SYMPHONY NO.9

The Subscription Concert Series of the Wiener Philharmoniker from the Golden Hall of the famous Musikverein, are special concerts reserved for subscribers, hence the name. But to become a subscriber, due to the exceptional quality of the concerts and the limited offer, the average waiting time is more than 10 years. With this series, these very special concerts are made available for the first time audiovisually to a wider audience worldwide. With Zubin Mehta and Martha Argerich "two veteran musicians gave rise to real storms of enthusiasm in the Musikverein." (Wiener Zeitung) "The power of true 'Old Masters' - Martha Argerich sat at the piano as spiritedly sparkling as ever. Just as Bruckner's Fourth subsequently succeeded in becoming a magnificent dialogue between orchestra and conductor: Bruckner impulsive, intimate, poignant, stirring." (Kronenzeitung) Program: Robert Schumann: Piano Concerto in A minor Robert Schumann: From Kinderszenen, Op. 15: No. 1 Von fremden Landern und Menschen Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 "Romantic"

This live recording differs from the recording included in the complete box set of Bruckner Symphonies on RCA Red Seal 60075.

Recorded at Lübeck Cathedral on August 22-23, 1987 as the final concerts of the 1987 Schleswig Holstein Music Festival.

Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 in E Major, WAB 107 (Modified 1885

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

This is the first release ever of all the Bruckner symphony recordings that Hans Rosbaud made for SDR (now SWR). Hans Rosbaud is remembered chiefly as a committed performer of contemporary music. This resulted from his regular appearances in Donaueschingen, where he conducted either the world or regional premieres of works by Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and many others. Crucially important was his conducting of the first concert performance of Arnold Schönberg’s opera Moses and Aaron in Hamburg on 12 March 1954. However he devoted equal attention to the works of Richard Wagner, Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler. which is all the more reason to take a closer look also at his other recordings, in this case, at his Bruckner interpretations. Rosbaud produced performances of all Bruckner's symphonies for the radio broadcasting company Sudwestfunk (SDR), apart from the First, which he never conducted.

Following Kent Nagano’s acclaimed recording of Bruckner’s original version of the Fourth Symphony, comes the release of Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 in E Major with the Bavarian State Orchestra.

The Seventh Symphony is without a doubt one of the composer’s most popular works; unlike many of his other scores, Bruckner didn’t revise the piece at a later date. It is one of the most moving pieces of funeral music of the 19th century, if not in the entire history of music.

BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 9, WAB 109

10 Sacred Choruses

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SYMPHONY NO. 9

• Anton Bruckner died before completing work on the fourth and final movenment of his 9th symphony. • Conductor Mario Venzago's ongoing complete Bruckner symphony cycle has provoked vehement pro and contra critical reaction. • The Bern Symphony's history dates back more than 125 years.

Otto Klemperer is, to this day, still considered one of the great Bruckner conductors. His EMI studio recordings made in the 1960's remain benchmark reference recordings. This 3CD collection of live Bruckner recordings from the 1950's and 1960's, a welcome addition to his famed studio recordings, finds Klemperer leading three of the finest European orchestras. Newly remastered.

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Austrian-born conductor Hans Rosbaud (1895-1962), noted champion of contemporary and Austro-German late romantic-era music, features here with an orchestra he came to be associated with and much-identified late in his career, the Southwest Radio-Symphony, Baden-Baden, in these mid-1950’s performances of four of Anton Bruckner’s monumental symphonies. +Includes the early Second, the lesser-known Fifth, the sublime Seventh, and the last fully completed, and towering, symphony, the Eighth.

"• Wilhelm Furtwängler is considered as one of the most important Bruckner conductors of all times. • With this box you can approve this easy. • All important live recordings of the Maestro collected in one Box set. • Includes his legendary war performances plus the unique No. 7 (appraised from all reviewers as one of the best recordings of the score) recording from Rom. • 6 CD Box"

BRUCKNER: SYMPHONIES NOS 8 & 0

Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 in E major, WAB 107
(1885 version, ed. L. Nowak)

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Klaus Tennstedt, conductor

Recorded live from the Symphony Hall, Boston, 5 November 1977

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: Enhanced Mono
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Menu language: English
Booklet notes: English, French, German
Running time: 66 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

R E V I E W:

A top-quality performance of Bruckner’s Seventh under a great conductor.

The welcome expansion of Klaus Tennstedt’s recorded legacy through the issue of live performances continues with this reading of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony from Boston. This was a work that Tennstedt did not take into the recording studios though there is another live account, this time on CD, on the LPO Live label (LPO0030). That issue preserves a 1984 performance but I have not heard it.
 
It was with the Boston Symphony Orchestra that Tennstedt made his US debut in 1974, when one of the programmes he offered consisted of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony. By all accounts that performance had the critics in raptures. It appears from the booklet note that when Tennstedt gave three performances of the Seventh three years later the critics, who attended the first of the performances, were a little less impressed, praising the conductor’s interpretation but finding fault with some of the playing; it was suggested that perhaps the performance was under-rehearsed. By the time the third performance came round – the one preserved here – it would seem that these little difficulties had been ironed out. There are one or two very minor slips but the overall standard of playing is extremely high and one has the definite impression that conductor and players are as one.
 
