Bruckner began work
on what was to be his last symphony
in 1891 though some of the material
was sketched as early as 1887. By the
end of 1894 he had completed the first
three movements and serious work commenced
on the finale in May 1895. Throughout
this period his health was increasingly
weak and towards the end he began to
realize with growing certainty that
the physical effort of composing a huge
finale would be beyond him. In his last
months he advocated that his setting
of the Te Deum be employed as
the finale but this must have been a
counsel of despair for the key of the
Te Deum is C major. Both in terms
of key and mood that work was a long
way from the music he had composed for
the symphony up to that point.
At his death a large
amount of sketch material was left,
some of which was detached (by fair
means or foul) from the rest. Over time
many of the missing pages of the sketch
have come to light and have been reunited
with the corpus of the sketch.
What has been recorded here is an attempt
by a number of Bruckner scholars to
make a performing edition of the sketches.
I think I’m right in saying that this
is not the first such attempt to be
recorded. There was a version some years
ago for Chandos, conducted by Yoav Talmi
but I believe that that recording was
not of exactly the same edition as Naxos
present here (though Naxos don’t present
this as a première recording.)
The ‘new’ music, as
recorded here, lasts 23’28" and,
sensibly, Naxos include it by itself
on the second CD. It is about 600 bars
long and most of it is by Bruckner –
the editors have interpolated some bars
where there were gaps in the material.
The story is told in reasonable enough
detail for the general reader in the
liner notes accompanying this release.
The annotator, Benjamin-Gunnar Coles
admits that the material constitutes
the movement in a "second-to-last
phase of its completion" and argues
strongly for the legitimacy of the completion.
The key issue for the
listener has to be ‘does it work?’ My
verdict can only be an interim one at
this stage, I think. This is because
I am so used to hearing the work in
its three-movement form that I find
it very difficult to adjust to hearing
another lengthy movement after the wonderful
adagio has died away. I must say, however,
that my provisional reaction to date
is that I don’t feel this completion
is successful. Much of the music that
we hear does sound authentically Brucknerian
in terms of timbre and ambience but
even so there are passages that simply
jar. Perhaps the most obvious case of
this is at 20’14" (I’ve not seen
a score of this movement) where a tutti
is underpinned by the timpani. However,
the timpanist is not playing a roll
as is usual in Bruckner, nor even an
ostinato on one note, as in the Sixth
Symphony. Instead the player is called
upon to play what I can only call a
tattoo. I can’t recall anything like
this in Bruckner; it sounds wrong.
That’s a detail of
scoring. More seriously, however, the
musical material is episodic and disjointed.
I can’t get away from the feeling that
if Bruckner had felt that he had more
time at his disposal he would have re-ordered
his material quite significantly and,
perhaps would have re-composed much
of it. I have found it difficult to
discern the shape of this movement.
In the wrong interpretative hands a
Bruckner movement can sometimes sound
episodic but I don’t think this is the
problem here. The musical material is
not organized into a finished article;
it doesn’t flow logically. Furthermore,
the themes don’t make a strong impression.
In short, the movement doesn’t hang
together. It sounds crude in parts and
it fails to convince me that this is
how Bruckner would have been content
to sum up what had gone before.
I readily acknowledge
that this is a view that I might alter
over time with increased familiarity
with the movement (though I don’t think
so). For all the claims made on behalf
of this edition this is nowhere near
as convincing as the case for the performing
version of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony where
Deryck Cooke (and others) were able
to work from a sketch that had been
left fully-composed but not orchestrated.
The editors of this Bruckner score seem
to have relied, understandably, on Bruckner’s
compositional habits to argue that what
he left was not far from the finished
article. They may well be right. However,
on this occasion I think one must take
into account his increasingly feverish
attempts to finish the movement. As
I say, with more time for reflection
I suspect he might have revised significantly
the material he left behind. The jury
must still be out but so far I am not
convinced.
What of the performance?
Well, what are here the middle two movements
seem to me to be fairly successful.
The scherzo is well done and, in the
Adagio, conductor Johannes Wildner adopts
a fairly steady and purposeful pulse,
something which he does not always achieve
in the first movement. The first movement
began reasonably well but as it progressed
I became concerned by two things. The
first, a subjective thing, is what appears
to be a matter of fact approach to the
music. I didn’t feel it was being moulded
and shaped sufficiently. One case of
this is the passage between letters
O and R (14’01" to 15’30")
which here almost sounds like a jaunty
march. It’s not an easy passage to bring
off but Georg Tintner, in a rival Naxos
disc seems to me to pace the passage
better and therefore to convey its spirit
more satisfactorily. Tintner, by the
way, uses the Haas edition of the score
and it’s clear from his strongly worded
liner note that the completion of the
finale would be anathema to him.
The second concern
I have in the first movement is an uncertain
approach to tempo. On several occasions
Wildner quickens or slows the pace even
though there is no marking in the score
(I followed a Nowak edition of the score,
as used by Wildner.) The tendency to
press on, I’d say, betrays a lack of
patience, so crucial in Bruckner. Patience
and concentration are the hallmarks
of the great Bruckner interpreters such
as Haitink, Tintner and Wand. I’m not
convinced that Wildner is of their calibre.
It must also be said
that the performance could be better.
The playing is decent enough but too
often it is undermined by the orchestra’s
seeming inability to play really quietly.
For example, in the first movement just
before cue J (9’40") Wildner fails
to get his players down to a genuine
pianissimo. What we hear is more
like mp and as a result all sense
of mystery is lost. This is not an isolated
example. In fairness to the players,
this may be partly due to the recorded
sound. This is a bit closely balanced,
which means that in the huge climaxes
there’s insufficient space round the
sound and the tuttis become congested
and fierce. Also the orchestra seems
to lack real depth of tone in the lower
strings. This is crucial in Bruckner.
In summary, it would
be perverse to recommend this as a performance
of the conventional three movement version
when there are so many other better
versions on the market, not least Naxos’s
own rival version under Tintner. The
completion of the finale is an interesting
curiosity but no more than that, I’d
venture to suggest. Consequently, I
find it hard to give a strong recommendation
to this release, enterprising though
it is. However at the Naxos price one
can sample without a vast financial
outlay.
Let the last word rest
with that notable symphonist and Bruckner
authority, Robert Simpson. Writing of
the Adagio of the Ninth he commented
as follows. "So ends Bruckner’s
uncompleted life’s work. Though
we may regret the absence of the vast
background to all this that might have
been disclosed by an achieved finale,
we may be grateful that this last Adagio,
though it is not his most perfect, is
his most profound." Like Simpson
I’m more than happy to stick with three
majestic movements that are indisputably
as Bruckner intended them to be.
John Quinn
New Philharmonic Orchestra of Westphalia/Johannes
Wildner 