In Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's recently published Echoes of a Lifetime (Macmillan), there is a provocative reflection: ''Although Eugen Jochum was usually thought of as the authentic Bruckner conductor, it seemed to me that his special strength lay in more direct, less mystical scores''. It is an interesting judgement that none the less begs rather a lot of questions, not least because Jochum's approach to Bruckner interpretation was a far from simple affair, evolved over several decades of never less than profoundly absorbed study and evaluation. This Deutsche Grammophon cycle, which originally appeared in a boxed LP subscription set in December 1967, was the first complete Bruckner cycle on record, and a milestone in its day. Two orchestras were used, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Jochum's own orchestra for many years, recorded in Munich's fine Herkulessaal, and the Berlin Philharmonic taking on the standard repertoire works, Nos. 4, 7, 8 and 9, plus the less-familiar No. 1. They were recorded in Berlin's Jesus-Christus Kirche, with the exception of No. 8 which was recorded in January 1964 in the recently opened Berlin Philharmonie, a recording venue Jochum plausibly distrusted when the hall first opened in its original unmodified form.
Jochum was to record the nine symphonies again in the late 1970s for EMI in Dresden, a cycle that will be reappearing on CD, also on nine discs this summer; but the EMI set is also in analogue sound, occasionally muted and damped down analogue sound at that, and given the generally superb quality of these DG recordings—even the oldest of them, that of the January 1958 account of the Fifth Symphony—and the fine new digital transfers, the prima facie evidence is that the later set is unlikely to enjoy any overriding sonic or technical advantage. By late spring, DG are also due to republish Karajan's cycle of the symphonies; and as you will see from the above heading BMG have recently acquired the rights to Gunter Wand's fine Deutsche Harmonia Mundi Cologne cycle which I discussed at some length in these pages in April 1988. This is an uncomplicated label transfer, with BMG even taking over the EMI/Deutsche Harmonia Mundi notes. The generally bright, open West German recordings are unaffected by the switch.
Jochum's DG cycle takes up nine medium-price discs as opposed to the ten medium-price of the Wand/RCA set. The reason for this is DG's ability to fit Jochum's account of the Eighth Symphony on to a single disc. This saves money, but as I will be explaining below, his way with the Eighth, interpretatively and textually, leaves a lot to be desired. In some respects, it is the set's Achilles heel.
Though Jochum must have learned his Bruckner largely from the Bruckner Society texts that emerged under Robert Haas's inspired general editorship from 1929 onwards—Haas edited everything except the Third and Ninth Symphonies, which were worked on by Oeser and Orel respectively—he was by the late 1950s an unswerving follower of Leopold Nowak who had displaced Haas as general editor and undone some of Haas's most significant work. In particular Nowak had reimposed cuts made by Bruckner under advice from colleagues in the Second and Eighth Symphonies. Nowak was also less scrupulous than Haas about printing tempo indications some of which, to say the least, are dubious. Even where they appear in the autograph manuscript (in whoever's hand) they often seem to reflect more contemporary interpretative whims and fashions than a considered compositional decision. The weight of critical opinion since the 1960s—including that of such pre-eminent Brucknerians as Robert Simpson and the late Deryck Cooke—has been for Haas as against Nowak, and it is a view from which I would not demur. On the other hand, it would be indefensible to write offJochum's Bruckner on the grounds of its Nowakian leanings, thus handing the palm to the Haasian Wand or Karajan, particularly when in six of the nine symphonies Nowak does relatively little to Haas's original editions.
At the nub of most discussions of Jochum's Bruckner is the question of what some including his greatest admirers—see as his highly charged, romantically intense, seemingly spontaneous approach to the music: an approach significantly different, it might be suggested, from that of the classically sparer Wand or the longer-breathed steadier, more far-seeing Karajan. Yet to judge from Jochum's own long and absorbing essay The Interpretation of Bruckner's Symphonies, published for the 1967 LP boxed set and now reprinted in the CD booklet, this is not at all how he saw the matter. For him, as for Thomas Mann's Kretschmar, Bruckner was no neoWagnerian sensualist but a 'pure' musician fit to be mentioned alongside J. S. Bach himself. In his essay, Jochum propounds the old-fashioned virtue of mathematically proportionate tempo relations between introductions and allegros within allegro structures, and even between movements. He talks of the music developing out of ''an eternal rest in God'' and deplores ''heated'' increases in tension. Such ''nervousness'', he argues, is alien to the music, and it will not withstand it. Considering his reputation as a leading proponent of the acclerando and ritardando style in Bruckner conducting, some will note with amazement his cautioning us against ''subjecting Bruckner to the excessive accelerandi and ritardandi that the sensual music of the late-Romantic era demands''.
