Here it comes - the first fruit of the cooperation between the conductor András Keller, Concerto Budapest and TACET. Until now András Keller was well-known as a violinist and member of the Keller Quartet, but now he is allowed to shine as a conductor. When it comes to highly-recorded works, listeners often hear many favorable reviews. Again somebody praises a recording of Bruckner 9. But this recording is truly something special- from the masterful interpretation, to the high-quality recording. The last Bruckner symphony talks about grandeur and nullity, about self-doubt and certainty, about life and death. Every listener has to find out on his own if András Keller and his musicians convey the message trustworthily. They tried honestly, that was obvious in every minute of these 5 recording days.

Here it comes - the first fruit of the cooperation between the conductor András Keller, Concerto Budapest and TACET. Until now András Keller was well-known as a violinist and member of the Keller Quartet, but now he is allowed to shine as a conductor. When it comes to highly-recorded works, listeners often hear many favorable reviews. Again somebody praises a recording of Bruckner 9. But this recording is truly something special- from the masterful interpretation, to the high-quality recording. The last Bruckner symphony talks about grandeur and nullity, about self-doubt and certainty, about life and death. Every listener has to find out on his own if András Keller and his musicians convey the message trustworthily. They tried honestly, that was obvious in every minute of these 5 recording days.

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

"[This recording] is well worth hearing, as any decent account of this masterpiece is, for the light it sheds on passages one may not have noted before. The recording has superb depth and range." -- Michael Tanner, International Record Review

This is a re-release of an SWRmusic-Bestseller, containing the concert recording of Bruckner's No.9 from September 20th, 1996 at the Stuttgart Liederhalle, conducted by one of the most prominent conductors of the 20th century, Carlo Maria Giulini. Carlo Maria Giulini was born in Barletta in 1914 and concluded his study of conducting at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome. He debuted as a conductor in 1944 with the Augusteo Orchestra, and at the same time became Fernando Previtali’s assistant in the orchestra of the RAI in Rome. Giulini gave up conducting in 1998. His life’s work includes a large number of phonograph recordings with, among them, the Vienna Philharmonic, which counted Giulini as its most important conductor for many years. After a long illness, Carlo Maria Liulini died in June 2005, and was laid to rest in the family chapel in Bolzano.

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

With nearly 450 years of tradition, the Staatskapelle Berlin is one of the oldest orchestras in the world.Daniel Barenboim has served as its music director since 1992, and in 2000 the orchestra appointed him Chief Conductor for Life. Having already performed important cycles such as Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann together, Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle turned their focus toward Anton Bruckner's last six Symphonies, performed in the Philharmonie Berlin in the course of only one week in June 2010. “This music is more serious and more significant than one had thought”, the Berliner Zeitung summarized in its review of Daniel Barenboim’s celebrated Bruckner cycle with the Staatskapelle Berlin. Bruckner’s unfinished Symphony No. 9 brought to an end, in a poignant manner, the work of one of the greatest symphonic composers of the Classic-Romantic era.Once more the essential elements of Bruckner’s symphonic style are present; the technical standard, the intensity of sound, and the enormous richness of expression are in this singular work brought to an unsurpassed level.

Anton Bruckner
Symphony No. 9

Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, WAB 109

Berlin Staatskapelle
Daniel Barenboim, conductor

Recorded live at the Berlin Philharmonie, 27 June 2010

Picture format: 1080i Full-HD
Sound format:PCM Stereo / DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 65 mins
No. of Discs: 1

Classical Music

Classical Music

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

The Staatskapelle Dresden certainly hasn't lost its touch in Bruckner, and happily Christian Thielemann also does his best work in this live performance. He paces all four movements just about perfectly, with enough freedom of pulse (especially in the finale) to keep the rhythms from turning monotonous. The first movement has wonderfully powerful climaxes and the scherzo plenty of joyous energy (save for a couple of unnecessary diminuendo/crescendos at the end of sections).

