harrumph
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« Reply #60 on: 12:31:26, 22-03-2007 » |
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The idea of Bruckner as austere, almost a divine fool, goes back to at least 1930 in Britain:
"Anton Bruckner was a man uncontaminated by the world, a rare and simple nature, who worked in solitude for the glory of God and the joy of artistic achievement." (Gramophone critic Richard Holt, in a review of Horenstein's 1928 recording of the Seventh, the first electric recording of a Bruckner symphony).
Perhaps (pace Barbirolli) this is a particularly British attitude towards Bruckner, rather than a more general late-20th-century one?
Of course, Bruckner was also a man who suffered agonies for his art, and liked beer, dancing, and girls, even if he never did get them... So there ought to be plenty of room for passion, warmth and flexibility in performances of his music.
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tonybob
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« Reply #61 on: 16:03:07, 22-03-2007 » |
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Do you have an opinion of Asahina?
Asahina, i think, recognised the limitations of his forces, and went for purely musical performances - that's what i hear in them, anyway. (I haven't, at this point, heard any of his non-Japanese performances of Bruckner, which i should imagine are much better played.) |
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sososo s & i.
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richard barrett
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« Reply #62 on: 16:54:13, 22-03-2007 » |
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I would imagine that if one had suggested to Celibidache that his interpretations of the symphonies were unduly influenced by Cooke and Simpson, his answer would not have been too friendly. In some ways his performances (I'm talking about the ones with the Munich Philharmonic) emphasise the "monumental" qualities of Bruckner, particularly in their often eccentrically slow tempi, but on the other hand it's always clear that his reason for doing this is to reveal the interior of the music in a way not many conductors do (and this doesn't just apply to his Bruckner of course). The only disappointment for me in his performances is the 8th (I particularly don't like the way the first trumpet sticks out at the end of the Finale, for me a crucial moment - I prefer more equality of balance between all the motives here).
Bruckner's music is surely flexible enough to take as many interpretative approaches as any other music of comparable stature, isn't it?
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time_is_now
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« Reply #63 on: 17:29:52, 22-03-2007 » |
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Don't know if this is of interest, but here are a couple of extracts from reviews of the recent Concertgebouw/Jansons Bruckner 3 at the Barbican. I found the reviews of that concert interesting in general for their apparent desire to get away from the 'monumentalist'/'religiose' Bruckner tropes, though maybe that's a particular function of the 3rd Symphony having a more profane character? (I don't know the piece at all, so can't comment further, but I'm sure someone else can.)
There wasn’t an empty seat in the house for Saturday’s Schubert and Bruckner - and both audience and orchestra seemed to be wreathed in smiles from the start. Both symphonies were the composers’ third: both of them brilliant, buoyant and driven by dance. [...]
That same sense of having found exactly the right pulse rate for the music was there from the start of the Bruckner too. Here, the misterioso opening - misty string figurations clearing to reveal the sun ray of a solo trumpet - even sounded ever so slightly like John Adams. Jansons did, indeed, play gleefully and cunningly with the notion of Bruckner as maximal minimalist: chording was compact, timbres lean yet ripe, and rhythms rigorous and highly charged, particularly in the exuberance of the Concertgebouw’s burnished brass. The orchestra’s lustrous strings sang as one, bringing light and air to an adagio that can too often become suffocating. Jansons, typically, understood and felt not only every nerve within the score, but also exploited and made very much his own every second of his orchestra’s own Bruckner heritage.
Hilary Finch, The Times, 13 February 2007
[P]erfection of execution was not always balanced by consistency of interpretative insight, a reminder that Jansons has become variable of late. [...] Elsewhere, however, we heard Jansons at his best. Berio's Songs, blowsily sung by Elina Garanca, had a sinuously earthy astringency. Bruckner's Third was radically done to the point of intransigence, but the gains outweighed the losses. This was Bruckner brought to earth and stripped of his religiosity. The first two movements seemed sparse and skeletal, though the finale was unforgettable. Its polka - an embarrassment for some conductors - was so toe- tappingly buoyant that you wanted to dance.
