" at the end did make for a quite extraordinary concert, if only in the strictly literal sense.

Yes, a great thread!

[ahinton]

Oh that's because both would not fit in a single room.

John Ogdon never played a recital with Jessye Norman either. Just saying...

Anyway, I was very much in two minds as to whether to take the risk of listening to this and decided against it, but my appetite and curiosity is now so whetted that I'll simply have to do so while it remains available! LS comes across quite bizarrely in interview and it often seems near impossible to stam (sorry!) the flow of his unique Segerspeak and his own symphonic production factory (or at least such as I've heard of it so far, which unsurprisingly isn't much) seems somehow set up to emphasise - nay, exacerbate - such eccentricities, yet put him in front of any orchestra worthy of the name and get him to conduct a Nielsen symphony or practically anything by Sibelius and you're almost guaranteed a performance that's peerless in its power and which draws the listener into its every subtlety while never losing the bigger picture.

In response to P. G. Tipps' #83 (and without the benefit of hindsight - or rather hindlistening - as yet), I suspect that it's less a matter of whether or how much a conductor "slows down" certain passage as how he/she does it; Bruckner is nothing without momentum, even in the most rapt of slow writing, but as long as Leif Segerstam somehow contrives to maintain this at all times (and many reports of the playing - by an orchestra that he's not accustomed to nor its players to him - speak eloquently and with passionate admitaion about the playing), then perhaps what at first seems like an unconscionably extended duration is indeed just extended and not distended. P.G. writes that "Bruckner was a famously impassioned and excitable Austrian not a staid, emotionless old German!" which, of course, is very true, but I don't get the impression that this performance was either staid or emotionless or "German" (whatever that sobriquet's supposed to mean in such a performance context); for what it's worth, Brahms, though obviously German, was likewise impassioned and excitable, not staid and emotionless and, for all his initial deploring of Bruckner, responded very warmly to the elder composer's seventh symphony when first he heard it...

Still - let's see...

Anyway, in the interim, since blessèd Brian's been mentioned, perhaps it's time for Segerstam to turn his attention to the blessèd Gothic - if not the Leif - of Brian; I'm not sure what his credentials in English music are, so maybe there'd need to be a preparatory Leif plays Rafe season in the interim (although I deeply deplore the parochialist/possessivist snobbery - for it cannot be anything else - that still seems to encourage some people to mispronounce Vaughan Williams’ forename thus)...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I agree with every word* of scotty's #83 (as I often do when he talks about Bruckner). Whatever the experience people felt at this performance, it had nothing to do with the tempi Bruckner wrote in all three versions of this work.

(* = "every word", including the last four )

[Prommer]

For some, it would appear that to listen to the performance even once is more than their Leif is worth...

Does anyone know anyone who plays in the BBCSO? Would love to hear what the players thought of being Segerstammed. There is a reference in one of the reviews to angry looks bring exchanged and players not being able to hear each other...?

This one, in fact, by Peter Quantrill with whom I was at the 'Bridge...

http://www.theartsdesk.com/classical-music/bbcso-segerstam-barbican

[Bryn]

...There is a reference in one of the reviews to angry looks bring exchanged and players not being able to hear each other...?

This one, in fact, by Peter Quantrill with whom I was at the 'Bridge...

http://www.theartsdesk.com/classical...rstam-barbican

Well they were playing in the Barbican.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

For some, it would appear that to listen to the performance even once is more than their Leif is worth ...

Not sure where you get this idea from, Prommer - it did seem as if it might outlast me, but for me it was more a case of an idea of how the work should go that beggared beLeif.

[ahinton]

Well they were playing in the Barbican.

Quite; notwithstanding the hoary old gags about the Royal Festival Hell and the more recent ones about the South Banking Crisis, if ever there could be a classic incompatibility between a large orchestra and a concert hall, then any decent orchestra and the Babycan must surely be it! The only occasion on which the grave problems there have ever been largely overcome in my experience was when Jessye Norman sang Erwartung with Boulez and LSO in September 1988 (I think) and I have to admit that, even in that place, the myriad exquisite subtleties of that miraculous score were exposed to my ears with remarkable clarity as never before in live performance.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I wasn't aware of any angry looks on the night but then surveying the 10 double basses, eight horns , four tbs. plus tuba ,three harps and extended string sections and anticipating an ear- splitting blazefest I made a tactical retreat to a seat , it turned out, right behind the disgruntled Brucknerian. Good move - the performance was very loud. I did though notice some extreme concentration from the leader of the viola section who,like the rest of the band , played their hearts out. They might have found Leif's conducting still a bit free .One gesture , arms splayed out for the tuttis I've only seen used before by goalkeepers trying to put penalty takers off or free fall parachutists stabilising their decent . I did bump into one player after the concert who agreed it was slow but didn't seem fazed by it at all, I get the impression orchestra players are pretty thick skinned and can cope with just about anything. To counter the Arts Desk review here is a more positive one from the Standard. The splits continue ...

http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/music/bbc-symphony-orchestraleif-segerstam-barbican-hall--music-review-10080024.html