Bruckner

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  • kernelbogey
    Full Member
    • Nov 2010
    • 5737

    Originally posted by Richard Barrett View Post
    It's the Cambridge Companion to Bruckner, by multiple authors. I would recommend it highly also. It's the most interesting single book on the music I've come across.
    Originally posted by jayne lee wilson View Post
    "The Cambridge Companion to Bruckner, edited by John Williamson. CUP 2004."
    Thank you both.

    Comment

    • Ein Heldenleben
      Full Member
      • Apr 2014
      • 6755

      Originally posted by jayne lee wilson View Post
      "The Cambridge Companion to Bruckner, edited by John Williamson. CUP 2004."
      Off topic but , in general , those Cambridge companions are often the best single volume surveys of a composer’s music around ...

      Comment

      • DoctorT

        I first heard a Bruckner symphony played live by the Leipzig Gewandhaus under Kurt Masur (IIRC) - no 7 - and was completely blown away, and bought the Karajan BPO 7 soon afterwards. Although I’ve revisited Bruckner many times since, I’ve never recaptured that moment. Driven by this thread to try again...

        Comment

        • gurnemanz
          Full Member
          • Nov 2010
          • 7382

          Above comments made me realise I didn't have a book about AB, so thanks for the nudge towards the Bruckner Companion which I may well order - still surveying the scene. The Venzago box (which I found cheapest at jpc - as very often with cpo discs) has a thickish booklet with some very worthwhile notes from Hartmut Becker and Venzago himself - about 60 pages each of English and German. Having done some translation myself, I enjoyed reading the German original and from time to time seeing how some particular turns of phrases had been rendered into English.

          Comment

          • Ein Heldenleben
            Full Member
            • Apr 2014
            • 6755

            Originally posted by gurnemanz View Post
            Above comments made me realise I didn't have a book about AB, so thanks for the nudge towards the Bruckner Companion which I may well order - still surveying the scene. The Venzago box (which I found cheapest at jpc - as very often with cpo discs) has a thickish booklet with some very worthwhile notes from Hartmut Becker and Venzago himself - about 60 pages each of English and German. Having done some translation myself, I enjoyed reading the German original and from time to time seeing how some particular turns of phrases had been rendered into English.
            Thanks for the link . I didn’t know the 8th was also known as the Apokalyptische. How very timely ....

            Comment

            • gurnemanz
              Full Member
              • Nov 2010
              • 7382

              Originally posted by DoctorT View Post
              I first heard a Bruckner symphony played live by the Leipzig Gewandhaus under Kurt Masur (IIRC) - no 7 - and was completely blown away, and bought the Karajan BPO 7 soon afterwards. Although I’ve revisited Bruckner many times since, I’ve never recaptured that moment. Driven by this thread to try again...
              Somewhat of a coincidence here: it was probably not exactly the same performance but I also first heard Bruckner 7 live with Gewandhaus and Masur, when I was in Leipzig in the 70s. I've just checked old programmes and it was part of a Bruckner cycle in 74/75. We also heard the 2nd. For one of them we were sitting right in the front row (not our usually favoured position) and I can remember being almost literally "blown away", as well as musically.

              Must have been good sessions - the 7th concert also had a young Gidon Kremer playing Beethoven Romances and Schnittke 2nd Concerto and in the first half of the 2nd we had Emil Gilels in Mozart K595.

              Comment

              • jayne lee wilson
                Banned
                • Jul 2011
                • 10711

                Originally posted by Heldenleben View Post
                Thanks for the link . I didn’t know the 8th was also known as the Apokalyptische. How very timely ....
                I never found out who called it that......not Bruckner......

                Venzago has his own very individual (you would expect nothing else...!) names for the Symphonies....
                From the CPO notes "A Different Bruckner", some viewable on Qobuz (see under No.5), where he has many fascinating observations...

                "At the risk of being naïve, I acknowledge that I have assigned a title and a story to each symphony in order vividly to capture its emotional individuality and message on the level of content. This assignment of the titles is subjective and does not claim even the smallest measure of universal validity":

                "Zeroth: The Appearance of Mary
                First: The Vanity of the World
                Second: Grace Symphony
                Third: The Law
                Fourth: Faith and Hope
                Fifth: The Holy Scriptures
                Sixth: The Temptation of St. Anthony
                Seventh: Paradise
                Eighth: Purgatory and Doubt in God
                Ninth: The Mighty Fortress"

                He offers this as a general set of principles.....
                "• a trimmer tone throughout – as already stated – in the tradition of Schubert;
                • a rubato-rich, bar-line-free playing style – where it is meaningful and possible – as I have found to be suitable for the works of Robert Schumann and have documented in the cycle »A Different Schumann«;
                • the working out of sacral, ritual moments, above all the choral components oriented by the sound of the romantic male choirs".

