Anton BRUCKNER (1824-1896)
Symphony No. 8 in C minor (1887 version, ed. Leopold Nowak) [95:00]
The Cleveland Orchestra/Franz Welser-Möst
rec. live, August 2010, Severance Hall, Cleveland, USA
Bonus: pre-concert talk - Dee Perry, William Cosel and Franz Welser-Möst
[17:00]
Picture: NTSC/16:9, 1080i Full HD
Sound: PCM Stereo, dts-HD Master Audio 5.1
Region: 0 (worldwide)
ARTHAUS MUSIK BLU-RAY 108 069 [112:00]
Bruckner’s Eighth is the composer’s most Olympian symphony, so
it requires heroic interpeters to stride its vast, open spaces and scale its
mighty peaks. Among its finest exponents are conducting gods and demi-gods
of the past and present, among them Hans Knappertsbusch, Wilhelm Furtwängler,
Herbert von Karajan, Eugen Jochum, Sergiu Celibidache, Carlo Maria Giulini,
Pierre Boulez and Günter Wand. The latter’s final recording for
RCA is glorious, and the Berliners respond to the ageing maestro’s lofty
vision with playing of incandescent reach and power.
Sadly that performance is on CD only, although it was also issued on SACD
as part of a box that now fetches silly money on the Internet. On DVD, I’ve
seen Boulez’s fine account with the Wiener Philharmoniker, but for all
its felicities - and there are many - it’s surprisingly short on the
epiphanies the work demands. Celibidache’s famous Munich performance
- which I caught on a television arts channel some years ago - is another
matter entirely; it may be rather long - even though he uses the shorter 1890
Nowak edition - but it never seems ponderous or self-defeating. His detractors
will say otherwise, but for me Celi has a peerless control of the work’s
daunting structure. I’m delighted to see these videos appearing on Blu-ray
- his Berlin Bruckner 7 is on my desk as I write - and I’ll be particularly
pleased to revisit that extraordinary Eighth when it appears.
So where does Franz Welser-Möst fit into this pantheon of Bruckner greats?
I’ve not heard him in this repertoire; indeed, his troubled tenure with
the London Philharmonic - which lasted from 1990 to 1996 - and several of
his EMI recordings made very little impression on me. That said, he seems
to have been much more successful since then, as musical director of both
the Cleveland Orchestra and the Vienna State Opera. His Zurich opera DVDs
- some of them controversial - have done well too.
Back to Bruckner’s Eighth, and we have the perennial problem about which
version is used. I tend to prefer Haas, but I have absolutely no problem with
Leopold Nowak’s edition of the 1887 score, first published in 1972.
The pros and cons of both are well rehearsed, and I won’t repeat them
here. Suffice to say, it’s up to the conductor to convince us of the
rightness of their choice, as all great Brucknerians invariably do. Having
a top-flight orchestra at their fingertips helps - the Cleveland band are
in that august group - but as Celi’s Munich Philharmonic so powerfully
demonstrates that’s not necessarily a prerequisite in this work.
I’ll start with the pre-concert talk, if only to discover the cut of
this maestro’s jib. It’s more of an informal chat, chaired by
Dee Perry, a producer with Cleveland-based public media company ideastream.
Also on stage is video director Bill Cosel, who introduces the audience to
the various cameramen in the hall and talks a little about the challenges
of filming large orchestral concerts. Perry’s questions to Welser-Möst
aren’t terribly illuminating, and his self-conscious replies are rather
awkward. It doesn’t make for comfortable viewing, and reminds me why
I usually give these bonus tracks a wide berth. That said, I wholeheartedly
agree with Welser-Möst that restless and inattentive audiences - all
too often signalled by unguarded coughs and sundry interruptions - can change
the dynamics of a performance quite dramatically. Anyone listening to this
year’s BBC Proms - plagued with tubercular barks and loud throat clearing
- will know whereof he speaks.
The primordial start of this symphony suggests that Welser-Möst’s
reading will major on lucidity rather than loftiness, an impression confirmed
by the forensic clarity of the work’s inner voices. Also, this performance
isn’t as seamless as some, and it lacks the inexorable quality of Wand
and the BP or the nobility and breadth of Celibidache and his Munich band.
That worrying lack of cohesion makes the triumphal coda - one of the more
controversial elements in this edition - seem much more arbitrary than usual.
At this point it’s an efficient performance rather than a great one.
The Clevelanders produce a shiny, chromium-plated sound, but the brass are
much too prominent in the mix. Instrumental balance and blend are just as
crucial in these symphonies as tempi and phrasing; really, this presentation
is just too bright, and it lacks essential warmth and weight. Otherwise the
sonics - in PCM stereo at least - are adequate, but they fall far short of
the best Blu-ray can offer. That said, visuals are sharp and colours are true.
The camerawork is generally unobtrusive, although the use of split screens
is distracting. stracting.
The Scherzo is much more problematic; for a start the very first appearance
of that big, vaulting tune is marred by fractional hesitations - agogic pauses
if you like - that snap the narrative thread. Also, phrasing is ungainly and
articulation is less than crisp, which exposes the joints and seams that others
so artfully conceal; deprived of all its coherence, Bruckner’s writing
becomes little more than a series of rhetorical gestures. The strident brass
doesn’t help, as it makes the big tuttis sound at once grandiose and
gutless. Most damning is the complete lack of feeling here, the great journey
- literal or metaphorical - without incident or epiphany.
If the Scherzo is disappointing the Adagio is dire. I’ve never heard
the tread of this music drag so, or its grief transmuted into self-pity. Even
allowing for the inevitable imprecisions of a live performance the playing
is less than immaculate, the natural breath of this radiant music reduced
to a series of ragged gasps. Brass intonation isn’t terribly good either,
and those pounding timp figures sound remarkably like a steam train chuffing
past at speed. Really, a more unlovely rendition of this glorious music would
be hard to imagine; as for those majestic climaxes - and Nowak’s almost
inaudible cymbals - they’re just a mélange of tangential
textures. Even that most profound and beautiful genuflection at the close
- usually so affecting - left me completely unmoved.
Bruckner’s symphonies, like Mahler’s, are deeply personal, so
a performance that’s as distant and inscrutable as this is doomed to
fail. And fail it does, spectacularly, in the last movement. Welser-Möst
reduces the long spans to a string of non sequiturs, the mighty perorations
- each meant to be more uplifting than the last - made to sound unbearably
loud and vulgar. Even more distressing than this hideous performance is the
frankly second-rate playing of what used to be one of America’s finest
orchestras. And to think Welser-Möst’s contract with them has been
extended until 2018.
Atrocious; a gift to Bruckner’s army of detractors.
Dan Morgan
http://twitter.com/mahlerei
Atrocious; a gift to Bruckner’s army of detractors.