The adagio is very beautiful, with superb work from the strings, horns, and Wagner tubas. However, both here and in the finale (the coda especially) the trumpets could penetrate a bit more powerfully when they need to ride over the entire orchestra. This may be a function of the recording, which is very natural but perhaps just a touch distant. Still, as a live production it really does convey the thrill of having been there in person. There are many fine versions of this symphony currently available, but you won't be sorry if you add this one to your collection as well.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Also available on Blu-ray

Bruckner’s Eighth is one of the most powerful works in music and the symphony that Bruckner himself regarded as his “opus summum”. This recording by the acknowledged Bruckner master Christian Thielemann and “his” orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, marks the beginning of a cycle of the Austrian composer’s complete symphonies that is to be produced over the course of several years – a living monument of musical architecture! Thielemann’s Bruckner “is so mighty, and with such a depth of sound … that one would have to be hard-hearted not to be touched by this heartfelt music” (Der Tagesspiegel).

Anton Bruckner
SYMPHONY NO. 8

Staatskapelle Dresden
Christian Thielemann, conductor

Recorded live from the Semperoper Dresden, 2012

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Booklet notes: English, German, French
Running time: 88 mins
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)

What makes Bruckner's eighth symphony so special to Jukka-Pekka Saraste is the richness of it's atmosphere. He is always excited by the dramatic first subject of the first movement, which is based on the same rhythmical motive as appears in the beginning of Beethoven's Ninth symphony. Saraste chooses to perform the Haas edition because it contains some fascinating sections taken from Bruckner's first version. In his version, Bruckner, advised by his well-meaning supporters, appears to have tried to create a greater symphonic unity and line.

Classical Music

As a Wagnerian I always had an intimate relationship with Bruckner..... I have performed Bruckner over and over again, all his symphonies. (Karl Böhm in: Life Remembered) The fourth part of our Böhm-cycle presents Bruckner's Eighth as a studio production with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1971. This recording marks the beginning of a unique series of later Bruckner recordings with Karl Böhm from the 1970s. Apart from three recordings made in Dresden in 1936 and in spite of his 'intimate relationship with Bruckner', it was not until the 1970s that Böhm began to record the symphonies of his Austrian compatriot for radio and gramophone. The Eigth Symphony was followed by recordings with the Vienna Philharmonic as well as in 1977 by a live recording of the Seventh Symphony with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. The present CD shows Böhm confidently crafting this most wide-ranging of Bruckner's symphonies, not allowing it to stiffen into forbidding monumentality but dramatising it with a powerful forward impetus and a positively fiery tonal effect.

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

The celebrated Bruckner cycle by the Hamburg Philharmonic under Simone Young saw its completion during the 2014–15 season. On 30 August 2014, this mature, practiced Brucknerian orchestra recorded Bruckner’s radiant Seventh Symphony in the Laeiszhalle, heard live on this CD. With the beauty of its themes and its moving homage to Bruckner‘s great, intimidating model, Wagner, this Symphony - ranking among the composer’s finest orchestral statements - offers a particularly impressive listening experience.

REVIEWS:

The most apposite word I can apply to Simone Young's approach to Bruckner is 'fluidity.' She allows the lyrical melodies of the first two movements to unfold naturally and with a good sense of structural cohesion.

-- BBC Music Magazine

I enjoyed this performance very much. I also liked the sound on this SACD which has presence and definition. There’s a good front-to-back perspective and all sections of the orchestra have been well served by the engineers. In particular the brass, so important in Bruckner’s sound-world, register very satisfyingly yet never excessively.

-- MusicWeb International

This is one of those performances where you feel from the opening phrases that everything is just right. The music soars, yet has all the heft and depth one could want. Orchestral balances are excellent… Above all, the spirit of Bruckner, often felt in the concert hall but so elusive in recordings, is present. This is a glorious Bruckner Seventh.

-- Fanfare

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