It's all in a day's work. Check out the unbelievable emails and press releases I received, all on the same day. You're not gonna believe just how crazy this business can get.
The recordings section is a goldmine indeed. Dozens of rare, historic, out of print or premiere releases of Bruckner symphonies in Flac format, some merely interesting for hardcore completists (like all the obscure in-house stuff from unknown orchestras and conductors) but some really exciting and important items as well. I just listened to the 1941 recording of Bruckner's 5th with Paul van Kempen and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra. That is, if it's really that, I can't find any evidence online that Van Kempen ever recorded the 5th. But whatever it is, it's tight, gripping and monumental, in quite spacious mono sound. Too bad the really bad shellac (?) source adds loads of noise resembling the Wehrmacht marching on a gravel path.
I'm not one of those "the score is a sacred text and the conductor is forever subservient to it" types. But my goodness, I think John Cage scholars are more faithful to his respective scores than the Bruckner fanatics.
Remember those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books from the early 80s? This should be the International Bruckner Society’s next venture-funding recordings where the music stops every two bars and you get to choose whether you hear a measured or unmeasured tremolo.
Frankly, I have a hard time understanding the point of Bruckner scholarship, since his mature output is so slim. Nine mature symphonies (or maybe seven, if you discount the first two numbered symphonies as "not fully" mature), plus a handful of choral works. It seems that Bruckner scholars have to compensate for the lack of musical territory to investigate by multiplying versions of no particular interest from an aesthetic point of view. I can understand the incentive and the need for investigating prolific but undervalued composers such as Telemann. If I were a musicologist, I might devote my life to examining the less well known works of Schubert--amazingly prolific from an early age. When it comes to Bruckner, however, I would think the more interesting paths to explore would be those of cultural context--late 19th Century Austria, such as the impact of the Cecelian movement on Catholic composers. But the proliferation of versions and completions really doesn't interest listeners and concertgoers, such as myself, who love Bruckner's music but for whom the standard editions (Haas, Nowak, etc.) serve our needs perfectly well.
Exactly because Bruckner's output is so slim (relatively speaking, that is, and only pertaining the number of works), of course desperate Bruckner scholars have to take recurse to desperate measures to butter their bread!
@@jensguldalrasmussen6446 Indeed. And if you or anyone else reading this has ever engaged in doctoral study, you will know how difficult it is to find a topic that hasn't been thoroughly researched. My field was philosophy, not musicology, but even back then (1980's) it was almost impossible to find an angle on the philosopher I chose for my dissertation--even though the philosopher in question (Kierkegaard) wrote voluminously on every topic under the sun. Why, then, Bruckner for musicologists? Why not the forgotten works of Mendelssohn (a favorite topic of Dave's) or the masses and motets of Cozzolani (one of the first and greatest women composers)?
@@davidaiken1061 Allthough ridiculed by many of his contemporaries, my dysphoric compatriote can't complain about the recognition and attention, he has received the last 150 years...well, on second thoughts, he might exactly just do that, complain, and consider it another thorn in the flesh!
@@jensguldalrasmussen6446 If SK hadn't existed we would have had to invent him, if only to be the patron saint of curmudgeons everywhere. Of course, Dave Hurwitz has my nomination for patron saint of musical curmudgeons. And concerning Bruckner, another quasi-curmudgeon, one can say that he was perhaps the only composer in history to try and live out, at least musically, SK's dictum, "purity of heart is to will one thing." AB spent his entire carer as a symphonist trying to compose that "One Thing" which would express the Mysterium Tremendum. He failed at that--no surprise--but at times he came startlingly close.
Idea for a boxed set: Every possible Music Minus One version of every possible version of every Bruckner Symphony. On 999 cds, with a book-length essay by Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs and a complete set of mental health facility commitment papers.
BRUCKNER 4 - already has these incarnations: 1874 version (Nowak 1975) 1878 version with "Volksfest" finale (Nowak 1981) 1878 version with "Volksfest" finale (Carragan 2012) 1878 version with "Volksfest" finale (Haas 1936) 1881 revision (aka 1878/80) (Haas 1936) 1886 revision (aka 1878/80) (Nowak 1953) 1880 First performance version - Unpublished 1888 Schalk/Loewe version (Gutmann 1889) 1888 Schalk/Loewe version (Korstvedt 2004) 1895 Mahler revision of 1888 Version That’s just the ones I have been able to figure out, Somebody is planning to make some money out of this, or they wouldn’t do it. What will this one be called? This is nuts.
I've literally never cared about which edition of Bruckner I'm listening to. Don't care if its Nowak or Haas or Schwitzingdoodlebangerhoff. I only care if its Abbado, or Bernstein, or Wand or Karajan or Walter or Giulini, etc etc.
