Recorded on two nights, on 8 and 9 October 1993, this
disc joins the rest of Skrowaczewski’s Bruckner cycle. At a surely unprecedented
super budget price this Eighth is a worthy addition to the catalogue
and contains in it manifold examples of the conductor’s long association
with Bruckner (collectors will well remember his Fourth with the Hallé,
last on Carlton). He achieves superb climaxes, perfectly weighted, with
robust and eloquent orchestral playing that never congeals into the
generic. There can be times when a somewhat more individual solo patina
is called for but otherwise the orchestra is responsive and fully equal
to Bruckner’s demands.
At 82.24 this is a slow performance – though not unconscionably
so – but in such matters it is frequently the interrelatedness of tempi
which is of paramount importance and here Skrowaczewski reveals his
strengths as both a thinker in paragraphs and as a master of Brucknerian
punctuation. This is a big and dark-textured performance but listen
to the way the veiled string tone is introduced at 5’12 in the Adagio
to appreciate the level of subtlety and preparation that has gone toward
a performance such as this, a detail which is never mannered and emerges
with just the right weight of tone. Or listen to the control of dynamics
at the close of the same movement to understand and appreciate just
what gradations of sound really mean.
Such flexibility and sensitivity can be found throughout
the discs – the symphony spills onto the second CD, which contains the
finale – and if this cannot for me displace the greatest recordings
committed to disc (Karajan and Knappertsbusch amongst them) it is an
excellent, well-recorded and thoroughly convincing account worthy of
the highest interest.
Jonathan Woolf
Saarbrücken Radio
Symphony Orchestra/Stanislaw Skrowaczewski