BRUCKNER Symphony No 6
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Anton Bruckner
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Accentus
Magazine Review Date: 04/2014
Media Format: Digital Versatile Disc
Media Runtime: 58
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: ACC202176
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Symphony No. 6 |
Anton Bruckner, Composer
Anton Bruckner, Composer Daniel Barenboim, Conductor Staatskapelle Dresden |
Author: Richard Osborne
Henning Kasten’s film report on this live Berlin Bruckner Sixth begins well enough; as, indeed, it should do given the clarity with which, thematically and instrumentally, Bruckner lays out his material. It is when the thematic material begins to diffuse itself in transitional passages that the trouble starts. After which it is the great points of arrival – the first-movement recapitulation or the movement’s glorious coda about which Sir Donald Tovey waxed eloquent – which are most at risk from Bruckner-lite direction that shows too little concern for the music’s line and harmonic movement.
Rhythm is also misconstrued. How, one wonders, is the approach to that first-movement recapitulation advantaged by a long-shot of the stage from which the camera slowly withdraws even as the music presses forwards with added rhythmic and dynamic intensity? As for the podium itself, cutaway shots to the conductor are mainly used as a form of randomised infill.
Barenboim has made two previous recordings of the Sixth, the first with the Chicago Symphony for Deutsche Grammophon, the second with the Berlin Philharmonic for Teldec. This latest performance mixes cogency with ease, until the finale, where once again a quickish tempo is married to a powerfully fluctuating pulse. The Berlin Staatskapelle do all their chief conductor asks of them, which in terms of dynamic pointing is not always a great deal. The playing of the keening oboe solo at the start of the Adagio not so much ignores Bruckner’s dynamic markings as reverses them. And the very end of the symphony is something of a damp squib as the orchestra loses rhythm and focus of tone in a mismanaged slowing in the final bar.
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