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Off topic but , in general , those Cambridge companions are often the best single volume surveys of a composer’s music around ...Originally posted by jayne lee wilson View PostComment
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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
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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
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Thanks for the link . I didn’t know the 8th was also known as the Apokalyptische. How very timely ....Originally posted by gurnemanz View PostComment
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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.Originally posted by DoctorT View Post
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
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I never found out who called it that......not Bruckner......Originally posted by Heldenleben View Post
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, 15:39.Comment
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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.Originally posted by jayne lee wilson View PostComment
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What does that mean? (This is a perfectly serious question on my part)Originally posted by Richard Barrett View PostComment
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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.Originally posted by rathfarnhamgirl View PostComment
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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.Originally posted by gurnemanz View PostComment
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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'Originally posted by Richard Barrett View Post
Do either of you happen to know what 'Chagalian nihilism' is? (I'm too embarrassed to ask the person who used it
).
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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.Originally posted by rathfarnhamgirl View Post
Chagalian infantilism, I think it was, assuming we're thinking of the same post?Do either of you happen to know what 'Chagalian nihilism' is? (I'm too embarrassed to ask the person who used it ).
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Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View 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 .....Comment
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