Norrington's Bruckner

Norrington’s Bruckner

Bruckner, Symphonies Nos. 3, 4, 6, 7, 9

Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR

Hänssler Classic SWR Music 

(CD 93.217, 93.218, 93.219, 93.243, 93.273)

The latest installment in Roger Norrington’s Bruckner cycle with the Stuttgart RSO is the 9^th, recorded in July 2010 and released by Hänssler Classic in 2012. It is interesting to consider this latest recording in the context of its four predecessors, which like the 9^th are all live concert recordings (although the 9^th appears to be drawn from two separate performances on consecutive days). Norrington has a remarkably unified approach to Bruckner. The principal features of Norrington’s Bruckner are the absence of vibrato, very brisk tempi, and an unorthodox approach to editions.

It is particularly in the 4^th that Norrington goes against conventional wisdom in his choice of editions. He records the 1874 original version in the 1975 Nowak edition. Norrington is proselytizing. He seems convinced that the original version is to be preferred. Certainly there’s no sense that we are being treated primarily to a historical curiosity (which the impression that comes across in the rather apologetic  program notes for Kent Nagano’s 2007 recording with the Bavarian State Opera Orchestra – Sony Classics 88697368812). In fact, Norrington makes a convincing case for the 1874 edition, which is far more appropriately labeled ‘Romantic’ than the far more widely performed and recorded 1878/1880 version. Bruckner subsequently discarded the scherzo, even though it more closely echoes the first movement than its successor, the Hunt scherzo. The rhythmically complex finale has great forward momentum and a driving pulse. Norrington plays it Allegro, rather than Nowak’s Allegro Moderato. I have to say that I found the 4^th by far the most satisfying of the performances reviewed here.

The 3^rd Symphony is also played in its original version (1873), firmly placed on the map by Inbal’s well-known recording with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony (Apex CD 25646 00052). The performance reveals some of the advantages of Norrington’s avoidance of vibrato. The Adagio is very clean, with the absence of vibrato opening up some of the finer grain of Bruckner’s orchestration. At the same time, though, we see an unintended consequence of the approach. In the program notes, Norrington emphasizes that Bruckner is not “the quasi-religious abstraction we are sometimes given”. But Bruckner’s slow movements without vibrato do tend to sound quasi-religious and the Adagio of the 3^rd is a case in point – rather cold and austere. The finale, with its juxtaposition of polka and prayer, is more successful.

The least successful performance for me was the 7^th. Here Norrington’s brisk tempi really do interfere with the architecture and dramatic shaping of the symphony. He sprints through the symphony in just a little over 54 minutes – the fastest recording of the 1885 edition that I could find. At 15’08” the opening Allegro Moderato loses a huge part of its lyrical and elegiac dimensions. The Adagio (just over 19 minutes) is much less monumental, and more uniform in mood than the most successful performances. The scherzo works well, though, as does the finale.

Extremely brisk tempi are also present in the 6^th, which is the fastest in Berky’s discography. But here they seem less damaging, and indeed . Norrington gives the Adagio, one of Bruckner’s most profound, its due. The scherzo (surely Bruckner’s least Brucknerian scherzo) is very successful, with the details of the orchestration emerging very clearly. The finale, which features another polka, is taken very quickly, but the music lends itself to a mad rush.

And so, finally, to the 9^th. This performance reveals the strengths of Norrington’s approach far more than the weaknesses. The opening initially sounds eery without vibrato, but when one gets used to it one can appreciate Norrington’s attention to detail, and how clearly it emerges without the acoustic distraction of vibrato. Likewise the absence of vibrato allows Bruckner’s dissonances to stand out cleanly. The dissonant climax in the finale is particularly effective, as is the coda to the opening movement. The timing for the Scherzo is uncharacteristically slow – in fact, it occasionally sounds lumbering rather than demonic. The tempo for the movement appears to be set by the Trio, which works much better. The finale is lightning fast. Blink and you may miss some favorite passages. When Norrington slows down the effect is impressive, but the contrasts are just too extreme for this slow movement to work. Or rather, to be fair, the contrasts are too extreme for the slow movement to work as a finale. Who knows how well it would work if we had a completed finale to follow!

Furtwängler conducts Bruckner

Furtwängler conducts Bruckner: Symphonies 4-5-6-7-8-9 (Music and Arts CD-1209, 5 CDs)

In many ways Furtwängler is the ideal Bruckner conductor. There is the extraordinary sense of large-scale architecture that made him such a wonderful Wagnerian. Not to mention his ability to penetrate to the emotional depths of Bruckner’s adagios, and to build and sustain momentum as the composer moves slowly, massively, and inexorably to his great climaxes (in, for example, the slow movements of the 7^th and 8^th, and the finale of the 5^th).

All of these qualities are on display in this collection of live recordings, all but 2 from wartime performances. These performances have all been available over the years on various labels with differing levels of sound quality. The transfers here are first-rate and Music and Arts are to be thanked for gathering these materials in a relatively inexpensive set (5 CDs priced as 3, it proclaims on the box). The issue contains a useful leaflet with extracts from John Ardoin’s 1994 book The Furtwängler Sound corrected in some cases by detailed notes from the sound engineer (Aaron Z. Snyder) on the editions Furtwängler used.

All of the symphonies are complete, with the exception of the 6^th, for which the first movement was not preserved. The core of the symphony is the second movement Adagio, surely one of Bruckner’s finest, and Furtwängler’s performance of this movement with the Berlin Philharmonic is one of the highlights of this set. It is hard to believe that 1943 was his first year conducting the symphony.

The Berlin Philharmonic plays 3 of the other 5 symphonies, with the Vienna Philharmonic playing the 4^th and 8^th. I am not a purist about Bruckner versions, but I do have an aversion to the Löwe-Schalk version of the 4^th (which Furtwängler played in the Stuttgart concert recorded here). Debates about whether or not it was officially sanctioned by Bruckner seem to me to be beside the point. It just doesn’t sound right. Can I be the only person who has got up to answer the doorbell on hearing the extraneous percussion in the opening movement?

The 8^th is played in a modified version of the Haas edition. Furtwängler’s modifications do not intrude and the performance as a whole is magnificent, with the first 3 movements all building up to the Archimedean climax of the Adagio, whose energy is slowly dissolved in the coda. Furtwängler carries Bruckner’s greatest and most complex finale with a sure grasp of both journey and destination.

Another highlight is an incandescent recording (from October 1942) of the 5^th. Furtwängler takes this symphony, one of Bruckner’s most forbidding and structurally complex, at a phenomenal pace and white-hot levels of intensity. I know of no other performance that maintains a comparable momentum through the fugues in the finale.

The most disappointing performance here (leaving aside the 4^th) is the April 1951 Cairo 7^th . But disappointment is a relative concept when it comes to Furtwängler’s Bruckner performances. It would probably be better to describe it as the least spell-binding performance in this indispensable testament to the magical combination of Furtwängler and Bruckner.