I have now read also your piece on the Sixth, and I am sorry to say if you would only base your judgements on the scores and not on your listening experience, comparing with other recordings all the time. :-( There is a long tradition that most of the Bruckner priests do almost all the same way of slow sostenuto, pseudo-religious pathos, and as soon as somebody tries to realise the scores as Bruckner had written them guys like you just can't cope with it, maybe because they cannot read scores at all, or maybe just because a conductor does something unexpected. I agree to your observation on the booklet notes (only for the Seventh finally the label asked me to provide the notes for the first time), but I can assure you the string bowing of the beginning is exactly what Bruckner wrote, he wanted it to be played at the string, and Simon almost paintakingly observes Bruckner's own tempo indications and relationships. And please note the metronome markings in the autograph score, giving minims = 72 for the first theme instead of the ourday's usual 58 or even slower... You my also note that the coda of the first movement now starts with pizzicato of the string basses - the arco was an error by earlier editions...I shall send you some proper information later.
Warm regards
Ben
Hi Ben
Always good to hear from you.
Yes, I know - if only my house was stuffed full of scores, then my poor long-suffering wife would have kicked me out many years ago !
Remember, my job is to guide the listener to the versions I feel are the best and most convincing performances of the piece in question, taking into account the listener's preferences - so with Bruckner's Sixth Symphony, that would be Sawallisch/Bavarian State Orchestra, if you like things fast and fiery, or the polar opposite, Celibidache/Munich PO if you want to be on bended knees in rapt contemplation in front of an altar.
The problem we have with you guys (!) is that sometimes it appears as if you cannot see the woods from the trees ! A topical example of this would be the recent fad by the International Gustav Mahler Society in Vienna who, overridding some seventy years of recorded evidence to the contrary, announced that the opening measures of the Huntsman's Funeral in the First Symphony should be played by entire double bass section, not just a soloist. This neither sounded convincing, nor logical in light that nobody (including many who had worked with Mahler) had raised the issue before. I could go on .....
With regards to the Bruckner Sixth, I think as an interpreter you have to ensure that the basic tempo in the opening bars has to be supported as the theme is developed further on within the piece. As I indicated in my review, Rattle just about gets away with the tempo taken in the opening bars, but when the same melody reappears for full orchestra further on, it sounds garbled and too fast. Therefore in order to play that part of the music correctly, the tempo at that point needs to be slowed down, which then means the opening bars likewise have to be taken slower to match it. I know this from bitter experience with my fingers not being fast enough on the piano keyboard.
Of course you are absolutely correct, after listening to one way a piece of music has been done for many decades can make it difficult to accept something different - this would explain why so many Bruckner listeners prefer the completion of Bruckner's Ninth by Peter Jan Marthé over your own Ben, even if that contains 80% speculation and 20% Bruckner, whereas your own is 80% Bruckner and 20% blood and sweat !
With Simon, a musician and man I admire tremendously, I have always thought that he was intuitively more in tune with the symphonies of William Schuman, rather than Robert Schumann. This isn't to say he should be ignored and he can always be relied upon these days to a terrific Bruckner 9th, whether in the the three movement format or otherwise.
That said, very pleased to learn that you are getting to write the notes now - and hope you have included the cymbal crash in the Adagio of the Seventh, as it never sounds as good without it !
Warmest regards,
lee
Dear Lee, I've been lucky enough to hear Celi in Munich at precisely that concert which was later released by EMI on CD, and it WAS to bend knees (after the slow movement the 3000 audience was so quiet one could hear a needle drop down). Nevertheless it was too slow and not entirely coherent. (The only Sixth Celi ever did!!) I don't like in general Bruckner to be fast and fiery, but please read the tempo markings in the first mvt. of the sixth correctly. The beginning tempo is only limited to the first theme group with the peculiar rhythm, its recap and the last 14 mm of the Coda. The basic tempo is actually that of the second group, and the "Langsamer" needs to enter with the straight crotchets equalling the triplet crotchets (ca. minims = 50-52). And no ritardando, otherwise the effect is spoiled. In the mm. providing the link to the third group, it maintains this tempo (minim = minim, or crotchets ca. 100-104). If the initial tempo is too slow, the entire architecture of the movement collapses... as in most peformances I have heard. Note also Bruckner's own metronome marking in the Finale of the Eighth, a "solemn, not fast" as minims = 69.
