Bruckner
Gavin Dixon
For most Bruckner fans, the multiple editions and revisions of his symphonies are a problem. But Simon Rattle sees it differently; for him every edition offers more music to explore. That was the thinking behind this programme, presenting the Fourth Symphony in one and a half versions, a “discarded” scherzo and finale in the first half, and a complete version in the second. That layout might seem pedagogical or pedantic, but Rattle is also able to demonstrate exactly why these differences matter. His Bruckner is always compelling, and there is a rigour about it that only comes of deep Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Before his retirement last summer at the age of 90, Bernard Haitink worked magic on the podium, no one is in any doubt about that. Lining up one friend and musician after another to admit they don’t know how he does it hardly seems the most promising basis for a feature-length documentary. Yet John Bridcut’s film also works, rather like one of Haitink’s performances, by placing trust in his material and moulding its form with a nudge here, a pause there. The result, no less than his much admired portrait of Janet Baker, is worthy of its subject, and praise doesn’t come higher than that.There Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bruckner: Symphony No. 7 Berliner Philharmoniker/Bernard Haitink (Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings)Bruckner symphonies rarely include fast tempi and never feature Stravinskian changes of metre, but they do need conductors with enough stamina and charisma to keep players and audiences interested for 70 to 80 minutes. Most of my favourite Bruckner recordings are from veterans: Skrowaczewski and Blomstedt rarely put a foot wrong, and Karajan’s last, Vienna Philharmonic version of No. 8 is one of the best things he ever did. Bernard Haitink, unusually, has always been a great Bruckner Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 Australian World Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle (ABC Classics)I love Bruckner’s mature symphonies, but they still baffle me. Mostly in terms of how certain performances work, or don’t work, and the near-impossibility of understanding and explaining exactly why. Then there’s the question of tempo, and how incredibly expansive performances can feel shorter than quick ones. A BBC Music Magazine poll in 2016 asked conductors to nominate their favourite symphonies, and Sir Simon Rattle included Bruckner 8 in his top three. He’s recorded two impressive accounts of the " Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra/Manfred Honeck (Reference Recordings)I’m midway through exploring a cycle of symphonies by Heinz Winbeck, a German contemporary composer very much in the Bruckner tradition. I’ll report back next week, but, as a stopgap, here’s an incandescent live recording of Bruckner 9. The recent Berlin Philharmonic box set includes Rattle’s second account of the piece, including the completed finale. I find it pretty convincing, but Manfred Honeck’s Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra opt for the standard three-movement version. The playing is Read more ...
Richard Bratby
No orchestra wants its conductor to cancel in the week of a concert. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s illness was announced only on Monday, but even in ideal conditions, if you needed to find a last minute replacement maestro for a programme of Bartók and Bruckner, you could hardly do better than Omer Meir Wellber: a conductor with whom the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra has built a relationship that predates his recent appointment to the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester. And while it was unquestionably disappointing to be deprived of Gražinytė-Tyla’s first adventure into Bruckner (on these Read more ...
graham.rickson
Beethoven: Piano Sonatas 1-32 Igor Levit (Sony)“Beethoven paid no attention at all to the conventions of his own time In fact, he only ever wrote music for the future.” One strength of Igor Levit’s magnificent traversal of Beethoven’s piano sonatas is how contemporary, how disarmingly modern he makes many of them sound. Speeds in outer movements are generally swift, the dynamic contrasts extreme. Try No. 25’s tiny last movement, pushed to the limit here and almost buckling under the strain. But there's so much energy and joy; you suspect that Beethoven would have approved. He would also Read more ...
David Nice
His movements are minimal (perhaps they always were). A more intense flick of the baton, a sudden wider sweep of the expressive left hand, can help quicken a tempo, draw extra firepower from the players, but Bernard Haitink's conducting is still the most unforced and, well, musicianly, in the world. His decision to retire from official concert-giving - a "sabbatical", his biography says - after the season in which he celebrated his 90th birthday with two LSO concerts in March means we'll miss him terribly. But it was a timely gesture, like everything he's ever done. This Prom will not be Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
The Barbican Hall hardly boasts the numinous acoustic of Gloucester Cathedral for which Vaughan Williams composed his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, but Sir Simon Rattle has long known how to build space into the architecture of what he conducts.No indulgences needed to be made for the students of the Guildhall School of Music next door. They slotted seamlessly within the ranks of the LSO to conjure a luminous halo of string sound, untroubled by the sense of loss which belongs to the piece in more lean and urgent performances. Their wind colleagues then filled the stage for Percy Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bartók: Complete String Quartets Quatuor Diotima (Näive)Technical infallibility is now a non-negotiable when it comes to Bartók's six fiendishly difficult string quartets. Still, there's much more to these pieces than simply hitting the right notes and ensuring that the pizzicato thwacks ring out in all the right places. An influential early digital set by the Emersons now sounds a little brutal and mechanical in places. It’s easier to love a 1960s DG cycle from the emigré Hungarian Quartet, with hairy moments but plenty of soul. This new set on the revived Näive label comes from the Read more ...
David Nice
So this is how Bruckner's Fourth Symphony should go. It's taken a master conductor just past his 90th birthday and an orchestra on top form to teach me. No doubt Claudio Abbado and Brucknermeister Gunter Wand could have done so, too, but I never heard them live in this, the "Romantic", and they are no longer with us. Bernard Haitink - he eschews the "Sir" with a typically self-deprecating shrug - evinced a tearful semi-secret rapture in performances of Schumann's Second and Beethoven's "Pastoral" with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe; that he should do it in three-quarters of this Bruckner Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony: few other conductors could get away with programming two such monolithic works, but Simon Rattle has a lightness of touch that can leaven even the weightiest musical utterances. Bartók dances, Bruckner sings. It’s a quality that he communicates easily to the players of the LSO, who responded with vibrant rhythms and clean, transparent textures.When arranged around the piano, celesta and harp, the LSO strings comfortably fill the Barbican stage, making for large-scale Bartók. But the precision of the ensemble, as Read more ...