RECORDING OF THE MONTH
Anton BRUCKNER (1824-1896)
Symphony No 9 in D minor (1891-1896)
(Movements 1-3 ed. Leopold Nowak; Movement 4 in performance version by Samale-Phillips-Cohrs-Mazzuca
(1983-2012, Conclusive revised Edition 2012))
Berliner Philharmoniker/Sir Simon Rattle
rec. live, 7-9 February 2012, Philharmonie Berlin. DDD
EMI CLASSICS 9529692 [82:10]
Sir Simon Rattle’s recent live recording of Bruckner’s Fourth
Symphony in 2006 received a mixed reception. I have myself had my reservations,
ranging from mild to serious, regarding the success of some of his forays
into Brahms, Strauss and Mahler, but this latest release seems to me to be
the finest thing he has done with the Berlin Philharmonic to date.
Some have expressed the usual concerns about a slight muddiness in the sound
EMI has given him here, although I suspect that has more to do with the acoustics
inherent in the construction of the Philharmonie hall itself and the difficulty
engineers have in capturing the clarity of a live performance. Certainly any
deficiency is not serious enough to detract from the pleasure I derive from
listening to this thrilling performance.
Rattle has in the past appeared to lack a convincing overview and defaulted
into a certain fussy delicacy in his interpretation of composers like Brahms,
Strauss and Bruckner who respond to the big bow-wow treatment. No such problem
here; he maintains the kind of sumptuous sound for which Karajan made the
BPO (in)famous whilst ensuring that he eschews the “soupiness”
which could afflict recordings from the Karajan era.
There is a massive solidity and a rich sonority about the playing here. I
heard one little blip in the horns at 2:41 into the first movement but otherwise
the orchestra’s virtuosity throughout is breathtaking. I was also concerned
that Rattle would be too clinical when I heard him first scud rather too blithely
over the descending string figure five minutes in. That’s the point
at which Giulini applies a little rubato and makes so poignant. That said,
my list of nit-picking was never extended beyond that point as I became utterly
absorbed by Rattle’s glorious commitment. The climax to this opening
movement is both grand and urgent, showcasing the BPO in full flight.
The Scherzo is, in my experience, pretty difficult to foul up even under a
merely moderately gifted conductor and orchestra. Here it goes just as it
should; the lift and precision of the pizzicato passages are a joy.
In the Adagio, Rattle is up against stiff competition from the likes of Giulini
in his mesmerising accounts with both the VPO and in Stuttgart. Even so, he
has the measure of the movement, providing us with stunning vistas as the
D major trumpet theme ascends to the summit. There’s an aureate glow
in the strings for the Dresden Amen and a crushing dissonant climax.
For many the main interest here will be the stamp of legitimacy this recording,
and the performances from which it was derived, confer upon the latest and
last version of the Samale-Phillips-Cohrs-Mazzuca completion of the fourth
movement. There have been several recordings of this but none this recent
asserting that this is the “Conclusive Revised Edition”. The most
apt comparison to be made is with the superb Naxos recording by Johannes Wildner
with the New Philharmonic Orchestra of Westphalia but that was made in 1998
and used the 1996 revision, in which you may hear the inclusion of a passage
now deleted. Before the Berlin concerts, Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs explained that
he and his collaborators agreed to remove sixteen bars containing a pianissimo
and a crescendo in the interests of not interrupting the momentum from the
beginning of the chorale recapitulation up to the end of the coda. This is
a change I regret as I find the original idea very effective; otherwise the
textures and colours of these final thoughts could hardly sound more convincingly
Brucknerian. While I find the Carragan ending used by Gerd Schaller in his
excellent set of three symphonies from the Ebrach Festival on the Profil label
to be highly entertaining, I suspect that we are hearing from Rattle the closest
we shall ever get to Bruckner’s own thoughts. Rattle welds the three
disparate themes, drawing on motivic elements from the preceding movements,
into a cohesive and captivating whole. He emphasises the violence of the jagged
first theme before transmuting it into a Dead March. Then the horns embrace
the grand, broad Wagnerian melody over pulsating strings - magical.
Ralph Moore
Massive solidity … rich sonority … magical.
Masterwork Index: Bruckner 9