Incredible bargain on Janowski Ring cycle

It's hard to argue with a Ring cycle for $31.99!

The Janowski Ring, the first digitally recorded cycle is currently available for well under $2.50 per disc at ArchivMusik (with no program notes or other frills). I don't think that this will be many people's go-to Ring cycle, but it is certainly a rewarding set of performances with some wonderful moments and fine conducting from Marek Janowski. Some reviewers have taken issue with Jeanine Altmeyer's Brunnhilde, and it is true that she lacks the intensity and psychological depth of Martha Mödl or Astrid Varnay. But she certainly sings with passion and is a fine partner to Rene Kollo's Siegfried in their great duets. Theo Adam is a compelling Wotan/Wanderer, but the real highlight for me was the pairing of Siegfried Jerusalem and Jessye Norman as the ill-fated Walsung twins.

Marek Janowski is as underrated in Wagner as he is in Bruckner. But fortunately Pentatone have faith in him and are planning to release concert recordings of all 10 Wagner operas with the Berlin Radio Symphony. Enthusiasts will want to listen to this cycle, now nearly 30 years old, as we wait for his new version of the Ring. The concerts will take place in the coming season. Hopefully they will be released not long afterwards.

Bruckner 9, Schubert, and Berg from Keilberth and the Berlin Philharmonic (Salzburg Festival, August 1960)

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Schubert, Rosamunde Overture

Berg, Violin Concerto

Bruckner, Symphony No. 9

Berlin Philharmonic

Joseph Keiberth

(Salzburg Festival, 17 August 1960)

Orfeo C838 112B

Doubtless the performance of Bruckner’s 9^th Symphony is the main reason for this release from Orfeo of a live recording from the 1960 Salzburg Festival of Joseph Keilberth conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. And it is indeed an excellent performance. But the 2-CD set also contains a very good performance of Berg’s Violin Concerto with Christian Ferras, then in the early years of his fame. This is not  a piece that most would associate with Keilberth, but it is conducted with great insight, and delicacy where needed. Some will quibble that the Berg and Schumann combined double the price of the set, while adding only 37 minutes of music, but to my mind the price is worth paying.

Keilberth’s approach to Bruckner is manifest at the first climax in the opening movement – conducted with great power and with an energy that carries over into the pizzicato bridge passage. Throughout the movement the lyricism comes out clearly – as do the lilting rhythms – even though each climactic section seems carved out of granite. The tempo of the scherzo and trio seem exactly right, and the movement displays very forceful brass playing.

The brass continue to impress in the finale, still forceful but at the same time strikingly in balance with the woodwind, which Bruckner typically charges with the finer points of detail in this wonderful movement. The concluding dissonance before the coda is very draining, certainly the most powerful that I have heard for a while. The coda is a fitting epitaph and the audience is silent before bursting into enthusiastic applause.  

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!

DVD review of Bruckner 8 (Steinberg, BSO, 1962)

Bruckner, Symphony No. 8

Boston Symphony Orchestra, conduced by William Steinberg

ICA Classics DVD ICAD 5071

William Steinberg conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in this performance of Bruckner’s 8^th Symphony on January 9, 1962 while he was music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony. He subsequently served as music director in Boston from 1969 – 1972, but his recorded legacy is primarily with the Pittsburgh Symphony, recording with Capitol Records. (Bargain-hunters should note that a 20-CD collection of Steinberg recordings with the Pittsburgh Symphony is currently retailing at around $2 per disc at an online retailer near you.) This DVD comes from a concert televised by WGBH, Boston’s public television station.

Perhaps due to broadcasting constraints, Steinberg makes cuts of his own in the 1892 Bruckner/Schalk edition, primarily in the finale but also in the Adagio (which come in at 17’10” and 20’42” respectively). The cuts are not individually obtrusive, if one is not following with a score, but they do add up over the course of the final two movements so that by the end this listener at least was left feeling a little short-changed.

 

Curiously the first movement sounded the least convincing. I found it a rather flat performance, lacking in dynamic contrast both emotionally and acoustically. The scherzo carried more conviction and Steinberg and the BSO really came into their own in the Adagio, where the strange mismatch between the tenor of the music and the conductor’s body language disappeared. The finale was played with gusto, but over far too quickly.

