Based on these samples, I'm going to cherry pick the Horst Stein 2nd and 6th and the Bohm 3rd and 4th. There are plenty of good used Decca and London LP's on the used market. I have Abbado's more recent 1891 Vienna 1st and I'm among the minority who prefers that version.
The Seekers rushed straight to the top of danish top 20 in the year 65 when i was just 10 years, but Judith Durham’s wonderful voice have stayed in my head ever since.
That's the Immolation Scene which concludes Götterdämmerung and, therefore, the entire Ring. open.spotify.com/track/2H7YChRQIZB4O1MBFrq9HX?si=ae2667366ac04d81
@@classicsdirect Thank you for answering! There is something very special indeed in the way the violins play the beautiful theme towards the end! It is so expressive, so perfectly realized!
I think the commentary gave the impression that the first version of the 8th was the one preferred overall by conductors and musicologists: nothing could be further from the truth - the later version is the one you will find in most concert programmes and recordings and, in my opinion, with full justification. The earlier version is clunky and the changes to its form and the rewritten transitions in the later version could only have been written by Bruckner. The modulations in the lead-ins to the cardinal points sound, surprisingly, given the chronology, much more natural in the later version - as though they had always been intended to sound that way (e.g. the recapitulation in the 1st movement). I would never dream of recommending the earlier version to anyone new to this work. I am happy with either the Haas or Nowak editions of that later version. Haas reinstated some deleted passages from the earlier version. The work sounds fine without them as in the Nowak edition but they are lovely, they add to the experience (there was no artistic reason to delete those particular passages, to my mind) and you get a few more extra minutes of delicious music. It's having one's cake and eating it.
“Your the jewel in God’s creation”, is a part of the lyrics in this wonderful song. As a singer it was Judith Durham who was the jewel in God’s creation. She had the most beautiful voice I ever heard in my life coupled with an utterly sublime singing talent. As janmitchell641 below says, “The world has lost a treasure”. Thank God we still have so many recordings of her to listen to!.
The opening tempo is difficult to judge. Klemperer and Celibidache were among the slowest; Stein and Sawallisch were among the fastest. I prefer Haitink's moderate, steady approach, best heard in his live 2017 Bavarian RSO recording.
Solti's "Die Walküre" recording is the weakest of his otherwise supreme Ring Cycle - Hans Hotter as Wotan is past his prime and sounds muffled. Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic perform wonderfully, except for the opera's final moments in the "Magic Fire" music - the various sections of the orchestra start going out of sync. The best Walküre for me is the Leinsdorf recording with George London as Wotan and Birgit Nilsson as Brunhilda - both were in the prime of their careers and were in spectacular voice on the recording dates. London really does sound like a God, while Nilsson gives a much better performance than what is heard on the Solti recording. The Leinsdorf recording also sounds better - there is a very spacious and wide stereophonic production that makes everything sound all the more grand.
That was a brave effort - to compile a program on such a massive amount of wonderful music. I bought my first Bruckner LP (#6) on a sale, and have been a lover of his music for about 65 years. Thank you!
Germany was once known as the "land of poets and thinkers", not of musicians. When a David Hurwitz (🤮) effectively dismisses the entire genre of Lieder as quaint or whatever, it is an indication of a fundamental miscalculation. Strauss, Mahler, Wolf, Brahms, Pfitzner, Löwe, Robert Franz, Schumann and obviously Schubert were all arguably first song composers. And not coincidentally, Richard Wagner, who was responsible for joining opera, symphony and drama into a unified art work, in his capacity as symphonic conductor, and as the founder of an entire school of conducting style, referred to "melos" as the guiding principle in conducting symphonies.
@@mediolanumhibernicus3353 No. As coined by John Berke, the "Bruckner moment" is that epiphany in our our teens or whenever when we first hear this music and experience something akin to a seizure. It is intensely subjective and spontaneous and couldn't have less to do with a temporal cultural whim.
Are you able to explain why there are two different composers, both using the name Giuseppe Verdi? There is the composer of light and inconsequential operas such as La Traviata, Nabucco and Rigoletto and the composer of serious operas such as Otello, Simon Boccanegra and Don Carlos. In fact, for many years I completely dismissed Verdi's music - that is until I heard Otello for the first time and I was forced to reconsider. What is the explanation for thie two different styles? Did he have two personalities, similar to Schumann's Floerestan and Eusebius or is there some other reason why his operas are so different?
Would you care to tell us some examples of passages you consider to be dross? I'm not challenging your opinion: I just wanted to appreciate where you are coming from. Were any of those passages featured in this video? Only one example springs to mind for me: it's in the middle of the imcomplete finale of the 9th when, after the big fugue, a build-up over a pedal point featured simple and bland harmony leading to a new, undistinguished, halting and repetitive theme introduced during the development and finishing with a pause bar after what sound like wrong notes! I cannot help feeling he would have revised this out of existence had he lived.
wow! I am the first person to comment on this! This video is fresh! I am very much obsessed with unfinished symphonies (and getting obsessed with Bruckner in general)...I will start listening to this episode now...
I have met some people who prefer the first version: one included the widow of the composer Tintner but that is the version her late husband recorded so she may have been influenced by personal loyalty! I think they are wrong and that the revised version is far superior. The Haas version is my guilty pleasure as the earlier version did have some nice extra bars Bruckner cut out of the revision unnecessarily and which are nice to have back.
Know that this talk focuses mostly on the various Bruckner editions. Newcomers or those seeking the heart of these towering works should look elsewhere. I think you should not worry, initially, about editions; just let the music work its magic.
This video needs an addendum. The nullified Symphony in d-Minor is not the next symphony he wrote after his study symphony! It was written AFTER the 1st and before the 2nd Symphony. It's kind of an embarassement that people talking about Bruckner still make that mistake.
My understanding was that it was started before the 1st but completed after it. Do you know if that belief has now been conclusively debunked by more recent evidence?
This video is amazing. My one complaint is that I feel like the Vienna philharmonic played the coda from the 8th like an amateur high school orchestra.
