“They want me to write differently. Certainly I could, but I must not. God has chosen me from thousands and given me, of all people, this talent. It is to Him that I must give account. How then would I stand there before Almighty God, if I followed the others and not Him?” - Anton Bruckner
Welcome back to Building a Classical Music Collection. We have reached #35 on our way to the top 50 classical recordings of all-time. It is beginning to dawn on me that there are limited slots remaining to plug in epic recordings. To be clear, there are many more great recordings than slots available in this list. Once this survey is complete, we will turn our attention to individual pieces of music and the recommended recordings for each respective work.
Number 35 is a Deutsche Grammophon recording of Anton Bruckner’s Symphony no. 9 taken from a 1988 live performance by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by legendary Italian maestro Carlo Maria Giulini.
The Composer
Josef Anton Bruckner was born in 1824 in Ansfelden, Austria, and died in 1896 in Vienna, Austria. Born into a family of schoolteachers, he was a chorister at nearby St. Florian monastery where he also learned to play violin, piano, and organ. He became a teacher at the same school, as a choirmaster for a group of monks, and later as a church organist in Linz, Austria. He would begin study in Vienna, eventually passing exams in composition and counterpoint in 1861.
Bruckner was well into his 30s by the time he began composing in earnest, meanwhile teaching counterpoint and organ at the Vienna Conservatory, and becoming a professor in 1871. In the early 1860s, he produced his first large work, a Symphony in D minor that he later dismissively named “die Nullte”, or Symphony No. 0.
Bruckner was a devout Catholic, and his connection to his faith is important to understanding the man and his music. In addition to the symphonies he composed, Bruckner also wrote at least seven Masses and other devotional works including a well-known Ave Maria, a Te Deum, several Psalm settings, a Magnificat, forty Motets, and a Requiem. The style of writing he used for his religious works was somewhat different than what he used for his symphonies, in that for the works with religious themes he used more counterpoint and shorter structures. The symphonies, on the other hand, were much broader structures with repeating themes and changing tonalities and dissonances. Much of the church and choral music Bruckner composed as a young man is rarely, if ever, performed nowadays. During his lifetime, Bruckner was a well-known organist, and gave recitals in various places in Europe. However, he composed very little for the organ and preferred larger choral and orchestral settings.
Bruckner was a life-long bachelor, although he made several unsuccessful marriage proposals, specifically to teenage girls. Because of the rumors created by his pursuit of young girls, and even though accusations of impropriety were unfounded, at some point Bruckner decided to only teach boys. It is thought Bruckner preferred teenage girls owing to his strict Catholic morality, believing that there was a much better chance that younger girls were virgins and therefore were without sexual sin. When he was in his 50s, a young chambermaid came very close to accepting his marriage proposal, but ultimately it never happened because she refused to convert to Catholicism.
In 1865, Bruckner attended the premiere of Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde, an experience that was to transform his artistic life. From that moment on, Bruckner became an almost fanatical follower of Wagner. While Bruckner was a huge fan of Wagner, the extent to which Bruckner’s own compositions were influenced by Wagner’s music is a matter of debate.
The music critic and writer Harold Schonberg said of Bruckner:
“Bruckner was a simple man, incredibly rustic and naive. He had a shaven head and a country dialect; he wore homespun and ill-fitting clothes and moved in constant awe of those great city people who knew so much more about everything than he did. A child of nature, he was not well read, was completely unsophisticated, would blurt out the first thing that came into his mind.” He tipped the majestic and wealthy conductor Hans Richter at the end of the final rehearsal of his Fourth Symphony. ‘Take this’ - pressing a coin into Richter’s hand - ‘and drink a mug of beer to my health’. The dumbfounded conductor looked at the coin, put it into his pocket, and later had it put on his watch chain…Bruckner met Wagner several times. On one occasion, Wagner gave him his hand, and Bruckner, overcome, bent down on his knee, pressed the Hand to his lips and said: ‘O Master, I worship you!’ Bruckner’s Third Symphony shows some of this worship, though in his music Bruckner never was really Wagnerian.”
Despite Bruckner’s admiration for Wagner, he never wrote any operas and was generally more interested in the music than the drama on the stage.
Well-known conductors of his time such as Hans Richter, Gustav Mahler, and Artur Nikisch began to take an interest in his music. But when his music was performed in Vienna, the critics were absolutely brutal. In Vienna at the time, there were two primary musical sects: the Brahms sect and the Wagner sect. Bruckner belonged to the latter. However, the press of Vienna was very much aligned with Brahms, and so the critics did not go easy on Bruckner. Brahms represented tradition and bowing to his music forebears, while Wagner represented something more radical, groundbreaking, and forward-looking. Bruckner in his own music would follow the ideals of Wagner in further developing more modern musical ideas.
