Bruckner's Symphony No 4
Jansons's very fine Bruckner Fourth comes coupled with the Third
The Gramophone Choice
Symphony No 4 (1880 Nowak edition)
Coupled with Symphony No 3 (1889 Nowak edition)
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra / Mariss Jansons
RCO Live RCO09002 (125’ · DDD/DSD). Recorded live 2007 & 2008. Buy from Amazon
In these powerfully articulated accounts of Bruckner’s Third and Fourth symphonies, Mariss Jansons exhibits the quality that Karajan attributed to the great Czech conductor Václav Talich: 'He had a great genius for…drawing the orchestra together and controlling it as a single expressive instrument.'
This is particularly evident in the finale of the Fourth Symphony. Though Bruckner spent years trying to get this movement right, it can still sound inadequate in a less than first-rate performance. That is not the case here. Jansons’s grasp of the relative importance of individual ideas within the competing hierarchies of thematic material is as impressive as his marrying of a properly measured opening pulse with a strong yet unforced forward motion.
Though the Third Symphony is less difficult to bring off, there have been few better-directed accounts on record than this. If there is a limitation, it lies with the Dutch orchestra’s northern manner. Finely as Jansons shapes the polka-cum-chorale in the symphony’s finale, others have managed it better. Nor do the horn or bassoon sections have the kind of sound characteristics that have helped establish the superiority of Vienna and Munich Philharmonic accounts of the Fourth Symphony under Böhm, Abbado, Celibidache and Kempe.
The horns are further disadvantaged by a somewhat distant recorded balance, unlike that of the cellos which can be too immediate. RCO Live generally gives us a closer, darker sound than that of Concertgebouw recordings made in an empty hall under studio conditions. A striking pair of discs none the less.
Additional Recommendations
Symphony No 4 (1878/80 version)
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Günter Wand
RCA Victor Red Seal 09026 68839-2 (69‘ · DDD). Recorded live 1998. Buy from Amazon
The pacing of each movement is majestic. Not too fast in the first movement; a slow, contemplative tread in the second; animated, but capable of opening out into something more leisurely in the Scherzo; varied, but with the sense of an underlying slow pulse in the finale. Wand allows himself some fairly generous rubato from time to time, halting slightly on the high unaccompanied cello phrase in the first movement’s second subject. From the start there’s something about his performance that puts it in a different league from rivals. There’s the depth and richness of the string sound in the opening tremolo. A few seconds later the Berlin Philharmonic’s principal horn intones the opening phrases so magically and majestically that it’s hard to believe you aren’t listening to a real voice – a superhuman larynx, not just a contraption of brass and valves. The sound is, to some extent, the orchestra’s own, but there’s a feeling that the players are giving extra for Wand, something with more inner life; and the unaffected eloquence and shapeliness of the phrasing is all Wand. It carries you along even when the rubato ought to jar, as it does sometimes in other versions.
This is a concert performance, and feels like one. Things that work in concert aren’t always ideal solutions on a repeatable commercial recording. Take Wand’s big ritardando at the fleeting reference to Brünnhilde’s Magic Sleep motif in the finale – the effect might pall after a couple of playings. But then he does ease very effectively into the weird pianissimo cello and bass figures that follow, triplet quavers gradually becoming triplet crotchets. The sound quality is excellent.
Symphony No 4 (1878/80 version)
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra / Karl Böhm
Decca The Originals 475 8403DOR (68‘ · ADD). Recorded 1973. Buy from Amazon
Böhm’s VPO account of the Fourth Symphony has the unmistakable stamp of greatness. It was made in the Sofiensaal in Vienna with its helpful acoustic; for though you can detect a whisper of tape-hiss if you put your ear against the loudspeaker, in almost every other way the sound is realistic and warm. There’s a roundness in the brass tone with plenty of bite and fullness but no unwanted rasp – especially important in this symphony. Böhm’s Fourth is at the head of the field irrespective of price. The warmth as well as the mystery of Bruckner are far more compellingly conveyed in Böhm’s spacious view than with any other conductor.
Bruckner Symphony No 4 (1880 version)
Coupled with Beethoven Piano Concerto No 2, Op 19*.
*Bruno Leonardo Gelber pf Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Klaus Tennstedt
Testament SBT2 1448 (110’ · ADD). Recorded live 1981. Buy from Amazon
The LPO’s live 1989 Royal Festival Hall performance is entirely surpassed here in terms of the drive, imagination and power of Tennstedt’s engagement both with the music and the orchestra. This Berlin Philharmonie recording, expertly remastered by Testament from Berlin-Brandenburg radio tapes, also surpasses its London equivalent in richness, depth and clarity of sound.
The real test of any performance of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony is the finale, which Tennstedt handles with special understanding: generously paced, shrewdly detailed and comprehensively of a piece. Significantly, the first horn is as eloquent in the elegiac 16‑bar solo which emerges out of the coda’s hymn-like initiation as he is in the symphony’s celebrated opening. That magical horn line echoes the slow movement’s principal ‘processional’ motif. Tennstedt plays the Andante quasi allegretto broadly, at the kind of lingering pace favoured by Walter, Böhm and Celibidache, rather than swiftly and idiomatically as Klemperer and Kempe do. He also retains one or two details – orchestral ‘gestures’ you might say – from the old Löwe/Schalk edition of the score. This will be familiar territory to Tennstedt followers, who will not be dissuaded from treating the release as archive gold.
