Bruckner 6?

[Beef Oven!]

I was amazed to see criticism of the Klemperer, sound and music, here a few, months ago, since both the issues here - the EMI GROC and the earlier EMI Studio sound excellent in the classic EMI Kingsway style (GROC a bit smoother, better resolved). "Majestic, magisterial, magnificently architectural" said Deryck Cooke, while RO described the recording as "wonderfully spacious, the balances first rate.... gaunt, highly individual, immensely imposing". Klemperer doesn't hang about - which appeals to me greatly now - his adagio takes 14'42.

Different strokes for different folks - it's what makes the world go 'round!

I admire the Celibidache Munich PO in the quicker movements, but his 22'01 adagio just loses me I'm afraid. I don't think I have a short attention span, but...

Celi's MPO 6 on EMI has an adagio of 15 minutes 16 seconds and I find it out of keeping with the rest of the performance, in that it seems to me, somewhat hurried and perfunctory by comparison.

[jayne lee wilson]

Different strokes for different folks - it's what makes the world go 'round!



Celi's MPO 6 on EMI has an adagio of 15 minutes 16 seconds and I find it out of keeping with the rest of the performance, in that it seems to me, somewhat hurried and perfunctory by comparison.

There's another EMI Munich 6th? With a quicker adagio? News indeed! Gotta link, Beef?

[Beef Oven!]

There's another EMI Munich 6th? With a quicker adagio? News indeed! Gotta link, Beef?

Finale, I meant. What on Earth is wrong with the adagio???

You know what you're letting yourself in for when you put Celi on the turntable! Maybe you have a short attention span?

For me it's the finale that lets this performance down.

[makropulos]

In Bruckner 6 I'm a big enthusiast for Haitink's Philips/Concertgebouw performance - it was how I came to know and love the piece as a student and I still like it very much. Jochum's DG and EMI versions are both exciting, and I like Chailly too. But I don't have any problem with Klemperer either.

[BBMmk2]

I don't think Abbado had recorded this work?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I don't think Abbado had recorded this work?

No - nor (perhaps more surprisingly) the Eighth. (He did record the First twice.)

[Petrushka]

Richard Osborne's word on Bruckner is usually Holy Writ where I am concerned but I've never been able to understand his hymn of praise to the Klemperer disc. I've been listening to a lot of Klemperer recordings of late but the 6th Symphony in the Warner Bruckner box sounds very much 'in-yer-face' with overloud brass. Sorry RO and JLW, I can't get on with it.

The lack of performances of the 6th is a real mystery to me. The first movement is one of Bruckner's very finest, even the finest and the others aren't bad either. Nevertheless, in 40+ years of concert-going I've only heard it once (Concertgebouw/Chailly in Birmingham in the late 1990s).

Recommendable recordings? Dresden Staatskapelle/Haitink, Concertgebouw/Chailly, Chicago SO/Solti and NDR SO/Wand are all exceptionally fine.

As a postscript to the mention of Abbado. He did perform the 8th in Prague with the Vienna Philharmonic and it was filmed. However, I've never seen the full film or heard of a release. Perhaps someone who knows can clear this one up?

[Gordon]

Thanks all for inputs still digesting with Klemperer, Norrington and Jochum [Dresden] with others in mind to track down later. I found Venzago a bit disppointing in the 3rd - it asks for nicht schell and he goes off too quickly for me then slows in the trio - langsam - but we'll see in due course. Too many to choose from!

BTW the OAE and Sir S will be doing the same programme [Brahms Tragic, Roth movement (Bruckner pupil died young) and Bruckner 6] at the RFH on 22nd April and the next night they are at the Anvil in Basingstoke. Tickets still avaialble at each venue. If there is a radio relay it'll most likely be the RFH. Given the rarity of performances this is a must especially out here in the sticks.

[jayne lee wilson]

Finale, I meant. What on Earth is wrong with the adagio???

You know what you're letting yourself in for when you put Celi on the turntable! Maybe you have a short attention span?

For me it's the finale that lets this performance down.

You took issue with my comment on the very long Munich adagio by... comparing it with a quicker one. Which it turns out doesn't exist... except that...

There are earlier Bruckner performances from Celi which don't go to anything like the Munich extremes (in lyrical 2nd and 3rd subjects as well as slow movements) - check out the timings in the DG sets of 3-5,7-9. Personally I feel that super-slow tempi in Bruckner play into a clichéd view of this very original composer anyway (and tend to put the conductor, musically as well as emotionally speaking, centre-stage). Colin Davis' LSO Live 6th's adagio takes a string-drenched 19'49 (poor oboe only just keeps its head above the water) , which sounds to me like it's already stretching the attention span of Bruckner's music, never mind my own ability to follow it (at a deeper level than mere architecture). And our own varying individual pulse-rate is closely intertwined with our response to music, and specifically a given performance of it. I'm drawn to the lovely pastoral buoyancy that Venzago (14'02) and to some extent Klemperer (14'42 - whose winds are often more foregrounded even than Venzago, very beneficially too) bring to it, or rather out of it.