Bruckner was a bit of a late bloomer as a composer, being 39 years of age before his first major symphonic work. Unlike his idol Wagner, Bruckner was a humble and self-effacing man, and was relatively insecure about his abilities. To some extent this may explain some of the many textual problems in his symphonies. There is the opinion that Bruckner was so anxious for approval that he would allow friends, critics, and conductors to alter, cut, and re-orchestrate large sections of his work. When he received suggestions from others, he would often feel so insecure that he would agree to the changes. However, other scholars maintain that changes were often done without Bruckner’s involvement, and some works were corrupted without his approval. In any case, the first editions of his symphonies were inaccurate, unreliable, and sometimes far from Bruckner’s original intent. This was particularly true between the years of 1878 and 1903. It would not be until the formation of the International Bruckner Society in 1929 that correct editions of his works began to be published. Editors Robert Haas and Leopold Nowak were primarily responsible for the editions used today, and most conductors will use either the Haas or Nowak versions, although even between those two there are some significant differences.
Today Bruckner is primarily known for his symphonies. He wrote 11 symphonies, the first being the Study Symphony in F minor in 1863 and the last being the unfinished Symphony no. 9 between 1887 and 1896 (he was still working on it at the time of his death). His most well-known and most often performed symphonies today are his Symphony no. 4 “Romantic”, Symphony no. 7, Symphony no. 8, and Symphony no. 9.
John Berky writes of Bruckner:
“Bruckner expanded the concept of the symphonic form in ways that have never been witnessed before or since. … When listening to a Bruckner symphony, one encounters some of the most complex symphonic writing ever created. As scholars study Bruckner's scores they continue to revel in the complexity of Bruckner's creative logic”
The structure of Bruckner’s symphonies was traditional in the sense that he usually followed much of the same pattern as Beethoven. There are usually four movements, generally as follows:
Allegro or a moderately increasing tempo
Adagio or andante
Scherzo, trio, or dance form
Allegro in a more intense manner
Many of Bruckner’s symphonies have slower, more mysterious openings which build and open up to majestic, large themes. Over the course of his composing, his style changed little. Bruckner's compositions looked forward to modern radicalism in music, owing to their dissonances, unprepared modulations, and roving harmonies. As Paul-Gilbert Langevin says,
“The symphonies are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, strongly polyphonic character, and considerable length.”
Many of Bruckner’s works were not understood well in his lifetime, and he was convinced they would be better understood by future generations. Indeed, that has been the case. Bruckner’s symphonies have been compared to cathedral-like structures which are huge, take time to build, have broad arches, impose a grand spiritual feeling, and are more impressive and stunning in their summation than in their individual parts. Bruckner truly felt a connection to God in his music, and he wanted to create something lasting.
The great musicologist Deryck Cooke said of Bruckner’s symphonies:
“Despite its general debt to Beethoven and Wagner, the "Bruckner Symphony" is a unique conception, not only because of the individuality of its spirit and its materials, but even more because of the absolute originality of its formal processes. At first, these processes seemed so strange and unprecedented that they were taken as evidence of sheer incompetence.... Now it is recognized that Bruckner's unorthodox structural methods were inevitable.... Bruckner created a new and monumental type of symphonic organism, which abjured the tense, dynamic continuity of Beethoven, and the broad, fluid continuity of Wagner, in order to express something profoundly different from either composer, something elemental and metaphysical”
The dichotomy between Bruckner the man, and Bruckner the composer has troubled musicologists for decades. One the one hand he was a musical genius, and on the other hand he was a simpleton. I admit to having difficulty myself listening to Bruckner for many years, and I concluded that I must be missing something. I didn’t understand it. Why is Bruckner so well-loved by many, and yet not by others? It is true this is not easy-listening, nor is it appropriate for background music. Bruckner’s music only pays dividends upon repeated listening, and upon taking the time to listen without distraction in order to see the larger structure. He builds something monumental, but it requires patience. Bruckner pointed the way for his good friend Gustav Mahler, although Mahler is something different altogether. Bruckner is really the essence of the late German Romantic tradition, but he also took the symphonic form to entirely new places.