                This point about Rubato is one of the features that sends me back to the tradition of Andreae and Knappertsbusch....it has to be natural and flowing of course, maybe won't always come off.....but for me it lends new life and a sense of risk to a performance, tends to be more songfully Austrian.

                One for the adventurous of course, but apart from the strange 5th (which sounded under-prepared, and which I'll have to try again) there's an exciting ride ahead....


                Last edited by jayne lee wilson; 18-12-20, 14:39.

                Comment

                • Richard Barrett
                  Guest
                  • Jan 2016
                  • 6259

                  Originally posted by jayne lee wilson View Post
                  "Zeroth: The Appearance of Mary
                  First: The Vanity of the World
                  Second: Grace Symphony
                  Third: The Law
                  Fourth: Faith and Hope
                  Fifth: The Holy Scriptures
                  Sixth: The Temptation of St. Anthony
                  Seventh: Paradise
                  Eighth: Purgatory and Doubt in God
                  Ninth: The Mighty Fortress"
                  Nice! I can see what he means... although I'm bound to say also that putting everything in terms of religious concepts is somewhat reductive - I would suggest that Bruckner's symphonic music continues from where his liturgical music leaves off, rather than offering a kind of tone-poem version of the same ideas.

                  Comment

                  • Leinster Lass
                    Banned
                    • Oct 2020
                    • 1099

                    Originally posted by Richard Barrett View Post
                    Nice! I can see what he means... although I'm bound to say also that putting everything in terms of religious concepts is somewhat reductive - I would suggest that Bruckner's symphonic music continues from where his liturgical music leaves off, rather than offering a kind of tone-poem version of the same ideas.
                    What does that mean? (This is a perfectly serious question on my part)

                    Comment

                    • Joseph K
                      Banned
                      • Oct 2017
                      • 7765

                      Originally posted by rathfarnhamgirl View Post
                      What does that mean? (This is a perfectly serious question on my part)
                      I'm just guessing that Richard means that reducing the 'content' of Bruckner's symphonies to apparently the exclusively religious doesn't wholly do justice to their breadth and depth.

                      Comment

                      • Bryn
                        Banned
                        • Mar 2007
                        • 24688

                        Originally posted by gurnemanz View Post
                        Above comments made me realise I didn't have a book about AB, so thanks for the nudge towards the Bruckner Companion which I may well order - still surveying the scene. The Venzago box (which I found cheapest at jpc - as very often with cpo discs) has a thickish booklet with some very worthwhile notes from Hartmut Becker and Venzago himself - about 60 pages each of English and German. Having done some translation myself, I enjoyed reading the German original and from time to time seeing how some particular turns of phrases had been rendered into English.
                        Hartmut Becker's notes on the 8th (available to Qobuz subscribers in pdf format) I found particularly illuminating. Nowak gets a passing reference but there is no mention of Haas, though he is criticised, by implication, for the pick and mix approach which he addopted.

                        Comment

                        • Richard Barrett
                          Guest
                          • Jan 2016
                          • 6259

                          Originally posted by Joseph K View Post
                          I'm just guessing that Richard means that reducing the 'content' of Bruckner's symphonies to apparently the exclusively religious doesn't wholly do justice to their breadth and depth.
                          Exactly!

                          Comment

                          • Leinster Lass
                            Banned
                            • Oct 2020
                            • 1099

                            Originally posted by Richard Barrett View Post
                            Exactly!
                            Thank you both. I take it that's another way of saying 'expressing everything in religious terms' or 'relating everything to one's religious beliefs'

                            Do either of you happen to know what 'Chagalian nihilism' is? (I'm too embarrassed to ask the person who used it ).

                            Comment

                            • Serial_Apologist
                              Full Member
                              • Dec 2010
                              • 37614

                              Originally posted by rathfarnhamgirl View Post
                              Thank you both. I take it that's another way of saying 'expressing everything in religious terms' or 'relating everything to one's religious beliefs'
                              Or reducing the origins of The Cosmos to the workings of God - or A God: another type of reductionism that some scientists call The Singularity, if I understand them non-reductively! Reductionism is a useful term for over-simplification.

                              Do either of you happen to know what 'Chagalian nihilism' is? (I'm too embarrassed to ask the person who used it ).
                              Chagalian infantilism, I think it was, assuming we're thinking of the same post?

                              Comment

                              • Leinster Lass
                                Banned
                                • Oct 2020
                                • 1099

                                Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View Post
                                Or reducing the origins of The Cosmos to the workings of God - or A God: another type of reductionism that some scientists call The Singularity, if I understand them non-reductively! Reductionism is a useful term for over-simplification.



                                Chagalian infantilism, I think it was, assuming we're thinking of the same post?

                                THAT I understand - thanks!
                                You're probably right about the Chagalian wotsit, but I still have no idea what it means, especially in connection with CD covers (or did I misunderstand that too? )
                                I try my hardest to follow people's arguments but quite often struggle - not because I don't agree with them, but because I find some of the terms and vocabulary used beyond (or do I mean above?) me .....

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