And listen perhaps also to Roger Norringtons Bruckner Six from Stuttgart. Also note how in the Finale the initial rhythm of the first movement reappeaars shortly before the coda, and then the principal theme itself crowning the Finale coda; hence the Finale must have the same basic speed as the beginning of the entire Symphony...
Most of the mess which seem to be caused by "wrong tempo" is caused in fact by inppropriate style of playing. Too much sostenuto, too much vibrato, no speech-like phrasing, no heavy and light measures which were so incredibly important to Bruckner that he even checked heavy (= odd) and light (= even) measures by inserting his famous metrical numbers, which significance for performance are widely overlooked.
The real problem with "us guys" is that we take the directions of the composers perhaps more serious than many conductors (and in my special case I can claim to be one of the rare "scholars" who has also conducted more than one Bruckner Symphony); I' ve been trained as a conductor AND scholar, and precisely for this reason my publisher has chosen me to run his new Bruckner Urtext Complete Edition.
You don't see the woods from the trees if you don't acknowledge the existance not only of various versions of Mahler's First -- Titan in the Hamburg and Budapest scores, the revised autograph scores, and the printed editions which were revised over and over by Mahler until 1911. Impossible to say what was his "last word" on this; we only now his choice for his own last performance he conducted... It is not "evidence from recordings" that counts; it is evidence from the sources of the composer himself!
Also the Cymbal Crash in itself is not the point of editing the Seventh, its point is to show the conductor the circumstances and evidence we have, include options in the score, and let HIM decide what he wants to do - and not the editor for him (like Nowak or Haas or others).
Your job may be to guide the listener, but the better you are informed the better you can serve that noble purpose...
Best, Ben
PS: Wait until you hear my own new completion of the Finale of the Ninth - which I shall publish only if I get a chance to first perform it... even more blood and sweat. and 90% Bruckner now...
pps: Sorry for the typos; sitting in the train from Vienna back to Bremen typing with an old keyboard.
Hi Ben
I hope you had a pleasant journey and please don't worry about the typos as I didn't see (m)any. It's just a pity that you are not travelling from Prague to Linz today on the Bruckner Intercity train as that would have made my day !
That said, I hear everything you say about the Bruckner VI, but the plain truth of the matter is that the orchestral tutti which starts at the end of bar 24 in movement 1) cannot be cleanly articulated at the tempo you are suggesting and that tells me that the composer has made a miscalculation and so it needs to be slower. If such expert practitioners as Rattle/LSO cannot pull it off at that tempo, what hope the rest ?!
So yes, I know the various editions of the First Symphony - I prefer to refer to the Budapest and Hamburg editions as the five movement tone poem, 'Titan', respecting that the composer from 1896 referred to the four movement work as 'Symphony No 1' from 1896 onwards, shorn of the nickname and programme. You may/may not (care) be aware that i have published an essay on this (see pp13-15 here: Mahler-sy1-survey-LD.pdf (musicweb-international.com) ) where it is noted that it was originally the solo cello used for the Huntsman's Funeral and there were possibly thoughts at one point by Mahler of placing the discarded 'Blumine' movement third within the overall work, which I think works rather well and, in turn, would then be a kind of homage to Schumann's Rhenish Symphony. which we know influenced Mahler so much.
As for the performing history on record, I diverge slightly from you by pointing out that it is often the closest we can get to knowing what the composer wanted. If we take Mahler as being an example, Walter, Mengelberg and Klemperer all knew and worked with the composer, yet achieved different results, but surely they would have been aware of the solo double bass/full section issue? Even if there is no recorded evidence of the latter two, there is of someone like Paul van Kempen, who began life as a violinist in Mengelberg's Concertgebouw, so would almost certainly have performed Mahler's First Symphony under him. So this is why I think recording history is important and makes me puzzled when certain conductors decide to perform the 'Titan' with minimal/no vibrato and claiming 'authenticity' when we have Nikisch conducting a Beethoven symphony in 1913 with loads of it! However, I do accept that recording history has its limitations,especially since there appeared to have been a significant sea-change with interpretations as a result of Mendelssohn and thereafter Wagner's influence on podium craft, the likes of which would be impossible to imagine.