"A great conductor but in the end (in the Munich years) he conducted everything the way Furtwangler conducted slow movements." - Daniel Barenboim on Celibidache.

(***PETRUSHKA - that Warner box was remastered wasn't it? So there you are then! Or have you heard any of the others, the EMI Studio or the GROC? In my system they really are perfectly balanced with no glare of upper range harshness, and certainly no overprominent brass. The Studio is pretty good but the GROC is sonically exceptional for its years).

[Beef Oven!]

You took issue with my comment on the very long Munich adagio by... comparing it with a quicker one. Which it turns out doesn't exist...

I've already explained that I meant the finale, which does indeed exist.

There are earlier Bruckner performances from Celi which don't go to anything like the Munich extremes (in lyrical 2nd and 3rd subjects as well as slow movements) - check out the timings in the DG sets of 3-5,7-9.

I know those recordings, but I much prefer the later Celi - the 'live only' later years. It hardly matters how long a particular performance is, I'm mostly unaware of the timings when the music is as absorbing as Sorabji, Goodall, Celi, et al.

Personally I feel that super-slow tempi in Bruckner play into a clichéd view of this very original composer anyway (and tend to put the conductor, musically as well as emotionally speaking, centre-stage).

Those cliches are optional. I've never bought into cliches about Bruckner, all that 'hewn from granite', 'building great cathedrals of sound', 'a man who had found God'. I focus on the music.

"A great conductor but in the end (in the Munich years) he conducted everything the way Furtwangler conducted slow movements." - Daniel Barenboim on Celibidache

I think the great Bruckner maestro is being a little unfair here, but I certainly struggle with Celi's MPO LvB6 and Schumann.

We shouldn't forget that these MPO performances were intended as just that- performances, concerts, a snapshot in time, a one-off. I wouldn't want to be without them, but I understand that they are somewhat out of context as CDs.

[Nick Armstrong]

I've yet to meet anyone who knows the Sawallisch version, let alone likes it; and that seems to be the case with the Forum too...

[Petrushka]

I've yet to meet anyone who knows the Sawallisch version, let alone likes it; and that seems to be the case with the Forum too...

Duly ordered!

[Nick Armstrong]

Duly ordered!

Now I'm anxious !!

[Petrushka]

(***PETRUSHKA - that Warner box was remastered wasn't it? So there you are then! Or have you heard any of the others, the EMI Studio or the GROC? In my system they really are perfectly balanced with no glare of upper range harshness, and certainly no overprominent brass. The Studio is pretty good but the GROC is sonically exceptional for its years).

I bought the EMI Studio CD when it came out in 1990 (from MDT's shop in Derby city centre when they still had one!) following RO's rave review in Gramophone. I found then, and find now with the latest Warner re-mastering, that the sound is suffocatingly close, the very antithesis of the Bruckner sound. It sounds as if it was recorded in a matchbox and have to say that from the extensive listening I've been doing with the Klemperer Warner boxes this is very much the exception. Everything else is breathtakingly good, better by far than many a modern recording so the disappointment with the Bruckner 6 is hard to explain.

[kea]

The recording I always turn to is by Sawallisch and the Bavarian State Orchestra on Orfeo - just splendiferous and very moving.

Although I got to know the 6th (rather later than most of the others) through the Celibidache - Munich Philharmonic recording, which I still like a lot. The complex rhythmical superimpositions in the first movement are razor-sharp (unlike with Klemperer for example), the slow movement is particularly memorable, and there's none of SC's tendency to slow things right down as he does in the 9th (although I like that also).

Horst Stein VPO Eloquence

Klemperer does not take off, for me.

I have yet to hear the Venzago, but Norrington's Hanssler Classics recording is as perfect as we have any right to expect: fire, colour, pathos and structure all perfectly controlled and at the service of the work. Norrington's finest hour in the recording studio, IMO - crass cover photo notwithstanding!

However, since I recently discovered that cycle with the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra/Rozhdestvensky on YouTube, I can tell you that you could do a lot worse than download and listen to that raw, no-holds-barred account of the symphony. Alas, I don't know if it's possible to purchase any of this wonderful cycle (+) in the UK.

Thanks, more or less spared me a post!

Norrington or Sawallisch is probably my "first choice", but I like all of these. It should be noted that there's basically only one "correct" version of the symphony (Haas/Novak only differ in very minor details). iirc Rozhdestvensky departs from it in the last bars of the piece by changing the timpani part, but if you like Soviet trumpets, an orchestra that's constantly on the verge of falling apart and poor sound quality, it's an excellent reading otherwise.

Thought I'd also mention Russell Davies/Linz on Arte Nova, which is not a favourite but highly stimulating in other respects—only recording where the tempo relations in the first movement follow the (possibly spurious) metronome markings in the manuscript, features a bizarrely slow finale and in general takes lots of risks. I can't say if anyone will like it, but it's worth hearing!

(I also like another recording rarely mentioned, Eichhorn/Linz on the Camerata label, which is a bit slow and wrong-notey but features one of the most convincing finales I know of)