Bruckner's Symphony No 8
A mighty Eighth from Klaus Tennstedt
The Gramophone Choice
Symphony No 8 (ed Nowak)
London Philharmonic Orchestra / Klaus Tennstedt
LPO LPO0032 (74’ · ADD). Recorded live 1981. Buy from Amazon
Tennstedt’s performance of Bruckner’s mighty Eighth Symphony is high on adrenalin from the very first minute and remains so for the next 73. There were times during the performance when, had the laws of physics permitted it, the speakers would have glowed white. Not all Brucknerians will approve of so unremittingly intense a performance – the Scherzo, for example, treated as a rip-roaring festive joust – though it is impossible to fault Tennstedt on the cogency and long-term reach of the reading. When it comes to seeing the symphony whole, hewn as it were from a single block of marble, he is up there with the best: Barbirolli, Furtwängler, Karajan, Klemperer. The players, the brass in particular, are also high on adrenalin. Given the dry, bright, somewhat unaccommodating Festival Hall acoustic, this doesn’t always make for easy listening. The audience greets the performance with its own ecstatic yawp. But, then, they heard the real thing, not this all too brazen aural précis.
Additional Recommendations
Symphony No 8 (ed Haas)
Hallé Orchestra / Sir John Barbirolli
BBC Legends BBCL4067-2 (74‘ · ADD). Recorded live 1970. Buy from Amazon
At the time of this concert in May 1970 there were just three recordings of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony in the catalogue; now there are more than 50, and counting. This performance is that rare thing, an intensely dramatic Bruckner Eighth. It isn’t often that you hear an account of the turbulent first movement as thrilling as this. The jagged downward slashes of the trumpets are terrible to experience, yet the space that opens up after the vast and glorious E flat cadence 40 bars later is the very reverse, a way to heaven even from the gates of hell. The odd stumble in the brass, the occasional cough are immaterial. This isn’t a performance for those who measure out their life in coffee spoons. The Scherzo is ferociously quick with a Trio of compensating loftiness. The loftiness returns in the Adagio which Barbirolli again projects urgently and with a full heart. Plaintive winds, trenchant brass and speaking strings, full-bodied and emotionally intent, build the heaven on earth that Bruckner envisions. To hear why this is great music-making, listen to the coda and the gloriously articulated long string recitative that underpins it. The finale, too, is fairly gripping, though there’s a brief tired patch midway.
The Festival Hall’s fierce acoustic suits the performance well and the engineering is spectacular for its day. Barbirolli was mortally ill when this concert took place. He died just 10 weeks later. ‘This might be the old man’s last, so let’s make it a good one,’ the players were saying at the time. By all accounts, Karajan’s last live Bruckner Eighth was a lofty, out-of-life experience. Barbirolli’s is the very opposite, a case of ‘Do not go gentle into that good night / Rage, rage against the dying of the light’. It’s a one-off, eloquent beyond measure: the boldest, bravest Bruckner Eighth on record.
Symphony No 8 (ed Haas)
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Günter Wand
RCA Red Seal 74321 82866-2 (87‘ · DDD). Recorded live 2001. Buy from Amazon
Few readings have been more assiduously toured or generally acclaimed than Wand’s Bruckner Eighth yet Wand himself struggled to better on record the exact and far-seeing account of the symphony he made with the Cologne RSO in 1979. In January 2001 he harnessed the Berlin Bruckner sound to his own particular ends, a potentially Sisyphean task for a man then nearing his 90th birthday.
And the rewards are here. This Eighth is exceptionally fine. When in the Scherzo you sense that the mountains themselves are beginning to dance, you know you’re onto a good thing; on this occasion, Olympus itself seems to have caught the terpsichorean bug. Not that anything is exaggerated or overblown. Wand knows where each peak is and how best to approach it. His reading is broader than it was 20 years before, yet nowhere is there any sense of unwanted stasis. Wand draws from the orchestra, the brass and strings in particular, sound of great power and transparency which the engineers have translated in a recording of uncommon reach and splendour. This is a grand and worthy memento for the tens of thousands who heard Wand conduct the symphony in the concert hall.
Symphony No 8 (ed Nowak)
Suisse Romande Orchestra / Marek Janowski
Pentatone PTC5186 371 (80’ · DSD/DDD). Buy from Amazon
As an interpreter of Bruckner, Marek Janowski steers a straight centre course, avoiding both what you might call marmoreal posturing (Karajan, Celibidache) and the vicissitudes of mood and tempo that characterise the interpretations of (for example) Furtwängler, Jochum and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Kubelík. Janowski’s approach is more along the lines of Volkmar Andreae, Hans Rosbaud, Stanisπaw Skrowaczewski and Kurt Masur, and this Eighth is a good example of how well that approach can work.
Interesting that the first two movements seem slower than they actually are: both fall short of the quarter-hour mark and yet the weight of tone, consistency of tempo and the general preference for linear rather than shapely phrasing (especially in the opening phrases) lead to a certain feeling of measured austerity. The second and third movements work best. Listen to the almost tactile brush of resin across the basses at the start of the Adagio, then follow the cellos in their dialogue with the violins and, later, the brass, the way Janowski allows the music to breathe, never pushing the tempo or excessively holding back to heighten the expressive effect.
The finale has rarely opened at a more perfectly judged tempo, accelerating almost imperceptibly for the opening bars, then steadying so that brass make their full effect – breadth, control and precision being obvious priorities. The sound is excellent, the woodwinds (the bassoon especially) always clear, although more prominently focused timpani might have been welcome.
Just where this Eighth stands in the overall scheme of things will be largely down to personal taste but Janowski (who uses the familiar 1890 version edited by Leopold Nowak) neither exaggerates nor falsifies: anyone who isn’t especially concerned with strongly personalised interpretation is unlikely to be disappointed.
Symphony No 8 (ed Nowak)
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Carlo Maria Giulini
Testament SBT2 1436 (85’ · DDD). Recorded live 1984. Buy from Amazon
As with much of the music he conducted, Carlo Maria Giulini took his time to come to Bruckner. He first amazed the musical world in 1974 with a superb account of the then rarely played Second Symphony. In the years that followed, it was the mighty Eighth Symphony that most preoccupied Giulini. Again he struck gold, conjuring forth performances worthy to be set beside Furtwängler’s or Karajan’s. In May 1984 he made his own memorable recording with the Vienna Philharmonic, now available to download from DG.
No matter. This Berlin Philharmonic performance, recorded in concert in February 1984, four months before the DG recording, is very much on a par with its studio rival, such is the power and long-term command of Giulini’s conducting, the quality and refinement of the playing and the extraordinary staying-power of the Berlin orchestra throughout this 85‑minute quest. If anything, the great Adagio is even more impressive, benefiting from the added tautness live music-making can bring. The Philharmonie-derived radio sound is a touch closer and more confined than that of the bespoke studio version made in Vienna’s Musikverein but it is a marginal matter, no real bar to enjoyment.