I am looking forward to hearing your own version of the completed Bruckner IX.
lee
Hi Lee
Maybe you simply misunderstand the notation of the rhythmic pattern at the beginning of the movement? Basically the semiquaver has to be executed inegale, and in falls more or less together with another triplet quaver; this notation has been choosen by Bruckner only to emphase the heavy and short first note of the phrase. It is not intended to be played precisely as it stands, which is in whatever slow tempo impossible. This case parallels, for example, the notation of Schubert or Schumann, where, say, dotted quaver plus semiquaver occurs along triplet quavers, the dotted rhythm has to be executed accordingly. There is no miscalculation of the composer; it is a miscalculation of the interpreter. One may I ask if Bruckner wanted that note to sound a triplet quaver too, why did he not write triplets througout? The answer is: that upbeat note would become over-emphasized by too much broadening. (Compare the two notations and sing...) I have examined this issue thoroughly for a paper I read on a Bruckner conference in 2018.
Another sad truth is: There is no truth in performance of classical music - as an editor of music all I can do is present my editions as undogmatic as I can, offer choices and variants where possible and let the conductor decide.
"Authenticity" in performance is also a wrong concept to me - we first would have to ask "in which sense authentic"...?
Best, Ben
Ben is also a very passionate advocate of his work and craft !
It could be a matter of taste. The movement has an Alla Breve tempo marking which suggests something moving more swiftly than if the bar-lines are thought of as governing the tempo ( I have addressed the issue of Alla Breve in another thread). Bruckner strikes me (again a matter of taste) as a rather "Sectional" composer. I would have thought one of the problems of a Bruckner interpreter is how to manage the transition from one section to another convincingly. I listened to the Masur 6th. after posting on this topic and I felt that his way of handling the transitions was perfunctory. It might have been his intention to try to give cohesion to the movement by proceeding in a literal manner, but for me it doesn't work. It sounds like it doesn't work for you either.
I have the Masur cycle. Played it once and not once since. Am revisiting. The first movement of the 6th is just too fast and glib for my taste.
The Keilberth recording (an old mono Telefunken) was one of the first Bruckner symphonies I got to know. Bruckner aficionado I'm not but over the years I have acquired several recorded cycles of the symphonies and the orchestral scores. What strikes me whenever the subject of Bruckner interpretations comes up is that nobody seems to mention the Kurt Masur cycle, even to hold it up as a bad example. Is it really so negligible or are there any performances in it that "Score" with any of our Bruckner-devoted listeners ?
Hi Lee
I tried to make it sound as though I was going gentle on Sir Simon by quoting the dreadful Davis recording - along with his 9th, about the only Davis recordings I don't admire.
Yes indeed, Sir Simon ought to stick to what he's good at and I hate to say this but many composers ain't one of them, if that makes Gerald Manly Hopkins sense.
Thank you for your responses.
As I was saying only the other day to a wise old friend, Rattle would have been better off taking one of the Big Five US ensembles rather than the BPO some twenty years ago. I personally feel that he is very good at unravelling the knottiest of late twentieth and early twenty-first century scores, rather than nineteenth century romanticism and so would undoubtedly be worth hearing in the symphonies of William Schuman, rather than those of Robert Schumann. That said, I do not think we can criticise the LSO here - they clearly do all that Rattle asks of them - but it is the interpretation that is the disappointment. I agree with both of Chris's points about Keilberth/BPO - a fine and overlooked recording, but I prefer a steadier tread in my own journey through the Adagio.
Best regards,
lee
Horenstein's Bruckner 6 is with the LSO and is right at the top, or would be if a better sound source for it could be found. So the LSO can play it.
Don't forget Keilberth/BPO, though the briskish second movement might be a problem for some
Hi Lee
Read your review of Sir Simon's LSO bruckner 6. As you are probably aware, I believe Rattle is a hoax perpetrated on music by British Music Critics.
However, it brought to mind the dreadful LSO 6th under Sir Colin Davis, a conductor I respect enormously. Maybe Bruckner 6 and the LSO are not meant to cohabitate.
Also, while I am on my high horse, there is something so glib and false about Karajan's version of this mighty work: I recall bursting out laughing when I first heard it. Give me Blomstedt - San Fran - Jochum, yes, and the mighty Celi for the 6th.
As I get off my horse, I admit I admire Rattle's Bruckner 9.
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