Decades later, Bruckner’s music was revered by Adolf Hitler. Hitler saw Bruckner’s music as expressing the longings of the German people, and Hitler even consecrated a bust of Bruckner in a widely photographed ceremony in 1937 at Regensburg's Walhalla temple. Bruckner’s music was very popular in Nazi Germany. In fact, Hitler had planned to turn the monastery in St. Florian, where Bruckner went to school and later taught, into a repository for Bruckner’s manuscripts (Bruckner was buried in the crypt directly under his beloved organ). Hitler kicked out the monks, and paid for the building to be renovated into a Bruckner library. Hitler’s involvement also helped create the Bruckner Symphony Orchestra. When the news was announced on the radio of Hitler’s death, the Adagio from Bruckner’s Seventh symphony was played.
The Nazi connection to Bruckner’s music has not tainted Bruckner’s reputation, as it has Wagner’s to some degree. Wagner’s anti-semitism is a matter of public record, while Bruckner’s feelings about the Jews was less clear. Unlike Wagner, the Israel Philharmonic has programmed Bruckner’s music since the war. Several TV and movie productions have used Bruckner’s music since World War II, and even in Vienna where Bruckner’s music was critiqued so harshly, his music is now part of the regular repertoire of the Vienna Philharmonic.
Symphony no. 9
Bruckner was still working on his final symphony when he died in 1896, and so sometimes it is also called his “unfinished”. However, at a running time of over an hour, it is certainly longer than most completed symphonies. As he progressed with his work on this final symphony, Bruckner continually prayed that God might allow him to finish it. He said, “If He takes the pen from my hand, it is His responsibility.”
Bruckner’s Ninth is sometimes viewed as a musical link between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Wagner had opened a new tonal world, especially in the harmonic dissonance he used in Tristan und Isolde, and Bruckner would explore this trend further. The scherzo is a foreshadowing of what we would hear later from composers such as Bartok and Stravinsky. The first and third movements with their dissonances and progressions look forward to the so-called Second Viennese School developments of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. Although sketches exist of what would have been a massive fourth movement, in the form it is traditionally played now with just three movements, it finishes with an adagio. But perhaps this is fitting for Bruckner’s swan song.
The symphony progresses as follows:
Feierlich, misterioso - the symphony begins with a distant sort of solemn tone which builds tension, turning into a spinning wall of sound and eventually bursting forth into the main theme. This is followed by a hymn-like passage, and then it goes into a restless third theme. In the midst of this, a motive is developed which will appear again in the coda.
Scherzo. Bewegt, lebhaft - the second movement scherzo is highlighted by a pounding, brutal main theme which repeats several times. In the middle is a trio which begins in a lovely, light-footed manner but also morphs in unsettling ways.
Adagio. Langsam, feierlich - the final movement becomes Bruckner’s valedictory song. Unfolding slowly, the movement arrives at an exploding ecstatic climax. If there is anything that evokes Wagner’s Tristan, it is this movement. There follows a beautiful theme, nostalgic and sentimental. A march-like theme, which harks back to the first movement, appears next. Finally the nostalgic theme returns again, joined by a noble hymn-like theme. The music takes a more dissonant turn, working its way to a well-known seven note terrible grinding dissonance. There is silence, but then a return to the symphony’s opening statement. In the finishing pages, Bruckner quotes phrases from his Seventh and Eighth symphonies.
The Recording
In a legendary conducting career of 54 years, Italian Carlo Maria Giulini made many critically acclaimed recordings. His studio recordings on the EMI label with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London of the Mozart operas and the Verdi Requiem won him great praise. His live 1955 recording of Verdi’s La Traviata with soprano Maria Callas was also a triumph. Giulini’s recordings of the Brahms symphonies and A German Requiem with the Vienna Philharmonic on the DG label are among my personal favorites of those works. But Giulini made no better recording than his 1988 recording of Bruckner’s Symphony no. 9 with the Vienna Philharmonic on Deutsche Grammophon.
While Giulini may have come to Bruckner relatively late in his career, he brings to this interpretation a deep understanding of the monumental structure, and how everything is linked together. The Vienna Philharmonic plays gloriously for Giulini. The brass are weighty, the woodwinds are plangent, and the strings are able to adapt their tone to whatever Giulini requests. Where Giulini really triumphs is in bringing out the internal clarity within each movement, and how it all relates. The textures are clear, and no detail is left to chance.
