Bruckner's Symphony No 9
A 'glorious' Bruckner Ninth from Salzburg
The Gramophone Choice
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra / Nikolaus Harnoncourt
RCA Red Seal 82876 54332-2 (131‘ · DDD) Includes a workshop concert with commentary by Harnoncourt. Buy from Amazon
Harnoncourt’s flirtations with Bruckner haven’t always impressed. He didn’t seem to ‘know’ the symphonies as the old master Brucknerians did. But this live Salzburg Ninth is glorious. There’s no sense here of fallible rhythms or a conductor not being able to see the wood for the trees. Like all great interpreters of the Ninth, Harnoncourt treats the opening movement as a vast tripartite structure – exposition, countervailing statement and coda – which can be taken in a single glance. Nor is there any falling off in the Scherzo or the great concluding Adagio, both of which are beautifully paced and expertly realised in terms of each new harmonic salient. In beauty of sound and accuracy and articulacy of ensemble, the Vienna Philharmonic matches, even occasionally surpasses, its own high standards in this work. All of which must have helped the Teldex engineers, who make the acoustically problematic Grosses Festspielhaus sound like one of the great Bruckner halls.
Additional Recommendation
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra / Daniel Barenboim
Warner Elatus 0927 46746-2 (63‘ · DDD). Recorded live 1990. Buy from Amazon
This is an outstanding version of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony. Like Karajan’s reading on DG, it’s essentially a ‘central’ account of the score that attempts neither extreme breadth of utterance nor sharp-edged drama. Rather it’s a reading that combines long lines, flowing but astutely nuanced, and sonorities that are full-bodied yet always finely balanced. The outer movements have great rhetorical and emotional power; the Scherzo is thunderous and glinting by turns. The Adagio begins very slowly but, for once, Barenboim gets away with it, the movement growing organically rather than remaining stillborn near the start. This is a live performance and, as you would expect, it’s superbly executed, the playing every bit as fine as it is on the Karajan recording. But even that doesn’t compete with the natural splendours of this issue. This is superb Bruckner sound, spacious and clear, with strings, woodwind and brass at once unerringly ‘placed’ and finely matched. Given good engineering and the kind of astute playing we have from Barenboim and the Berliners, the Philharmonie is far from being the acoustic lemon it’s sometimes said to be. This is a front-runner for this symphony.
Hallé Orchestra / Cristian Mandeal
Hallé CDHLL7524 (62’ · DDD). Buy from Amazon
This is as fine a Bruckner Ninth as any we have had on record from an English orchestra. It was made in July 2007, during the 61‑year‑old Romanian Cristian Mandeal’s three-year spell as the Hallé’s principal guest conductor.
Mid-career, Mandeal worked with two noted Brucknerians, Karajan and Celibidache. Happily his Ninth is less bewilderingly long-drawn than Celibidache’s. His tempi at the beginning of the two outer movements are unusually broad yet he has the art of growing the music, of easing the pulse on after the initial exordium to the point where a broad, flexible yet forward-moving pulse has been established. There is thus nothing broken-backed about his handling of the first movement’s great double exposition as there is with some conductors.
The Hallé’s realisation of the reading is finely moulded, powerful where necessary, and distinguished above all by the sustained intensity of the playing in the music’s quietest passages. This is not ‘Hallé live’ but a properly made studio recording. And it shows. The treacherous wind passages in the great concluding Adagio are all expertly managed, as is the awesome but awkward Scherzo, which Mandeal plays with a pace and élan comparable to that of Sigmund von Hausegger on his pioneering 1938 recording of Bruckner’s original score.
The recording is very fine. There is great clarity of detail yet enough atmosphere to convey the work’s numinous element.
Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra / Stanislaw Skrowaczewski
Arte Nova Classics 74321 80781-2 (61‘ · DDD). Buy from Amazon
A very closely controlled reading. Skrowaczewski has taken enormous care over the preparation of the performance and the results tell in orchestral playing of a quality and articulacy that few ensembles could rival.
DVD Recommendation
Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra / Carlo Maria Giulini
Video director Agnes Meth
ArtHaus Musik 101 065 (123’ · NTSC · 4:3 · PCM stereo · 0). Buy from Amazon
‘My intention always has been to arrive at human contact without enforcing authority…The great mystery of music-making requires real friendship among those who work together.’ So said Carlo Maria Giulini, then living in seclusion in Milan. From the first few moments of the rehearsal, you know that he practises what he preaches, a gracious, spiritual presence whose stature doesn’t preclude him from apologising at one point to the solo horn for suggesting a misleading dynamic: ‘Sorry, that is my mistake – it sounds too much like Debussy.’ If you’re unfamiliar with Bruckner’s Ninth (the one he left incomplete at his death), then this absorbing hour-long sequence will prove a stimulating, unmissable introduction; for aspiring conductors and Brucknerphiles, this and the live concert performance are an essential purchase for repeated viewing.