And yet, rehearing the set after a number of years, I was struck by the general solidity and sobriety of much of the music-making. No one would doubt that Jochum's account of, say, the Fourth Symphony is more overtly 'romantic' than Wand's, which is rather serene and gamesome, or the clean-lined DG Karajan. It is, it must be said a more stop-go affair than some will like at repeated hearings, often inspired, but perhaps inclined to make Bruckner seem a little flaccid in some of the post-coital ruminations. Yet his control is never really in doubt. How beautifully, for instance, the symphony is launched—it can so easily be beached on page one—with a tremendous sense of atmosphere as well as a genuine stirring, burgeoning sense of symphonic life. The 1965 Berlin recording also comes up very well here. In the third movement Trio I was struck by how much more forward-seeming are the flute and clarinet, with the oboe's syncopated dronings much more distinct and characterful than they seemed to be on the old LP pressings. All this is part and parcel of a beautifully thought out reading.
Even more astonishing technically is the February 1958 Herkulessaal recording of the Fifth Symphony which is superior to the much later Wand and more or less comparable with the grand and glowing and rather more consciously diffuse sound of Karajan's 1976 Berlin reading, made in the Philharmonie. The work's great summarizing chorale, with the 11 added brass players, sounds awesome in this Bavarian performance half of rural Berkshire must have heard it when I played it at full throttle one dry, bright December morning. The performance, or rather Bruckner's uncut, unadulterated text, got a slightly guarded reception from the late William Mann in these pages in 1958. Thirty years on, the performance re-emerges to rank in majesty and authority with the very best: the live 1942 Berlin Furtwangler recently revived by DG, or the 1976 Karajan. Interestingly, Jochum writes at length about the Fifth in his essay on Bruckner interpretation, so here is a package of playing and writing to ponder and treasure.
Occasionally, the DG recordings can seem a trifle over-insistent. In the 1964 account of the Seventh, Jochum registers dynamic shifts with great clarity but there is some lack of really quiet playing. Nor does he always get from the Berlin violins and woodwinds playing of the quality we hear on the two Karajan versions, the luminously beautiful EMI or the later, drier DG. Under Karajan, the coda of the great Adagio is all of a piece with Jochum it is the passages for brass and lower strings that principally catch the imagination. Eloquent as the reading undoubtedly is, some will find it less organically whole than the two Karajans, the Wand, or the Blomstedt on Denon, with some obvious losses of tension—at, for example fig. E in the Scherzo—when the tempo is relaxed for what seems to be no apparent reason. And, again, though Deryck Cooke rightly insisted that in the right mood Jochum's account of the Ninth could seem to be ''one of the great musical experiences'', the reading doesn't entirely eclipse the Wand, the Karajan, or the Walter on CBS in one's pantheon of great Ninths. Jochum is very restless in the first movement development, the Scherzo is angry and flamboyant rather than menacing, and the Berlin playing is not quite as secure as it might be. The Adagio is gloriously done, very long-breathed, with a sublime end (despite a mistuned entry by either the third or fourth horn three bars into the Miserere quotation). Yet the climactic discord at fig. R (22'44'') is not wholly together and there may even be a tacked-on re-take thereabouts. If there is one moment in the entire cycle that should be there remorselessly and bang on time, like a curse from hell, this is it.