Oddly, the image on the cover of this CD is not taken from the performance we see. For this Boston concert Tennstedt eschewed a score and therefore had no need to wear spectacles. In fact the Tennstedt we see in this film is quite youthful-looking. The recording is presented in “Enhanced Mono” – I’m unsure what that means but the sound is perfectly satisfactory – so we don’t quite get the benefit of Tennstedt’s layout of the string section: the violins are massed on his left but the violas are to his right – where many conductors place the cellos – and the Boston cello section is seated to the right hand of the violas.
 
The reading is a very fine one. Tennstedt moulds the long, expansive cello melody at the start of the first movement with great care and evident feeling. As the movement unfolds he takes the second subject quite swiftly, though he’s not too hasty. This performance is one of those that remind us that Bruckner was a musical descendant of Schubert – and Tennstedt was a fine exponent of Schubert’s Ninth. The listener is left in no doubt that Tennstedt has the measure of the span and structure of this movement. That’s even more the case with his account of the solemn Adagio. This is a noble, burnished reading and though Tennstedt maintains a good objective stance there’s no doubt that he feels every phrase. He shapes the music splendidly and the Boston players respond to him with playing of distinction. The strings are wonderfully rich in tone, with just the right amount of weight, while the brass are sonorous. This is one of those performances where everything just feels right – and inevitable. The cymbal and triangle are included at the main climax.
 
Tennstedt ensures that the rhythms of the scherzo have real lift and spring while the lyrical trio is affectionately phrased. The finale is completely successful. Tennstedt mixes energy with expansive phrasing and the brass-dominated episodes are delivered with due majesty.
 
Tennstedt’s rendition of this symphony is deeply satisfying and it’s marvellous to have an example of him at work with one of the finest orchestras in the USA. We’re told that he worked regularly with the BSO until 1987 so I hope very much that ICA may be able to license more material, either audio or visual, from the orchestra’s archives. I found it fascinating to look at the BSO of thirty-five years ago and I noted with some surprise how few female musicians there were on the stage – possibly eight at most, including the orchestra’s celebrated principal flautist, Doriot Anthony Dwyer. Furthermore, at that time there don’t seem to have been too many young players in the BSO’s ranks. I bet things have changed quite a lot in the intervening period. The thing that really matters is that the Boston Symphony of 1977 vintage was a fine, seasoned ensemble and it’s a joy to hear them play under this great conductor.
 
The visual presentation is reliable and gives a good representation of the concert. One minor irritant, I found, was the director’s occasional propensity for split-screen shots, showing us, for example, the principal oboist in one half of the screen and the principal clarinettist in the other. Happily, this doesn’t occur too often and it may not bother other viewers. The key thing is that if you invest in this DVD you’ll acquire a top-quality performance of Bruckner’s Seventh under a great conductor.
 
-- John Quinn, MusicWeb International

Paul Hindemith was an all-round musician, virtuoso violist, composer and educator. He mastered all the instruments of the orchestra to a more or less professional level of proficiency, all of which was more than adequate preparation for conducting too. He was strongly influenced in his conducting by Wilhelm Furtwängler, placing the highest value on the living tradition of interpretation. This release features his 1958 recording of Bruckner’s radiant Seventh Symphony; the mature master locating Bruckner’s achievements as a high point on the continuum between Bach and his own work.

BRUCKNER: TE DEUM, MASS NO 2

Bruckner: Symphony No. 4, WAB 104 "Romantic"

"Sony's new transfer boasts greater definition in the treble and bass, with extra bloom in the strings. What's more, the finale no longer spills over to a second disc, enabling the listener to hear Bruno Walter's Bruckner 7th uninterrupted on one CD...Walter communicates his kinder, gentler vision of this music with love, authority, and conviction." -- Jed Distler

English born conductor F. Charles Adler was a student of Gustav Mahler and a devoted Bruckner enthusiast. Presented here on this 5 CD Music & Arts release are the fabled SPA and Unicorn studio recordings of 1952-56 as well as a live broadcast performance of Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 6. These works have been expertly restored and re-mastered in 2014 by Aaron Z. Snyder. At least two previously Music & Arts releases devoted to Mr. Adler, one exclusively Mahler, the other given over to both Mahler and Bruckner, have been warmly welcomed back to the catalog, resurrecting the important recordings of an ardent, early supporter of these once controversial, now universally-admired composers.

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THE ROYAL EDITION - BRUCKNER:

A staggeringly powerful reading, it represents one of the high points in Furtwängler’s entire discography. Like his two BPO accounts from 1949, this one with the VPO uses modified Haas—the latter’s insertion of 10 bars from the 1887’s Adagio is omitted—and there are elements from the 1892 Schalk (a cymbal clash is heard in the 1949 finales, but not in this one). This 1944 has greater passion and is more listenable than are either of the BPO 1949s.

-- Jeffrey J. Lipscomb, FANFARE [reviewing the box set of Bruckner symphonies conducted by Furtwängler, Music & Arts 1209]

Newly released as part of the Archipel Desert Island Collection, this luminous May, 1962 Vienna Philharmonic performance of Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9/Te Deum coupling marked the first of more than a dozen Herbert von Karajan’s performances of this symphony to be captured for posterity between 1962-1986 with either the Vienna or the Berlin Philharmonic. + The impressive soloist quartet roster for the Te Deum included soprano Wilma Lipp and tenor Nicolai Gedda.

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