Bruckner Symphony No 8
Tennstedt captured at white heat in an intense Bruckner Eighth
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Anton Bruckner
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: LPO
Magazine Review Date: 8/2008
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 74
Mastering:
Stereo
Catalogue Number: LPO0032
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Symphony No. 8 |
Anton Bruckner, Composer
Anton Bruckner, Composer Klaus Tennstedt, Conductor London Philharmonic Orchestra |
Author: Richard Osborne
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 law of physics permitted it, my 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.
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