A small number of composers attract more than a normal share of fanatics, similarly with conductors. Composers that spring to mind are Bruckner, Wagner and (in the UK anyway) Brian. From time to time Pettersson, Part, Schnittke and Glass have shown up on the fringes of this body. Conductors might include Mengelberg, Furtwangler, Carlos Kleiber, Celibidache and Karajan. Why some and not others is food for thought. Maybe serious analysis by scholars even. No, wait a minute ................................
A friend of mine convinced a collector he knew that there was a Mahler 2nd recording conducted by Frank Sinatra. Then again I have the rare recording of Frank Sinatra performing the long lost vocalise version of the Frank Sonata!
Heathkit--haven't heard that term in a long time. . . How about having every member of the orchestra determine which measure variants they'll play. Bruckner meets Ives. My brain hurts.
I think I'll spend Christmas Day devouring a fruitcake while listening to Remy Ballot's partial Bruckner cycle on loop. Relatives will happily quarantine themselves from me if Delta is still surging. Edited to add: not sure if there's a critical edition or urtext, but I know Rozhedestvensky and Nanut have recorded Bruckner 4 with cuts made by Mahler.
The Mengelberg prank was hilarious. Your remarks about the Bruckner edition of the 4th reminded me of Gardiner's programmable 3 disc Arkiv Messiah with ALL of Handel's many variant versions insertable at will. Likewise the Barenreiter Urtext score of Berlioz' Benvenuto Cellini with all of those separate systems, bars, pages for different versions (Paris 1, Paris 2, Weimar) which makes it nearly impossible to follow any given recorded performance unless you're extremely quick, agile and, irony of ironies, stop really listening to the music while you find the next set of measures or pages you need to flip to. Or use the pause function. This new Bruckner must be exponentially worse. How about using I Ching randomness to determine which form your Bruckner performance will take?
That score of Benvenuto Cellini has a perverse logic to it after a while but was probably better dealt with by issuing three different full scores for P1, P2, and W. I dread to think what the orchestral parts must look like if they’re beset with the same nightmarish maze of insertions, omissions, cuts, ossia staves, and jumps backwards and forwards.
David ~ That's a hoot, as so many of your video reviews and chats are. I recall reading Victor Carr's April Fool's review of the “Gunter Wand Commemorative Edition,” a box set that supposedly contained all of Wand's recordings of the Bruckner 9th, with a booklet in which Richard Osborne opined that Wand had intended to record the symphony nine times, each different from the previous one. Boy, was I excited!--until I calmed down and came to my senses. So yes, you could call me those beyond-crazy Brucknerians-or at least a sometime fellow traveler of some of them. In my travels in Brucker-Land, I've become personally acquainted with John Berky, and can attest that he's exactly as you describe him. But here's the thing: Not only do I know Mr Berky, but I've also been mistaken for him on several occasions. We bear some vague similarity to one another in height, physique, and hair style; we both wear glasses, and we both love Bruckner's music. But nobody who knows John Berky would think I'm him. As far as I know, no-one's ever mistaken him for me. Some examples: In Vienna, the manager of the hotel where we were staying during the Bruckner Tour of Austria once addressed me as “Herr Berky.” A few days later, in St Florian, a stranger came up to me and said “Hello John”--which happens to be my name too, which makes things even more confusing for me--”How are you? Don't you remember, we met at the Brucknertage a few years ago...” No, I don't remember you, because I'm not John Berky and I've never attended the Brucknertage. At the Bruckner conference in Oxford, a British Brucknerian struck up a conversation with me with the words “John, you have a wonderful website. Can I buy that Bruckner recording by so-&-so from you?” No, because I don't have a website. But you can call me John. Believe me, it easy isn't being John Berky, unless you're John Berky. But it's fun, if initially confusing, to be mistaken for him. ~ Cheers, John Drexel
This is hilarious. I once forged a letter by C.P.E. Bach in which he described an instrument invented by his father, "translated" by Stephen L. Clark as "lap organ". This, in conjunction of a set of 18th-century plans, discovered in Leipzig, for a bellows-type instrument with a keyboard and a panel of buttons marked with figured bass, evidence that Bach had invented the forerunner of the modern accordion - certainly reason enough to consider performances of Bach's music on the accordion authentic. All this was posted to a facebook group called Pretentious Classical Music Elitists. Few got the joke, most were incredulous, and at least one person spent all night doing research on the internet, and subsequently demanded I produce my sources (to which I replied, "You can't find everything on the internet"). I would send the letter to you, but this very practical joke got me expelled from the group by a humorless moderator and I no longer have access to it.
