I just can't get into Bruckner

You're right, pgraber. It isn't especially important, but it is worth commenting on because it is clearly moronic. 

Along with Haitink and Tennstedt, I would also add: Chailly (complete set of both), Karajan (good selection of both), Abbado (still doing both with Lucerne), Mariss Jansons, Klemperer, Karl Bohm, Sinopoli, Barenboim.........

As a wise old professor once said, "Please stop following me or I will apply for a restraining order."

Discographic details are nothing to swagger about - sometimes they suggest a bad case of consumer fetishism - but the assertion that Bernstein was "a whole anti-Brucknerian" (Parla) is wrong anyway. Bernstein recorded Bruckner 6, and in fact recorded 9 twice, with the NYPO and the VPO. To me that makes perfect sense, as 9 is indeed - as DarkSkyMan said - the place to begin if you're coming to Bruckner from Mahler, or more generally from a sense of Bruckner's "modernity." I agree completely that 9 or (from the other chronological end) 4 are good starting-points.

O.K., 50m. If every Brucknerian "knows and cherishes that there are at least 3 great (and unforgettable) melodies, spawned in all four movements of the 11 Symphonies" (all of them, even the rejected ones, are masterpieces of equal qualities), then, we are in agreement. Since I am not a Brucknerian, I reserve the right to have a different view on the matter. I hope all the other Brucknerians can identify, remember and cherish these 130 and more brilliant melodies from the "incredibly gifted brain" of a composer, who was so insecure to revise his works more than anybody else and to such an extent that they become so different, sometimes.

Pgraber, of course, there are conductors who managed to have successful recordings of both composers, but, this does not challenge my position that there are quite a few others who had problems with one or the other. I can add some more names to "my list": Wand, Jochum, Tintner, Knappertsbusch, von Dohnanyi, Knappertsbusch...

About Bernstein, I said he "virtually" didn't record any. For commercial reasons, he had to record a couple of Bruckner's Symphonies, but they were flops and he almost rejected them (they quickly vanished from the market). Karajan conducted few Symphonies and the Song of the Earth, at the end of his life, also for commercial reasons and with unconvincing results compared to his passionate and repeated performances of Bruckner.

I believe the undisputed virtue of Bruckner's Symphonies lie in the very complex symphonic writing, his creative style in the transformation of the various thematic material (however, in an almost identical pattern) and the thick and tense orchestration particularly in the grandiose Codas and pompous Finales, despite the use of a fairly standard Romantic orchestra.

If anyone of you over there, the potential or active Brucknerians, have tried his very slim production in Chamber music, a String Quartet in c minor and a String Quintet in F, you may realise how empty these great works sound, though with almost all the same features of his Symphonies but without the colour of the huge orchestra and the power of the imposing sound. For all the good recordings of some labels and very few live performances, they fail to gain even the slightest popularity or appreciation. A rare CD with his Organ works failed even more to convince. His Choral Work, however, needs more attention, since, there, he truly served very well (and in great originality as for the form and the thematic treatment) his obsession.

Parla

That's quite the most guffaw-inducing line I've read in a long while. Thank you Jane.

Strangely enough, the only thing he left intact in his revisions (when he didn't just replace whole movements, like in the 4th) were the main melodies...

Which kind of undermines your point, since you were arguing that he had little talent for writing catchy melodies while this was apparently the only thing he really felt secure about.

Apparently Kna is such a good example that you included him twice... but let's not forget that in his times Mahler's music was waiting to be rediscovered, and  there were still very little performances of his works by conductors who weren't  (like Walter and Klemperer) very close to him personally.

Also, I fail to see the importance of such lists. How about comparing conductors who were good at Mozart to those who were better at home with Beethoven? Or pianists who excelled in Debussy and Ravel but never touched Liszt? Other than that musicians have personal tastes and preferences as well as ordinary music lovers, this proves nothing.

I'm not a big Karajan fan, but some of his Mahler recordings got very good reviews. His 1975 "Lied" with Christa Ludwig and Rene Kollo is excellent and a classic in the catalogue.

We're talking about the String Quintet here that many people rank among the best in the genre, along with Mozart's and Schubert's? Empty and without color? Really? Reading such drivel about a masterpiece that brings tears (of joy and sweet sadness) in my eyes whenever I hear it almost feels like a personal insult.

It appears you're just trying to cloud the original subject by just randomly criticising different aspects of Bruckner's output. Let me just ask you - in order to get back to our original topic - whether the main theme of the 2nd movement of the String Quintet is a good one, or not? Or any of the other themes in this work?

is the right answer.

I loath Bruckner but this thread is terrific.

Bernstein was evidently phobic about Bruckner 8. Parla, would you consider documenting your claim that he recorded two other Bruckner symphonies "for commercial reasons" and "almost rejected them" (whatever that means?)? 9 is "on the market" now, so it's easy to make up one's own mind about the performance's qualities.

Enough of this, anyway - as others have said, it's not relevant to what matters about Bruckner. FWIW: personally I came to Bruckner in my teens (over forty years ago, alas). The "memorable" melodies won't leave my mind now, but - as I think others will agree - they also live with/in the minds of those who live with the pieces. They have astonishing intervallic richness (less pompously, are full of intervals composers can do things with) and the groups and cells of which they're made have immense generative power, which means that none of the symphonies can be a moment shorter than they are. I began with 9, but if poor Sebastian hasn't died, there are other early Bruckner symphonies that may be better gateways to his work. How about 2? - the lovely horn melody that enters over those pizzicato strings in the slow movement is unforgettable even for Bruckner. Or 3, with its uncanny alternations of funeral chant and polka in the finale?

Accusations that B.'s work is marmoreal and empty of memorable thematic material, like the cliché (I never expected to see this again) that he wrote the same symphony over and over again, are bizarre hangovers from the great Brahms-Wagner fracas, some of whose outgoing flak inevitably hit Bruckner. (As to the line about the "empty" String Quintet, I thought that too had gone the Way of the Dodo.) Yes, Bruckner idolized Wagner. He also absorbed classical traditions, something which recent performances from conductors like Norrington and Harnoncourt have highlighted. Hence the value, I think, of eyeresist's nice point about the classical symphony on growth hormones - B. inherits a form from (like it or not) Haydn, but that form contains - like a crucible about to explode - and furthers astonishing unfoldings of thematic material. That's Bruckner's radicalism.

As my italics are getting out of hand I'll stop, but ... on the last list, a clear contender for Bruckner 10 would be Richard Wetz's First Symphony, a fascinating work which in the horn-capped (more horns) coda of its slow movement has a definite valedictory edge, Im Abendrot a good way avant la lettre. The one recording I know of (Roland Bader and the Cracow PO, on CPO) sounds under-rehearsed, but the piece's special qualities do come across. Not to join the pedants, but surely it's Schnittke 2, the "Sankt Florian", that is his most avowedly Brucknerian? The "influence" issue, properly discussed - "afterlife" perhaps? - could be really interesting. Rautavaara 3 (atonal, but not so that you'd notice) seems to me a brilliant exercise in pastiche (not a snark - I like the piece). For another kind of "influence", I also can't help but think of Maxwell Davies's Worldes Blis - now, thank God, available again - and Haas's In Vain, which has been getting attention on another thread. But this will be dead in the water if some clown starts to pontificate platitudinously about the True Tradition of the Classical Music.