Anton Bruckner, Symphony No. 5
Philharmonie Festiva
Conducted by Gerd Schaller
Profil Hänssler CD PH14020
The summer festival at the abbey church of Ebrach has been
an important Bruckner venue since its inception in 2008 by Gerd Schaller, the
founder and continuing artistic director. Schaller has recorded a complete
Bruckner cycle there with the Philharmonie Festiva, a festival orchestra whose
core is drawn from the Munich Bach Soloists, supplemented by hand-picked
soloists from the other Munich orchestras. After this release of Symphony No.
5, only No. 6 remains (together with the Study Symphony, for
completists).
The music festival has released a nice promotional video
of Schaller conducting a 5 minute extract from the symphony. The video shows
the magnificent surroundings. For
those fortunate enough to have attended the performance the overall effect of
hearing Bruckner in an ecclesiastical location so close to the spirit of the
composer and his music must have been very special indeed. Those listening at
home, though, can’t help but notice the very real acoustic trade-off that comes
from recording in such a cavernous setting. The video also shows the extraordinary number of microphones
used by Bavarian Radio to record this live performance from July 2013. On the one hand the reverberation
and echo of the cathedral threatens to obscure some of the fine details of the
score. But on the other those very same features help to create a very rich and
magnificently developed sound, particularly in the strings and brass.
Acoustically the pros in this performance far outweigh the
cons. The first movement suffers a little in clarity of articulation,
particularly in the climaxes. But magnificence wins out in the last movement –
surprisingly perhaps, given that the last movement is Bruckner’s most
contrapuntally complex movement (but then again churches and complex
counterpoint have a long history together).
As I observed in an earlier
review of Schaller’s Bruckner 4, his approach to Bruckner is majestic
rather than monumental or mystical. This pays off in Symphony No. 5,
particularly given the classical architecture of the final movement. He also
has a fine ear for Bruckner’s changes of tone in the Adagio and Scherzo. Finally, there is some exceptionally fine
playing by the solo oboe and clarinet (particularly in movements 2 and 4
respectively).
Recommended.