Symphonic music does not always benefit from being filmed. Facial expressions don’t always enhance musical understanding, and 50 year old TV broadcasts have their own quality issues, with occasional flickers and blurs in focus. There is also a more subtle hidden cost in this case from the camerawork. The shots are predominantly close-ups, focusing on the individuals or instrumental groupings that are thematically prominent at a given moment (apart from a somewhat surreal superimposition of Steinberg on an orchestral background in the finale). This creates a claustrophobic effect very much at odds with the vast expanses of Bruckner’s symphonic landscape.

This DVD is interesting as a historical document and has some musical high points, particularly in the Scherzo and Adagio. But it is not a satisfying performance overall and it would ne hard to recommend to those without a special interest in the conductor or the orchestra.  

Reissue of fine Bruckner performances from Sanderling and Guilini

Anton Bruckner, Symphonies Nos 7 & 9

Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR

Kurt Sanderling (No. 7)

Carlo Maria Guilini (No. 9)

Hänssler Classic SCM CD 94.604, originally published as CD93.027 (Sanderling) and CD93.186 (Guilini).

This 2-CD set is a welcome reissue of two previously published live recordings. The Sanderling 7^th Symphony was recorded in Stuttgart on 16 December, 1999, while Guilini’s 9^th dates from 20 September 1996 and appears to be the latest Guilini 9^th currently available. The packaging is minimal, with no significant program notes. The performances, however, are terrific and highly recommended to those who do not already possess them. The sound is first rate, with very little audience intrusion or peripheral noise.

Kurt Sanderling offers a very self-effacing performance of the 7^th, eschewing percussion at the climax of the Adagio. If there is a single word that captures his approach it is “balanced” – the performance is well balanced across movements and between different sections of the orchestra. Sanderling adopts a slow, stately tempo in the Adagio (which comes in at just over 25 minutes, the second slowest of his 9 available recordings). He achieves a real sense of grandeur. The Scherzo and Finale offer a contrasting forward momentum, while remaining sufficiently weighty to counter-balance the Adagio, successfully resolving the great problem of how to sustain the intensity of the slow movement through to the final bars.

“Self-effacing” is not the word that springs to mind to describe Carlo Maria Guilini’s performance of the 9^th. Grandeur and monumentality are at the forefront from the opening bars, as he builds up to the first climax in the opening movement. The subsequent change in mood turns  out to be transitory, as Guilini reverts to a broad pacing that skillfully falls just short of the portentous. And so the movement continues, until the massive and effective final climax.

Guilini’s scherzo is suitably driving and demonic, providing a well judged bridge between the two massive slow movements. The Adagio sets a valedictory note right at the beginning. In Guilini’s hands this is definitely a finale, with a final, heroic affirmation in the dissonant climax and then a gently farewell in the coda.

The audience is suitably silenced for a good few seconds before the applause breaks out. And so they should be. This a wonderfully compelling performance, as is Sanderling's. I'm not sure that I understand the marketing logic behind reissuing them together, but I’m glad that Hänssler Classic decided to.

David Zinman, Schubert Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, and 7 (Unfinished)

Schubert, Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2

David Zinman, Tonhalle Orchestra, Zurich, although

RCA Red Seal 88697 87147 2

Schubert, Symphony No. 7 (Unfinished)

Schubert, Rondo for Violin and Strings in A major

Schubert, Polonaise in B flat major for Violin and Orchestra

Schubert, Concert Piece in D Major for violin and Orchestra

David Zinman, Tonhalle Orchestra, Zurich

Andreas Janke, Violin

RCA Red Seal 88697 95335 2

Here are the first two discs in David Zinman’s complete Schubert cycle for RCA with the Zurich Tonhalle. The first disc gives us Schubert’s youthful first two symphonies, while the second couples the much later and better known Unfinished (here numbered as 7, rather than the usual 8) with three less well-known works for violin and orchestra.