The two-record set comes at a special price, since the concerto which preceded the symphony in the Berlin concert is added on a second 30‑minute CD. The finale of Beethoven’s youthful B flat Concerto is here lacking in skittishness and subversive wit but there is enough to enjoy in the two earlier movements. The orchestral playing under Tennstedt is stylish and sure-footed.
Symphony No 4 (1878/80 version)
Coupled with Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis*
London Symphony Orchestra / István Kertész
BBC Legends BBCL4264-2 (78’ · ADD). Recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall, London 1964 & *1966. Buy from Amazon
There can have been few finer live performances of the Fourth on record than this. Valuable in itself, it is also a document of rare interest where the LSO is concerned.
The performance of the Bruckner took place in London in March 1964, three months before the death of the LSO’s revered chief conductor, Pierre Monteux. The well nigh symbiotic relationship between orchestra and conductor that is evident on every page of this Bruckner Fourth is a pointer to why the LSO later chose the 35-year-old Kertész as its new principal conductor.
So what we have here is Monteux’s clear-sighted yet mellow-sounding LSO led by a superbly gifted young musician at his relaxed and decisive best. ‘Wonderful sense of rhythm, great sense of line and phrasing, but incredibly immature as a person’ was one player’s retrospective on Kertész. Here happily it is the musical qualities that count.
Kertész’s role model for the Fourth Symphony was Bruno Walter who, like Klemperer, played this most vital yet at the same time lyrical of Bruckner symphonies with a judicious mixture of pace and relaxation. The playing is superb, as is the recording.
The microphones are set further back for the Vaughan Williams, giving bloom and perspective to a performance of some grandeur and eloquence. Happily, there is time to exit before the applause which BBC Legends insists on preserving but which in the privacy of one’s own room ruins the sense of completion and quiet at the music’s end.
Symphony No 4 (1878/80 version)
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra / Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Warner Elatus 2564 60129-2 (65’ · DDD). Buy from Amazon
If you’re expecting something controversial here you’ll probably be disappointed. Harnoncourt’s Bruckner Fourth is nothing like as provocative as his Beethoven. It’s relatively fast, but not startlingly so. If Harnoncourt’s first movement is more gripping, more like a symphonic drama than usual, that has more to do with the crisp, clear rhythmic articulation than with the number of crotchets per minute. The solo woodwind and horn-playing is lovely, expansive enough; what else would you expect from the Concertgebouw in Bruckner? This is an unusually compelling Bruckner Fourth – exciting throughout the first movement and Scherzo, and in passages like the problematical Brucknerian Ride of the Valkyries that erupts after the finale’s bucolic second theme. In many more traditional Bruckner performances the bass often seems to move in sustained, undifferentiated pedal points. In Harnoncourt’s version you’re often aware of a deep pulsation – like the throbbing repeated notes that open the finale – continuing, however discreetly, while the tunes unfold above. To hear the finale’s second theme in this version is to be reminded that Bruckner was an excellent dancer, light on his feet until he was nearly 70. Of course, you shouldn’t confuse the man with the musical personality, but why should Bruckner always sound heavy, sedentary, as though slowly digesting a gigantic meal? Harnoncourt provides us with the light-footedness, while allowing the music to unfold at its own speed, to take time. There’s no question that Harnoncourt must be considered a serious contender in Bruckner.
DVD Recommendation
Symphonies No 4
Coupled with Symphony No 7
Munich Philharmonic / Christian Thielemann
Video director Agnes Méth
C Major 701908 (157’ · NTSC · 16:9 · PCM Stereo and DTS 5.1 · 0). Buy from Amazon
One of the world’s finest Bruckner ensembles, the Munich Philharmonic has already recorded classic accounts of the Fourth Symphony under Kempe and Celibidache. Christian Thielemann’s performance is comparably fine, not least for the orchestral playing which has the kind of concentration of tone and attack one used to associate with the Berlin Philharmonic in this repertory. Thielemann’s podium manner is that of a general calmly surveying the landscape spread out before him. Like Fritz Reiner, he tends to keep baton and body movements to a minimum with an unblinking gaze controlling proceedings in a 180° field of vision.
Harald Reiter’s booklet essay speaks of ‘the apparent paradox between total commitment to the task in hand and at the same time a highly effective, conscious and intellectual organisational power’. Dynamic control is masterly, paragraphs are clearly marked, silences fully exploited, climaxes expertly tiered. The slow movement is taken at a slower tempo than Bruckner requests. On CD it might hang fire; seen as well as heard, it works perfectly well. There is a thrilling account of the Scherzo and a properly broad-based approach to the finale. Agnes Méth’s video direction is excellent. As reportage it is superb, as a piece of visually conceived musical analysis the camerawork outscores even the finest programme essay.
The performance of the Seventh Symphony, also filmed in the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, begins with what are in effect two slow movements, culminating in the sombre funeral rites, memorably realised, of the second-movement coda. Though the lights go up in the last movements, this is not quite as easy a recommendation as that of the Fourth, which is set to be a DVD Bruckner classic.