Because they are played less frequently, the early symphonies can cause problems, though experienced Brucknerians like Jochum, Karajan and Wand have tended to find fresh inspiration by bringing their often arcane interpretative experiences to bear on these once neglected works. In the First Symphony there is no contest. Wand, interestingly but eccentrically, plays the late revision of the work dating from 1890–91. Jochum plays the 1865 Linz text but starts too quickly and ends up becalmed in the second subject group in a most alarming manner. Here, and throughout the symphony, Karajan is the master, also using the 1865 Linz text. In the Second Symphony Wand is my ideal. He plays Haas complete and very well. Karajan effects some intelligent and generally successful compromises between Haas's restitutions and Nowak's observations of Bruckner's cuts and brings to the whole symphony an intensity, a note of Schubertian lyricism and subdued anguish, that is often very moving. Jochum plays the foreshortened Nowak text, plus some meretricious tempo markings, and is not helped by a slightly dark-browed Munich recording. Yet newcomers to the symphony will find a great deal to enjoy in his performance; it is the genuine article despite the textual compromises. In the Third Symphony all three play the later 1888–9 revision and each makes much of it. Karajan has great force and spontaneity even at the cost of clean ensemble in places; Jochum is immensely powerful and grand. But again it is Wand who is the real master here. He shapes the blocked off, sometimes truncated text from within, as though he had rewritten it himself. And I like his brisker way with the third movement Trio, which is more of a piece with the movement as a whole than the Jochum account which is full of character but rhythmically more disjunct.
No one has an overwhelming success with the delightful Sixth Symphony. In his essay on Bruckner interpretation Jochum makes a fascinating point about the place of climax in a symphony but goes on to suggest that in the Sixth Symphony it is early, after which the symphony ''winds down''. But as Klemperer demonstrates in a Philharmonia recording, recently released on midprice CD from EMI ((CD) CDM7 63351-2—to be reviewed later), the symphony is a significant one from first note to last, particularly when the conductor gets the pulses right and keeps them at a high pitch of consistency and tension over the symphony's entire span. Some over-miked subsidiary voices apart, Jochum's account is a sturdy enough affair but tempo variants do weaken the finale. Klemperer begins and ends it in the same pulse, as Bruckner requests, and the effect is inevitable-sounding and immensely satisfying, spiritually exhilarating.
Wand's set also has an unsatisfactory Sixth and a moderate-sounding Fifth. Otherwise, the 1890–91 text of the First apart, it is a set with few failures, and it rises to real greatness in the Second and Third, Eighth and Ninth Symphonies. Karajan is perhaps the most consistent of all, though with a Sixth that sounds like a preliminary readthrough. As for Jochum, I don't find his erratic account of the First Symphony to be a problem, but his account of the mighty Eighth, barely modified for the later Dresden set, is. Putting aside the question of the cuts that Nowak's edition reinstates in the slow movement and finale, there is the additional problem of Jochum's surprisingly quick tempos in parts of the symphony. The huge Scherzo sounds decorous to the point of coyness at first and the great finale emerges, with cuts and variabie tempos, an astonishing five minutes shorter than the Wand or the Karajan. The first movement is also strangely quick in places, lacking real gravity and tragic menace. The timing is 13'36'' to Wand's 15'56'', and Wand's, it must be remembered, is a relatively direct and classical reading, one of the finest ever made. But what is most difficult to take from Jochum is the reading of the great Adagio which begins at crochet 32 but reaches double that in what become the frenzied climaxes near the movement's end. With the tempo accelerating and bars being lopped away by the Nowak edition, the whole thing simply fails to add up in the way that the Karajan and Wand, Haas-based, performances overwhelmingly do.
But this is not a note to end on. An eccentric account of the Eighth is a substantial drawback in any complete cycle of the Bruckner symphonies; but when all is said and done Jochum was a great Brucknerian, a great Bruckner conductor, a man whose view of the works is both authoritative and at the same time individually revealing. DG are right to reissue the cycle. And although a disinterested totting up of the kind of facts I have tried to outline in this review might tend to give the shortly to be reissued Karajan set more consumer points, with the Wand not far behind, the Jochum cycle is distinct from either and will give hours of pleasure to any traveller journeying for the first or for the fiftieth time through Bruckner's awe-inspiring, far-flung symphonic kingdom.'