Search - Anton Bruckner, Günter Wand, SWR Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra :: Bruckner: Symphony No. 9

Sublime

Roberto La Porte | Madrid, Spain | 05/02/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If I had not already known that Gunter Wand was a superb Bruckner conductor, most especially from his performances of the Eighth Symphony, I would know it now from this exhilarating, titanic, visionary interpretation of the Ninth. The surprisingly good recording comes from a live performance of a concert in the Basilica of Ottobeuren in Austria on June 24, 1979. This is its first release (PH 04058), part of Profil's posthumous Gunter Wand Edition. Apparently, there were some 3,000 people in attendance, but one would not know it because the silence of the audience was close to complete. In fact, newspaper reports of the event said that the audience neither spoke nor moved for ten minutes after the end of the performance. When you listen to this, you will know why. A profound spiritual communion has taken place soli Deo gloria, as Bruckner wrote on the score's manuscript. This is art serving its highest hieratic purpose - to make the transcendent perceptible.



The Profil booklet notes tell of a young female rocker who wrote to Wand about her first terrifying experience of Bruckner. The emotions it aroused made her fear falling into a bottomless abyss. Wand wrote back: "Just let yourself fall - with Bruckner, you always fall upwards." That sensation is exactly what Wand captures with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra in this performance, which Wand called "one of the most memorable in my life." You will be gripped and shaken to the roots of your being by it. It is many ways a shattering experience. Few things I have heard or experienced in my life have brought me closer to the awesome sense that God in all his majesty and power is very near than has this music in this performance. After it is over, you will not be able to move for ten minutes - or longer.



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A completed version of Bruckner's last unfinished symphony

11/24/1999

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Sonically excellent, interpretively adequate, the great virtue of this 2-disc set is its inclusion of the fourth movement, pieced together from Bruckner's sketches by American harpsichordist William Carragan. For anyone curious as to where the dying Bruckner would take this, his most disturbing, confident and forward-looking symphony, this is absolutely essential and riveting listening. Of course it remains a "what if" proposition, but of other completed versions (Elihu Inbal offers one on Teldec, as a fill-up to the 5th; Kurt Eichhorn another, with the Bruckner Orchestra Linz), this is the most convincing. One reservation: Carragan, in the coda, apes the climax of the 8th rather too closely. Bruckner, had he lived, would undoubtedly have forged an entirely new path."

A "Must Have" for Bruckner admirers......

04/19/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Anton Bruckner died in 1896, his ninth and final symphony completed only as far as the third movement, with some sketches for a finale. For most of the twentieth century, it has been customary to perform the symphony as a three movement work, ending with that sublime Adagio movement. However, harpsichordist and musicologist William Carrigan has done an admirable job realizing the sketches into a workable finale. He really knows Bruckner's style and it it is obvious in the way he pieces together the last movement. While he does tend to ape the conclusion of the Eighth Symphony in the final moments, to me this is not a bad thing. What Bruckner would have done is another story which we will never know for sure, but taken all in all, this reconstruction is a magnificent effort. It has the nobility, sense of architecture and monumentality characteristic of the composer at his best. In terms of recording, you couldn't ask for a better production. The Oslo Philharmonic is on excellent form,and Yoav Talmi thoroughly understands the idiom. The first three movements get an excellent performance here, preparing the listener for the finale. I particularly liked his reading of the Adagio...noble, broad and fully in keeping with Bruckner's musical idiom. The Wagner tuba quartet (led at that time by hornist Froydis Ree Wekre) is splendid. In addition, one gets a bonus....a recording of the sketches of the finale as they stand without reconstruction. It is interesting to hear just how much Bruckner did manage to sketch out before the pen dropped from his hand. All in all, a most praiseworthy effort. One final note: This recording was produced by the late James Burnett for the Chandos label. This is one of his finest efforts."