Posted on 10/24/2005 4:22:42 PM PDT by EveningStar
I've never heard the first movement coda handled with such perfect pacing. The 31 bars of careening Wagnerian strings building to the brass crescendo were exquisite, and I found myself reaching for my handkerchief at the cadence.
My Jochum recording of the Eighth has moments that are striking beside the finale's coda. The opening of the slow movement has always been a perfect depiction of the night sky to me.
All of that is so true.
It is a short throw from the sublime to the maudlin to the ridiculous.
Bruckner covers it all. Not the easiest of 19th century composers, but really worth the effort.
The ninth, the eighth, the seventh and naught 00 symphonies are monumental and really grow on you.
Si vale la pena.
Brilliant! I was trying to think of a way to say what I think about Bruckner. This says it all.
The critic's point about a great performance being necessary to appreciate Bruckner is right on the mark. Bruckner ("trumpeter") is above all the greatest composer for brass, ever, building on and surpassing Richard Wagner. Bruckner symphonies regularly feature Wagner tubas, and Bruckner was about the only composer to use them besides Wagner himself. I can tell you that playing in a full brass section belting out Bruckner is an ecstatic, transcendent experience. Here in the United States our premier brass sections have always been in the Cleveland and Chicago symphonies. In Europe it's any of the great Vienna orchestras of course, the Berliner Philharmonik, and the Concertgebouw Orchestra. These orchestras, and particularly their angelic brass sections, can be counted on to elevate the playing for most any conductor, and particularly those Germanics with a mystical connection to Bruckner. Viva Bruckner!
seen this?
When I worked in London, the building Bloomberg News was located in (City Gate House) had a plack saying that Anton Bruckner lived there. I don't know if many people noticed it, but I was happy to. So, I do have a connection to him.
No, I hadn't. Thanks.
Finally! Another fan of the great Russian composers! Sometimes I've thought I was their only fan on FR!
I'm not as familiar with Bruckner as others, but what I've heard I like - the symphony I heard was brisk and full of passion. However, it seemed to me that the tempo had to be just right to carry off the energy of the piece, otherwise it would have sounded pompous or dirge-like.
Contact "sitetest" and get on the classical music ping list if you aren't already on it to help me out from time to time!
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000002ZGK/qid=1130253344/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/104-5031562-8670344?v=glance&s=classical&n=507846
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000001415/qid=1130253344/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-5031562-8670344?v=glance&s=classical&n=507846
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00000J9H8/qid=1130253344/sr=8-6/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl15/104-5031562-8670344?v=glance&s=classical&n=507846
A favorite a capella group of mine is the Voices of Ascension, but I checked and they do not offer a recording of Bruckner pieces, but if you like a capella choral music, especially Renaissance motets, check out Voices of Ascension.
And now a humourous story about ol' Anton:
The following incident is from Jan Swafford's 1997 biography of Brahms, page 500 of the original hardcover:
Outlandish stories about Bruckner went the rounds in Vienna, many of them true. Part of what Brahms and others could never quite get over was that Bruckner the composer of epic symphonies behaved, much of the time, like a nincompoop. There were, for instance, the incidents regarding the Beethoven and Schubert remains. Both composers were exhumed in 1888 for reburial in "Graves of Honor" in Vienna's Central Cemetery. Before reburial the coffins were opened for the inspection of doctors and scientists. Bruckner, then sixty-four, showed up uninvited on both occasions. When he saw Beethoven's open casket, he shoved past the horrified doctors and seized the skull in both his hands, staring into the empty sockets as if he were trying to divine the sublime riddle of genius, and declaimed in his Upper Austrian drawl,"Now ain't it true, dear Beethoven, that if you were alive today you'd allow me to touch you? And now them strange gentlemen here want to forbid me that!" He had to be forcibly removed. Beethoven's bones may be decorated to this day by a lens from Bruckner's spectacles, which fell out during the ruckus. He pulled the same stunt at Schubert's exhumation, refusing to release the skull until they allowed him to place it in the coffin himself.
Just don't ask me what "Upper Austrian drawl" for "ain't" was.
Bruckner being a very pious Catholic probably placed great store in the mystical power of relics. Who is to say that this eccentric genius was not physically inspired by this pilgrim act? It sounds like the epitome of Romanticism. Bruckner's best work is certainly in sympathy with the grandeur of Beethoven and the sublimity of Schubert.
Man, I like this guy. He really couldn't help it. He is driven by the muse.
A lot of people stand by the wayside, but some folks go right up and dig in. He certainly did, by the sound of it. I am interested in his compositions after he did these impassioned things.
....not that I'm recommending that others do it....
After 1888 he continued to revise a lot of his earlier works. Here's a list of what he completed (for the first time) during and after that year: Symphony # 9 as far as he got it (3 movements: he suggested near the end of his life his 1884 Te Deum could be used as a finale for his 9th: I may try that tonight), Tantum ergo (5 settings: he'd composed a number of settings of this earlier), Traumen und Wachen, Das deutsche Lied, Psalm 150, Vexilla regis, Helgoland, and Tafellied.
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