Giulini in the latter part of his career was known for slowing down pieces, often to a fault, to bring out the pathos and emotion, at times at the expense of the forward momentum. It should also be said that Giulini has his devoted acolytes that believe he could do no wrong, and that everything he touched turned to gold. Personally I am not so enamored of Giulini’s recordings generally, but this one is very, very special. Although this recording is one of the slower Bruckner Ninths, at no point do I find it drags or is too broad. In fact, Giulini seems to find the correct pacing throughout as though he is carefully building the super-structure. The Scherzo is hard driven as it should be, but not too fast. Giulini uses excellent dynamic control, but still allows space for the impact to be felt. In the final Adagio, this is where the Vienna Philharmonic truly shine, with string playing that is unmatched and where the horns in particular cut through the orchestra with power and yet refinement. This is a reading of authority, with a bold vision of Bruckner’s intent, with playing and recording quality to match. Personally I am left in awe at the end of this recording, and I feel a debt of gratitude to this humble man Bruckner for bringing forth such a transcendent masterpiece.
Other recommended recordings
There are many outstanding recordings of Bruckner’s Symphony no. 9, below is only a partial list of some of the best.
The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra led by Manfred Honeck, recorded in 2019 by Reference Recordings. Boasting demonstration class clear and vivid sound, this is a gut-wrenching, spiritual, and life-enhancing performance played superbly by the PSO with Honeck displaying tremendous control. For me, the Scherzo is a shade too fast, but in all other ways this is a stunning recording.
The Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan, recorded in 1966. It still sounds good, depending on which remastering you find. But Karajan in his heyday was one of the finest Bruckner conductors, as shown on this recording. His goal was to scale Mount Olympus, a grand vision, passionate, illuminating, and moving. If Karajan misses a bit of the mystery of the piece, you hardly notice in such a sweeping recording.
The Lucerne Festival Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abbado, Abbado’s final recording made live in 2013 as part of Abbado’s final concert and recorded by Accentus, and released by Deutsche Grammophon. Abbado was very ill, making the performance that much more poignant and moving. Abbado brings some of the same insights and qualities to bear as Giulini, with weight, depth, and sensitivity. The recorded sound is not at the highest level, but still preserves an historic concert.
The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra led by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, recorded live in 2002 on the RCA Red Label, now owned by Sony. Harnoncourt is not a conductor one might associate with late romantic composers such as Bruckner (although Harnoncourt’s Brahms symphonies with the Berliners is one of the finest sets). However, Harnoncourt seemed to have a real affinity for Bruckner’s symphonies. His recording of the 9th is especially successful and enjoyable, avoiding some of the eccentricities which mar other recordings, and yet bringing a great deal of insight and reverence to the work. It is clear Harnoncourt loved this symphony.
The Columbia Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bruno Walter, recorded in 1959, still packs a punch and Walter was one of the greatest Brucknerians. There is terror and spaciousness here, even if Walter was a bit more “objective” with the score than Giulini and Abbado, and perhaps slightly less hard driven. The sound is quite good for the time. One of the best.
Eugen Jochum led many fine performances of Bruckner’s 9th. His recordings from Dresden on EMI, and Berlin on DG, are both very good. Jochum’s recordings for years were considered to be the benchmarks for Bruckner symphonies, and still are for many Brucknerians.
I apologize for the delay in this most recent post, but I hope you enjoy getting to know Bruckner’s 9th. Happy listening!
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Notes:
Berky, John F. Anton Bruckner – An Introduction by John F. Berky. Abruckner.com. Retrieved 30 June 2014.
Brennan, Gerald. Reisig, Wayne Gerard. Schrott, Allen. Woodstra, Chris. All Music Guide to Classical Music, The Definitive Guide. All Media Guide. Pp. 222, 225. Backbeat Books, San Francisco. 2005.
Cooke, New Grove (1980), 3:365.
Evans, Richard J. (2008) The Third Reich at War. New York: Penguin Books. p. 579. ISBN 978-0-14-311671-4.
In German "halb Genie, halb Trottel". This description is often, but mistakenly, attributed to Gustav Mahler. Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen: "»Halb Genie, halb Trottel«. Hans von Bülows Urteil über Anton Bruckner". In: IBG-Mitteilungsblatt 55 (2000), pp. 21–24.
Langevin, Paul-Gilbert. Anton Bruckner – apogée de la symphonie, l'Age d'Homme, Lausanne, 1977 – ISBN 978-2-8251-0880-2
Osborne, Richard. Bruckner Symphony no. 9. Gramophone Magazine. https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/bruckner-symphony-no-9-16
Schonberg, Harold C. The Lives of the Great Composers, Revised Edition. Religion, Mysticism, and Retrospection. Pp. 452-456. Norton & Company, London and New York. 1981.