Tim Ashley, The Guardian, 13 February 2007
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #64 on: 18:01:40, 22-03-2007 » |
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[P]erfection of execution was not always balanced by consistency of interpretative insight, a reminder that Jansons has become variable of late. [...] Elsewhere, however, we heard Jansons at his best. Berio's Songs, blowsily sung by Elina Garanca, had a sinuously earthy astringency. Wow - four metaphors in one sentence!  Bruckner's Third was radically done to the point of intransigence, but the gains outweighed the losses. This was Bruckner brought to earth and stripped of his religiosity. That to me is the sort of quote that critics like to say which could really mean so many things. What does it mean to play Bruckner 'radically', what is the norm against which this is being measured? The next sentence would imply that might be its 'religiosity', but how is this manifested or not? Through slow tempos, through rather flat phrasing, through long sustained sonorities with little attack, or what? The first two movements seemed sparse and skeletal, though the finale was unforgettable. Its polka - an embarrassment for some conductors - was so toe- tappingly buoyant that you wanted to dance.
Tim Ashley, The Guardian, 13 February 2007 Sorry to be cynical, but.....'toe-tappingly buoyant'?  |
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« Last Edit: 18:17:10, 22-03-2007 by Ian Pace »
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #65 on: 18:06:31, 22-03-2007 » |
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Unfortunately one doesn't have to have read a word of Cooke or Simpson to be influenced by their arguments. They seem to have been enormously influential in fostering a certain style of Bruckner performance which prefers the Haas editions (in fact rather dubious, musicologically and otherwise) to the Novak - to the extent that Boulez, of all people, seems to come down in favour of the former.
The 'cleaning up' job that Haas did on the symphonies - so that they'd be worthy of standing alongside the 'monumental' complete editions of the Austro-German classics - often chucked the baby out with the bathwater in terms of idiomatic performance indications, etc. And this in turn seems to have fostered a 'monumental' style of playing which itself has fed into the 'cosmic' perception. But just put on any of Karajan's (widely praised) recordings of the Eighth Symphony (for example) alongside those by van Beinum, Barbirolli or Jochum and you might get some idea of what's gone missing.
opilec, you seem to know quite a bit about Bruckner performance. It's something I need to do a bit of reading up on quite soon in connection with an article I'm writing - wondered if you had any thoughts on interesting writings on the subject? Anything good you know of in the newish stuff by Julian Horton? |
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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Ian Pace
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« Reply #66 on: 18:12:59, 22-03-2007 » |
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Bruckner's music is surely flexible enough to take as many interpretative approaches as any other music of comparable stature, isn't it?
Of course, but I think what was being referred to was not in order to say 'this way is right/that way is wrong' but rather to point out the hegemony of a rather singular type of approach which is almost uniformly accepted by critics to be the 'right' way, thus making it harder for conductors/orchestras to explore alternative approaches (such as including the stranger performance indications that come from the Novak editions) when they know they are likely to be slated for so doing. |
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
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George Garnett
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« Reply #67 on: 18:27:01, 22-03-2007 » |
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There wasn’t an empty seat in the house for Saturday’s Schubert and Bruckner.....The Times There were two next to me actually. Typical shoddy journalism, not checking the facts  . I do remember thinking at some point or other during this, 'Ah, Bruckner's Pastoral Symphony'. Discovering later from this thread that it was actually 'The Wagner' put me back in my box though. |
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richard barrett
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« Reply #68 on: 18:57:24, 22-03-2007 » |
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I don't really think there's much of a "hegemony of approach" in Bruckner performance, despite what some people here have said. I can think of a number of fairly fundamentally different recordings of most of the symphonies. As George says, one doesn't need to have been brainwashed by Deryck Cooke or whoever to come to a certain view of what the symphonies are "about", or at least what we perceive them to be about in the 21st century (silly comparisons to John Adams aside).
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tonybob
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« Reply #69 on: 17:34:54, 11-07-2007 » |
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clicketty here for some interesting stuff. scroll down for Bruckner meltdown. |
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sososo s & i.
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #70 on: 19:06:09, 11-07-2007 » |
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Tony, that's strangely beautiful.  |
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tonybob
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« Reply #71 on: 19:23:44, 11-07-2007 » |
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it reminds me of the end of the minuet in mozarts symphony 29.
i'm rather proud of myself as, when i heard it for the first time, i noticed the bar where the brass makes the mistake and thought 'uh-oh!'
smug git...
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sososo s & i.
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Bryn
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« Reply #73 on: 17:08:18, 05-10-2007 » |
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Getting back to the 8th, is anyone here familiar with Lionel Rogg's recording of an Organ version of that symphony? The clips sound rather fun, but I'm not sure I want to pay $9.99 hear the whole thing. |
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