 Zinman’s approach is historically informed, rather than a period performance. He uses modern instruments, but his Schubert looks back to Mozart and the classical tradition. This is entirely appropriate for the first two symphonies, which are very classical in approach. Symphony No. 1 was written when Schubert was just 16 years old, with No. 2 coming a year later. Zinman makes a good case for both symphonies, which lend themselves to his brisk tempi and clear articulation.

The first symphony is relatively lightweight, although it has real depth in the Andante and a delightfully lilting Trio. The second symphony is altogether more substantial. Its very long opening movement (13’30” even at Zinman’s brisk pace) couldn’t possibly be mistaken for juvenilia. Nor could the Andante variations on a familiar-sounding theme (based on “Il mio Tesoro” in Don Giovanni), or the whirlwind Presto Vivace, which is precisely the type of movement that Zinman and the Tonhalle play so convincingly.

All in all, Zinman’s Schubert is really rather civilized. This works well for the “fillers” on the second disc. The Rondo for Violin and Strings is Schubert at his most charming and sunny, as is the Polonaise. The Concert Piece in D Major is musically more substantial, but definitely not the dark side of Schubert. ‘Civilized’, though, is not an obvious word to characterize the Unfinished Symphony, and many will prefer darker and weightier approaches to the work.

Certainly, Zinman’s performance of the Unfinished is very short on Sturm und Drang. But he does maintain emotional intensity through momentum and steady tempi. His overall pace is very fast, with the two movements coming in at 11’42” and 9’23” respectively (as opposed to 15’00” and 11’35” for Harnoncourt, for example). The approach works best in the Allegro, where the orchestral color and tone emerge very clearly. The Andante moved too quickly for my ear, however, with a loss of dynamic contrast in key sections. To compensate, though, the Tonhalle’s fine playing is captured in excellent sound, with the woodwinds particularly standing out.

Bruckner 8 by Jaap van Zweden and DSO at Myerson Symphony Hall

Bruckner, Symphony No. 8

Dallas Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jaap van Zweden

Myerson Symphony Hall, Dallas TX

29 April 2012

Jaap van Zweden has been recording a Bruckner cycle with the Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra for Octavia Records. The 2nd, 4th, 5th, 7th, and 9th have already been released. The 8th is due out later this year. On the strength of this performance, the recording will be a compulsory purchase for Brucknerians, even though in Dallas Bruckner has home orchestra advantage, as well as the acoustics of Myerson Hall, which van Zweden has described as the best Bruckner Hall anywhere. Certainly, I have his other Bruckner recordings on order.

In this concert van Zweden played the 1890 Nowak edition. The character of his interpretation was in evidence from the very first bars of the opening Allegro moderato, with the opening theme very expressively played and shaped. Van Zweden's Bruckner is midway between the lyrical and the monumental. He uses the DSO strings, woodwind, and harps to excellent effect in the more singing passages, but never loses touch with the overall architectonic of Bruckner's greatest symphony. The final part of the first movement really showed his interpretation to best advantage, with a delicate rendition of the coda following a powerful and well-paced climax.

Perhaps the greatest strength of van Zweden's approach to Bruckner is his skill in shaping the music - at every level, from the individual phrase and theme to the contours an entire movement and the overall unity of the symphony. I logged the following timings:

I = 15'38"

II = 13'39"

III = 26'04"

IV = 20'48"

The numbers confirm my impression of a fast Scherzo and an expansive Adagio. The tempo of the finale was very well judged after the Adagio, with the slower sections of the finale seeming continuous with the pace of the preceding movement. This no doubt contributed to the security with which van Zweden navigated the multiple themes and complexities of the final movement. There was a similar connection between the Adagio and the Trio of the second movement.

As so often with performances of the 8th, the centerpiece was the Adagio, which built steadily and inexorably through Bruckner's numerous stops, restarts, and halting transitions towards the great climax - at which point, incidentally, the acoustics of Myerson Hall made the triangle clearly audible. This movement displayed the DSO to best advantage - extremely expressive strings, delicate woodwind, and very secure brass. The timpanist drove the pulse of the symphony throughout.

In sum, a very good performance from a conductor who clearly has Bruckner in his blood and an orchestra that can do more than justice to his vision. I look forward to listening to van Zweden's Bruckner recordings with the Netherlands Radio Orchestra - and also to his Parsifal!