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Finally, Rosbaud's Bruckner 7 in great sound

SwissDave | Switzerland | 08/28/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"No content list (bad habit, Amazon folks, how are prospective customers supposed to make buying decisions?!), so here is mine (all music composed by Anton Bruckner, of course):



CD1

Ernst Märzendorfer, ORF Symphony Orchestra: Symphony No. 0 "Annullierte" (vintage?) - Classical Excellence

plus:

Helmuth Rilling, Gächinger Kantorei: Motets "Os Justi" & "Christus Factus Est" (1976) - Intercord



CD2

Carl Melles, ORF Symphony Orchestra: Symphony No. 2 (1977) - Classical Excellence



CD3

Heinrich Hollreiser, Bamberg Symphonics: Symphony No. 4 "Romantic" (1961) - Vox Turnabout



CD4

Hubert Reichert, Westphalian Symphony Orchestra: Symphony No. 6 (1963?) - Vox Turnabout



CD5

Hans Rosbaud, SWF Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden: Symphony No. 7 (1957) - Vox Turnabout



The reason to buy this set is simple: ZYX offers the by far most successful remastering of Rosbaud's recording of the 7th. True stereo spread and spatiality, folks, the sound quality (almost) of a modern-day recording! Brucknerds know what this means (= even if you threw out the remaining four CDs, the set would still be worth acquiring).



Märzendorfer's "Nullte" (should really be the "Annullierte") sounds old-fashioned, some may say his interpretation verges on the heavy, but I like its seriousness. Melles' 2nd suffers from severe revisionist cuts (he takes them all in movements 1 and 2 and 4). Hollreiser was infamous for making a lot of mushy noise (overpowering his singers in opera performances), and while this turns out to be true also of his recording of Bruckner's "Romantic" Symphony, the first movement in particular starts promisingly enough - on the whole, still a reading that conveys typically Brucknerian "rustic beauty", as one critic wrote at the time. I like Reichert's admittedly tame interpretation of the 6th, mainly for his choice of tempi - for once the Adagio feels neither slow (e.g. Celibidache's - must admit I could wallow in that Adagio, though!), nor fast (e.g. Klemperer's - but note Reichert's is still a bit faster than e.g. Bongartz's), to me the snag in too many otherwise fine (including better!) recordings of the Sixth - unfortunately Reichert's band isn't too proficient.



But, and that's an important but: there's still a lot to discover here. I may not return to most of these performances very often (thanks to great alternatives), but thoroughly enjoyed myself, and at any rate, would buy the whole set again for the successful Rosbaud remastering alone any time. Before I forget: all the remasterings in this box are so well-done as to completely belie the price of admission.



Why only four stars, then? The Rosbaud alone deserves a hundred, that much should be clear. Some of the other performances barely deserve four, though. But more to the point: I don't like being forced to buy box sets in order to get the one performance/CD I'm really after. Even if, as here, a box set is fairly priced.



Greetings from Switzerland, David."