Top-notch Bruckner 8th, with distinctly modern clarity
Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 10/18/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"The composer labored mightily over his eighth symphony; and as with many of the others, a variety of versions or editions eventually littered history. Right off, a performer must decide which version, if any, is the best or most authentic. Self-doubting and malleable as Anton Bruckner was, whether listening to hateful critics or so-called friends and supporters; it can be difficult to discern his actual wishes, even from reading his letters. With regard to the Eighth Symphony, for example, Bruckner's letters to the famous conductor Weingartner are full of him begging that the length finale be cut, and tempos be adjusted however Weingartner might like, for the planned performance in Mannheim. Michael Gielen here opts for the Haas version or edition. This Haas redaction recombines the music so brashly cut from earlier versions, while using the composer's last version as well. Like other masterly Bruckner conductors, Gielen is wise enough to let the music unfold at its own pace, neither dragging out tempos or phrasing to relish in making romantic points, nor having to accelerate too dramatically as the mighty crescendos surge and build to climactic moments. Other orchestras, epitomized by Vienna, Berlin, and Dresden ... all of whom have become famous for their Bruckner sound ...bring amazing depths of string tone, brass and woodwinds to their playing. The SWR Baden-Baden has gotten very good, but its sound is still leaner and more muscular overall, than the other famous Bruckner orchestras. This lets Gielen achieve his familiar genius to bring great clarity, as well as the more customary breadth of pace and vision, to this Bruckner Eighth. All resounds splendidly in the Hans Rosbaud studio in Baden-Baden, then lapses into silence, breathing silence. Phrases and sections are musically shaped into long lines, and large paragraphs of narrative. The harmony somehow always seems to move forward, even when it is apparently remaining quite still, poised, and transmuted by eternities, at familiar passages. The added clarity Gielen and the SWR-BB allow this music only heightens its structural strength, letting bone and muscle show to good effect. Even with the mystical glowing lights turned down a bit, though by no means extinguished in this reading; the conductor and orchestra reveal just how much of the granite mountain still begs to live on in the polished expanses of the cathedral. Further, the clarity makes good old Anton Bruckner seem quite a bit less distant from the New Music soon to emerge into history, in that same Vienna. Highly recommended."
An inspired Gielen gives a great performance
Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 11/06/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Authentic Bruckner conductors are to the manner born, and Gielen is among them in this inspired reading of Sym. #8 from 1990. It's been a long time crossing the Atlantic on a readily available label. At around that same time a trio of Eighths from Karajan, Boulez, and Wand attracted a great deal of attention. I'm devoted to the Karajan and Boulez accounts (both with the Vienna Phil. on DG), but there's room for Gielen's way with the score. He doesn't try to build imposing edifices of sound, and like Boulez, the spiritual mood isn't one he cultivates.
To say that this recording fits Gielen's usual profile (he's known as a modernist who favors a lean, clean sonority) is irrelevant. What counts is his totally convincing dramatic pace and phrasing -- we are urgently pulled into Bruckenr's sound world. The best way to listen is not by ticking off stylistic points. Rather, just as you'd listen to a new version of the "Hammerklavier" Sonata, let your familiarity with a masterpiece be expanded through a new voice. As with Tennstedt's two versions (on EMI and the London Phil.'s house label), the hallmark here is a driving passion, but Gielen is considerably more disciplined than Tennstedt.
The SWR orchestra of Baden-Baden aren't first rate in general, but they are here; it would be hard to imagine more intense commitment. The recorded sound is ultra-clear and expasnive. It's also helpful to note that this is the somewhat expanded Haas edition and that the violins are divided left and right. In the midst of my encomium, I msut be fair and say that Gielen drops a stitch in the Scherzo, which feels a little flat-footed after the exhilarating first movement.
The substantial filler is Morton Feldman's 23-minute minimalist tapestry in sound, "Coptic Light," inspired by his viewing of ancient Coptic textiles at the Louvre (Feldman was a notable art connoisseur and collector). A large orchestra spreads out a scintillating carpet of string and wind timbres hovered over by a sparkling piano. From that point on, changes are minimal, which will be maddening to those who resist the minimalist aesthetic and hypnotic to those who revel in it."
Track Listings (2) - Disc #1