Schubert, Bruckner: Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Mariss Jansons (conductor) 10.02.2007 (JPr)

Schubert  Symphony No. 3

 

Bruckner Symphony No.3 (1889 version)

 

 

It was wonderful to hear such a fine orchestra living up to its reputation under the baton of one of the world’s finest maestri and, second only to Gergiev, one of the most hard-working. Mariss Jansons is the sixth chief conductor of the orchestra since 1888 in a line that includes Mengelberg, Haitink and Chailly … as most will know. Further common knowledge is that it was conducted in the past by Strauss, Mahler and Stravinsky and prides itself on the almost universal acclaim awarded to its strings, woodwind and brass.

 

So the reason I was not completely overwhelmed was because of the musical programme offered in the first of their two Barbican concerts in the ‘Great Performers’ series. When I visit an art exhibition, say for instance the recent Velasquez one at the National Gallery, I always have to temper my appreciation by having to be realistic by the amount of ‘conservation’ that has been undertaken over the years. How much in the colour and brushwork is original, how much is due to an ‘expert’s’ touching-up?

 

What has this to do with Schubert and Bruckner? Well, Schubert’s Third Symphony is a delightful work with a sunny disposition. He was only 18 when he wrote it but had already composed a great deal in the classical Viennese style of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. But it was undoubtedly originally written as an intimate work, probably for an ad-hoc orchestra that was composed of Schubert family members and their friends, but something that would, as the programme suggests, only have had ’20 strings, plus woodwind, brass and drums’. I didn’t double-check counting the numbers but with a string section of 50 or more all intimacy was dissipated and the work gained the bombast of an overture to a long lost opera. Is this really what Schubert would have wanted? The enchanting clarinet melody and pastoral tune on the oboe that were played with great virtuosity by the Concertgebouw principals made a muted impact and hinted at a much smaller scale original conception than we now hear with the symphony performed in this way.

 

After a performance of Tannhäuser Bruckner became a devotee of Wagner’s music. Bruckner had nothing to offer Wagner (neither money, nor a pliable wife) but Wagner allowed him into his home and offered him encouragement. He particularly liked the Third Symphony and the First movement’s undoubtedly Wagnerian horn call. Bruckner’s enthusiasm for Wagner came back to haunt him in Vienna because it annoyed the arch-conservative musical press and  because Wagner was reviled there. There was the oft-quoted disastrous first performance in 1877. The hall emptied as the concert went on leaving only a few supporters left (including a 17-year-old Gustav Mahler). Bruckner was apparently inconsolable ‘Oh, leave me alone, they don’t want anything of mine’ he is reported as saying.

 

In Stephen Johnson’s programme note he seems to suggest Bruckner had OCD, which is something I cannot find much about elsewhere. He cites his compulsive counting, numbering of bars in manuscripts and his ‘revision’ mania. He is a Bruckner authority and considers that ‘it would be possible to reconstruct as many as nine different versions of the score’. Am I alone in wanting to hear more often the original 1877 one rather than this, to me, anodyne 1889 version?

 

Still this symphony is always called the ‘Wagner’ yet by 1889 most of the Wagner quotations had been excised from the score. It is undoubtedly the most Wagnerian of all of Bruckner’s compositions and I refer back to the call on the trumpets in the first movement, that when Wagner first heard it earned Bruckner the nickname ‘The Trumpet’ because he undoubtedly wished he had first thought of it. There is some Wagner left notably a short passage from Tristan und Isolde in the Adagio, some blazing brass fanfares that hint at Das Rheingold but otherwise it is full of themes, even apart from that minor-major shift in the trumpets that Wagner could have composed but did not. With so many extant version is it not now time to restore in full Bruckner’s original intentions and forget the second-thoughts and the ‘overpainting’ that may have been the result of so much ‘arm-twisting’ due to its reception and from Bruckner’s students and publisher. Didn’t Bruckner strive a little too hard for acceptance?

 

For myself I find the stop-start-stop-start, loud-soft-loud-soft-loud nature of the work (possibly in this version) just a little wearying. The symphony begins with the quasi ‘beginning of time’ pulsing in the strings and concludes at the end of the Finale with the brass resounding out some sort of transfiguration and although Bruckner is quoted as saying that here ‘The polka represents the fun and joy in the world, the chorale its sadness and pain’,but I never felt I was on any sort of journey in this music.

 

No blame in this attaches to the Concertgebouw and their conductor, Mariss Jansons. This was probably a great performance for those who enjoy this symphony more, and the playing sounded wonderfully fresh with that resilient brass section providing the ideal ripe mix for the outbursts. Overall the full-bodied sound was warm, as well as, rich and the always reliable Jansons directed a performance that had, as appropriate, a genteel romanticism to it and was entirely convincing, secure and reliable. Jansons seems, as we should expect, totally at ease with Bruckner’s ‘cathedrals of sound’ musical architecture.

 

My final reflection on a repeat hearing of this Third Symphony is that in this version the nickname ‘The Trumpet’ is appropriate but not entirely apposite for this work. I never appreciated as much as at the Barbican how the great brass chorales are so organ-like, and I left the hall with the image of this devout Catholic composing and hearing those outbursts for first time sitting at his instrument. Why not ‘Bruckner – The Organ’ … or  maybe not?

 

Jim Pritchard