Anton Bruckner (1824-1896)
Symphony No 9 in D minor (WAB 109/143)
Budapest Festival Orchestra/Iván Fischer
rec. March 2021, Congress Center, Budapest, Hungary
CHANNEL CLASSICS SACD CCSSA42822 [56]
Many of the Bruckner recordings which have come my way recently share the same fault: excessive haste. Compared with the recommended versions from Sado and Walter in my Bruckner Shortlist, Fischer is here just too impatient, overseeing a very fast performance, some five or six minutes swifter than Karajan’s usual timing, for example. As a result, this leaves a rather rushed and shallow impression.
The recorded sound is, of course, as is virtually always the case with modern digital issues, clear and deep, with great atmosphere and definition. That somewhat compensates for Fischer’s excessive speed but also merely serves to illustrate how, for example, in the first movement, his hurried tempo does not give the excellent horn sufficient time to give his phrases weight and moment. The first climax has considerable heft but is again too fast. A firmer, steadier pulse would have been welcome; the Gesangsperiode three minutes in sounds harried, emerging as decidedly superficial and edging the slickness of film music. The orchestra as a whole, not just the horn, clearly needs more space to make its points, but everything is urged on, without rubato or rallentando, and the shaping of phrases is deficient, with insufficient relaxation and thus hobbled by a lack of flexibility – that is, until eleven minutes in, when for the first time Fischer evidently applies a modicum of rubato and the improvement is immediately noticeable. Then, however, he reverts to habitual hasty mode and the little descending figure on the violins from twenty minutes onwards is thrown away, being without portamento and devoid of mystery, and the triplets and appoggiaturas in the passage leading up to the conclusion sound messy and ill-defined - but it must be admitted that the massive, relentless peroration itself is grand, making one realise how and why what precedes it is too unvarying.
The Scherzo, too, is instantly too fast and perversely playful – really something of a travesty; instead of gazing into the pit of hell we are treated to a goblin dance.
To complete a trio of disappointingly movements, the Adagio instantly comes across as weak and pusillanimous. My listening companion and I played Karajan immediately after auditioning this recording and the contrast was stark; just where Karajan digs in, Fischer pulls back; the contrast is so great that under the two conductors their respective recordings make this symphony emerge sounding like two completely different pieces of music.
As music-making, this is never less than competent, and as with every modern orchestra under a conductor of Iván Fischer’s distinction these days, it has its moments but he essentially misses the sublimity of this great music; in a catalogue groaning with highly desirable recordings of just the three-movement version, let alone those with a completion, this is a non-starter.
Ralph Moore
This review has been commissioned by, and reproduced by kind permission of, The Bruckner Journal.
Published: October 24, 2022
