Bruckner

[doversoul1]

Nobody has anything to say about Bruckner?!

His symphonies scare me but I thought the choir works I heard on Monday were really quite inviting. Does this mean that these works are not (yet) quite Bruckner’s?

[teamsaint]

I was a bit surprised that there was no thread yet, given his huge popularity hereabouts.
This is a repeat, I think, from a couple of years back.
Whenever I hear the choral works, I never quite manage to get into them, even though I hear pleasing sounds.I suspect I need to listen under the right circumstances.
DS, Bruckner clicked for me last year with a chance hearing of the 8th symphony.

Only heard half the show yesterday, mostly a run through of the first movement of the 3rd. Hope to hear more today.

[BBMmk2]

I know Abbado has recporded them but he seems to have neglected this area?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

This is a repeat, I think, from a couple of years back.

Da Capo, perhaps? (Although after two years, it must be Celibidache!)

Whenever I hear the choral works, I never quite manage to get into them, even though I hear pleasing sounds.I suspect I need to listen under the right circumstances.

This is similar to my own reactions, ts: the choral works can seem "bitty" in comparison to the "organic" Symphonies - and I often feel that I'm expecting the settings of the texts to have the same "spaciousness" that I adore in the Symphonies, which isn't a fair expectation.

Having said that, just over a year ago I was coming back from a hospital visit with the E minor Mass on my CD player - the track it started from was the Benedictus: I had to pull over and just listen. Nothing more beautiful in the whole of Music!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydyt-g2yajc

Perhaps that's why there's so little to say about Bruckner - he starts exactly where words fail?

[Roehre]

....
This is a repeat, I think, from a couple of years back.....

No, it isn't. Then (2004, repeated 2009 iirc) more interesting brucknerian trifles were included, including e.g. a wedding song for yodelling soprano, flute solo and horn quartet.

[BBMmk2]

His Mass No.3 is one of his better settings of the genre, and as is his Te Deum. (specially in the hands of the likesw of Eugene Jochum or Claudio Abbado?)

[teamsaint]

No, it isn't. Then (2004, repeated 2009 iirc) more interesting brucknerian trifles were included, including e.g. a wedding song for yodelling soprano, flute solo and horn quartet.

Ah, apologies. I do remember hearing another one, clearly a different series. Still listening anyway !
Bruckner is a tough on for the Don. How can you do him without big chunks of Symphonies, but then they take up so much of the available time.
Not catch 22, but something like it.
The bit about the organ playing and the lack of any written musical legacy was interesting.

Lets hope the yodelling turns up by Friday.

[Sir Velo]

Good to hear Barenboim's fleet footed account of the Scherzo from the 8th symphony. Only a band as adept as the Berliners could probably bring this tempo off without it sounding like a hectic scramble for the tape, and a welcome corrective to those who would have Bruckner bear the weight of the world Atlas like.

[jayne lee wilson]

Well, I've loved Bruckner all my life, discovering him through R3 and a local record library in the 1970s. He's helped me through a lot so I do tend to promote his cause. Recently, Mario Venzago has been recording his symphonies with smaller orchestras - The Northern Sinfonia, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Basle SO. It's a very fresh, clear, swift and un-monumental view (even more radical than Norrington), which may show a way forward in Bruckner interpretation - there's no Romantic rhetoric but the readings are intensely expressive. The austro-german tradition with Karajan and Wand etc. is a great one but each age must make it new...

[Karafan]

Well, I've loved Bruckner all my life.....he's helped me through a lot so I do tend to promote his cause

I know just what you mean Jayne. He is the source of balm and succour to me in some of life's travails. They should make him available on prescription.

[Nick Armstrong]

Don't think I've ever heard Chailly's Bruckner.... Very impressed with the slow movement from the 7th on CotW today, with the DSO.

Tempting old box this, some with the Concertgebouw...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bruckner-The-Symphonies-Anton/dp/B0000CESR7/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359578142&sr=8-1

...under £4 a disc...

Anyone know any of the performances, have any views?

[Karafan]

I have them Caliban and they are extremely well-played and conducted - real refinement - and those slow movements are wonderfully shaped and tremendously moving. It is a bit of a sleeper of a set in many ways but I have enjoyed it greatly. In many ways he puts me in mind of Abbado in these works, that same overarching sense of unity and as far away from old Eugen (good on his own terms, but so febrile!) as it is possible to get I would say.

[scottycelt]

I love each and every Bruckner symphony to death ... and I'll probably die listening to one.

Like team, I've never really got into the choral works, apart from Helgoland which I utterly adore. I can't stand the Te Deum which sounds to me like the music equivalent of a bellowing 1970s Ian Paisley (Snr). (sorry fellow-Brucknerians!) The string quintet is a marvellous piece, though.

The more I listen to the symphonies the more I warm to the interpretations of his fellow-countryman, Eugen Jochum. He reveals the essential 'earthiness' in the composer's music as well as the sublimely 'heavenly', the 'human' as well as the 'grand'.

I could go on ... and on ... and on ...

[Nick Armstrong]

Thanks karafan and scotty. The only Bruckner box I have is Jochum (Dresden) though I have various recordings of most of them. Seriously tempted by the Chailly now

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Like team, I've never really got into the choral works, apart from Helgoland which I utterly adore.

I refer the honourable Forumite to my earlier link, in the hope that it will be the portal into the glorious world of, at least, the F minor Mass:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydyt-g2yajc