Bruckner demonstrably got better as his career progressed. It is not like Brucknet peaked early. His revised and refined ideas are way better than his first drafts and early work in general. This is actually pretty disrespectful to Bruckner himself. Just play the better versions..Scraps and drafts are just not performance worthy.
May I interest you in the semi-aleatoric bruckner 4th? The orchestra sections get to play all versions simultaneously. I happen to have the only recording available (conducted posthumously by Anton, himself).
It's a shame I don't care for Bruckner's music. Working through his oeuvre trying to sort through all of the competing versions sounds like it could be an interesting hobby.
Yes. I remember having to make sure the Nowak versions of Bruckner Symphonies were not confused with the other versions. It drove me crazy.I even remember Karl Haas on radio KKHI in San Francisco commenting on this dilemma .
Question, is there any other composer as complicated as Anton Bruckner? It's both funny and a shame that we don't really know what the composers final intentions were, of this amazing music. Great talk David... thanks...
Now just imagine the level of mayhem if they couldn't get the player's parts printed in time, and everyone had to read their part off an I-Pad (which is not that uncommon!). That would be fun.
Sooooo disappointed. Really was ready to buy ‘1812 minus the cannons’. Wanted to use my own cannons that have been stored in my backyard for ages. Bummer.
Why not just slice and dice all of the movements, print them in module form, and allow the performers to choose at random what to play? Then we could change the subtitle from "The Romantic" to "Available Forms III"...
What a wonderful rant! 👍 And now it is proven, indeed, and beyond reasonable doubt, that the deacons and archdeacons of the 'Bruckner Gemeinde' (i.e. the congregation of the true believers) are utterly bonkers!! Though, the venerable mr. Cohrs has created an entity, that perfectly teams in thematically with your Mengelberg April's fool: Music Minus One - a symphony without the composer!
A number of comments: - 1. I have something in mind for April 1st. next year! 2. My favourite Bruckner 4 is Bruno Walter 1960; I think he uses the Haas edition. 3. If they can do that with Bruckner 4, how about Handel's Messiah?
Nicholas McGegan did a recording of Messiah on Harmonia Mundi that includes many of Handel's alternate versions of various numbers. Unfortunately, it's a pretty dull performance.
Your Mengelbert review has reminded me a fake Musicweb review about Mahler's suposedly lost and newly found monumental violin concerto. It was a fake, but kept me searching the CD some few months. As for this Bruckner's 4th edition, I believe what editors really want is (using a famous Spanish expression) keeping on squeezing the cow to get more brucknerian milk. For me, it is really disrespectful for old Anton.
Do you think that this German historian is the same one who catalogued all of the species of palm trees in the world? You know - the scholarly Fronds List.
The Cohrs "urtext" is demented. Conductors should stick to 1874 Nowak, 1881 (aka 1878/80) Haas and 1886 (aka 1878/80) Nowak. The 1888 texts are either spurious (Loewe/Gutmann and Mahler) or unduly influenced by Bruckner's colleagues (Korstvedt). The 1878 Volksfest Finale is a failure, albeit a rather interesting one. Regardless, it doesn't belong in the concert hall, and the handful of recording that we have of it suffice.
Jansons does it in his RCO and BRSO versions, which are relatively recent recordings of what is otherwise the 1878-80 version. The crash is essentially borrowed from the 1888 version, a practice that was more popular decades ago when performing the 1878-80 version. Karajan did the same thing in his DG recording.
Love Bruckner's Fourth, but even I was getting confused by all of these critical and orch. text editions. What we need now, is a revision of the revision of the revision of the revised alternate version. That will keep you busy from here till eternity.
my beautiful brucknerverse needs a “horowitz-version” where people either accept it or don’t, but if they don’t then it’s entirely on them and nobody else… it’s the need for official permanent validation while also eliminating all other versions from collective memory… that’s the damn problem…
Volksfest should be dropped, it conjures up some ghastly Third Reich 'cultural event'. I see some of the Brucknerati are suggesting that the old, corrupt editions should count as valid versions, as that is how audiences heard them until 1945. The same thing happened to Wordsworth, the Cornell Wordsworth Edition includes every single revision and draft that he made. The Prelude takes up in its various versions four volumes occupying well over three thousand pages.
Although I love your April Fool’s reviews on Classics Today, occasionally I’m also fooled. Like when I caught the one Victor Carr did on Gunter Wand’s attempt to do nine recordings of Bruckner 9. He went into great detail about the first minute of the piece and how each recording of that section was performed. It was so well done, that I had no idea it was a joke. I guess I’m crazy too. 😄
