Prom 47: Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra - 23.08.19

[Sir Velo]

Not for me I'm afraid. It was as if this Everest among symphonies was being tackled by a group of one legged mountaineers with a blind man as leader. Never got going and fell down far too many crevasses.

[Tony Halstead]

Not for me I'm afraid. It was as if this Everest among symphonies was being tackled by a group of one legged mountaineers with a blind man as leader. Never got going and fell down far too many crevasses.

[Sir Velo]

Actually, to be fair I should say it was as if a group of extremely competent mountaineers were being led by a blind man with an uncertain grasp of terrain.

[Alison]

And better a good performance of a ‘discredited’ edition than a poor rendition of a fashionable one!

[jayne lee wilson]

To come back on this briefly -

Swifter Bruckner 8ths are certainly nothing new. Some of the greatest known to me, from Knappertsbusch, Andreae, Rosbaud etc (all 1950s, variously Lienau 1892, or Haas 1890) sound pretty quick at the start of the finale, but crucially they vary the pulse considerably within it. In fact many such finales take little more than 20’ to complete (Rosbaud even less), whereas Nelsons was around 22’/23. HvK or Wand usually bring it home in 24'-25' or even longer, and tend to less flexibility.
So I think the initial metronome mark is less important than it might appear.

So there is that older performance tradition - a quickened, volatile, Old-Vienna sound out of Schumann and Schubert, less grandiose, lyrical and more rooted, feeding up to us through the instinctive, in the blood responses of Kna (perhaps the only conductor to make explicit and yet triumphant, the vitalising influence of Wagnerian Music Drama), Andreae (VSO, first ever complete cycle, 1953) and their orchestras, (and later Venzago despite his occasional quixoticisms), which are by no means limited by such influences - these are vitally powerful accounts. The reputation of such recordings has to some extent been tarnished by some of the supposedly imperfect or questionable editions used; but this shouldn’t deflect one’s attention from a vitally insightful, back-to-the-fountainhead style of Brucknerian interpretation…. (one which Karajan seemed to rediscover in his late readings of symphonies 1-3…some of his most spontaneous tapings....another favourite locus classicus: Berlin RSO/Konwitschny, 1951 Bruckner 2 ).

How much respect should conductors have for the metronome mark?
That instinctive feel for "how it should go", and Rubato itself, will always be a very personal perception/response. But for me, always judging by ear and "heart" (I often feel one’s own heart rate is a usually unacknowledged influence on one’s preferences…), it is a vital element in the best, most alive Bruckner performances (Salonen’s 4th a few weeks ago was a great example, finale especially).

(But see the essential discussion on this in The Cambridge Companion to Bruckner…”Conductors and Bruckner”).