Review: Poschner's Vivacious No. 6 Launches Capriccio's Bruckner Extravaganza With A Bang
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- čas přidán 10. 07. 2024
- This lithe and lively Sixth has plenty of character and freshness, qualities not always associated with Bruckner. It inaugurates Capriccio's plan to record all of the symphonies in all of their various versions (heaven help us) by 2024, the bicentenary of the composer's birth. Here's hoping it all turns out this well.
Musical Examples courtesy of Capriccio Records - Hudba
Interesting! As I heard of the project, I thought it would be one of the extravaganzas ahead for 2024. But you convinced me to listen to this 6th. Thanks so much, once again.
I’m very excited about this new excursion into the Bruckner cycle. I can’t wait for your take on the next release, David.
The horse knows.😀
I would pay good money to hear you vocalise an entire piece! I always love how your ‘sounds’ match the rhythm and pitch of the instruments so effectively. The whooping horns in the coda made me belly laugh! I really like what I heard in the snippets of this performance so I’m off to get me some more… PS. A very brave choice to start with No. 6. It so often kills a cycle stone dead so I’m delighted this test seems to have been passed. On to sterner tests
My first serious engagement with the 6th was at the BBC Proms, 2005. There, Kent Nagano conducted the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in the performance. The beginning made my hair stand on end (already seriously balding then, but yes, it did), and since then I have loved Bruckner (not the horsie kind)! This performance is wonderful. Zippy as you say, with the timbral quality you mentioned beautiful in the brass sections and their parts. Thanks for your guidance as always!
I love it! Thank you and horsey.
I once worked an overnight shift. Couldn't get to sleep at 6am when i returned. I thought music would help me. Cracked open a recording of the 6th which i never heard before. I was more awake then ever! Loved this piece ever since.
"If I were an orchestral musician who spent all of his life playing either Bruckner or the Philip Glass symphonies, I'd probably kill myself."
Dave, I agree with you sometimes, and other times, not so much- that's what makes art interesting. But that sentence made me laugh harder than anything today, and that's partly because you're so right. Thank you for this channel! It is a treasure!
Me too. Hilarious.
I remember one of the very first videos on this channel being about how newer Bruckner recordings are mostly terrible and nobody seems to know how to conduct him anymore. I'm very glad to hear that Poschner proved you wrong. This record owns.
It was about there being a lot of bad Bruckner, and I'm still right. The good ones will always be exceptions, if only because everyone's doing it and most of it will be junk.
How many recordings will all the versions entail? 25? More? I have never heard an original version set that I especially like. Maybe this will be the first.
... this seems to me lik a showpiece of intrinsic contradiction: "micro-management" ... what I often heard Abbado being charged with makes this recording interesting, e.g. transitions where you can clearly differentiate the individual instrument-groups against each other whereas that is sometimes buried in the thick flow in the recordings from many a "beloved" Bruckner-specialist. Both conceptions can be interesting ... but this recording shows as an example that tagging a conductor as "micro-manger" sometimes seems questionable. Just to mention ... I personally neither especially like nor dislike Abbado or Eugen Jochum or Markus Poschner. Just a thought that came up.
One personnel annotation: David, I congratulate you sincerely for your esteem to maintain this channel and I am personally pleased to see your subscriptions increase. You have a very pleasant way to present your thoughts in a tactile way whereas a videocast like this in Europe would sometimes represent an overloaded academic exercise. Beside this I am especially enjoying your sometimes weird humour ... though all people that are not sharing your great and unique mother-tongue with you have to suffer sometimes ...
Yes, I understand, but I can only speak what I speak, and humor is often untranslatable.
I really like the sound of this recording. I've always wondered why Capriccio, which is a good label, has somehow, in its cheapjack branding, managed to always sully itself by coming off as just another version of its sister label, Laserlight. I always think of the two labels as virtually the same, even though Capriccio has consistently better material than the more hit-or-miss budget oriented Laserlight.
Wasn’t even aware of that connection. Capriccio is a German label founded in the 1980s, now based in Austria. Laserlight is an American label. They share(d) the same distributor in the US. Maybe that’s what’s giving you that impression? In Europe I haven’t come across many Laserlight recordings.
Horst Stein's recording of Bruckner's Sixth Symphony has the noblest reading in the cascading brass in the first movement. I love it! But I must say, the samples of Poschner are beautiful.
The sixth is SUCH a quirky piece. It is somewhat Jazzy, Groovy and almost very hollywood godlen age-y in character! There is a Bernstein performance out here on youtube that ,while technically bad, reveals a lot about what this can be. He plays it in a vulgar way like a broadway musical.(and imo its really fitting) This recording seems to get it. Fantastic snippets.
After all is said and done , it really might be Bruckner's most original and unusual symphony.
Light and nimble Bruckner. One for the Christmas stocking. 😄.
David, what are your thoughts on Joseph Marx's Eine Herbstsymphonie? I don't know of you or anybody else on ClassicsToday reviewing it.
Odd that this has been mentioned for the second time today. I think it's a flabby, over-scored bore, devoid of interesting ideas. I have the score. I've never seen so many notes deployed to so little purpose.
I have just listened to the First movement in its entirety and at the ending the timpani comes through loud and clear even with the tempo a little on the fast side.
Yep.
This release sounds enjoyable and intriguing, As noted below, the eighth is due out Nov 5. Potentially good but timings seem to indicate a very brisk approach, with just over 15 minutes for the first movement and around 24 minutes for the adagio. However, as we know, timings aren't everything.
Some of the most thrilling versions of the 8th have been notably fast. I do not subscribe to the notion of "the slower the better" in Bruckner. As you say, timings aren't everything. 24 minutes for the Adagio is quite long enough.
No 6 is the Bruckner symphony I always recommend to people who have not listened to any Bruckner because it is a splendid example of his mature style, it is short by Bruckner standards and one avoids having to explain about dates, Haas, Nowak etc. Let's hope the rest of the cycle maintains the standard of this release. Incidentally I have a CD of shorter orchestral pieces by Korngold with the Bruckner Orchestra of Linz which is enjoyable..
I have that set too. It was originally on ASV.
Classics Today Sweatshirt - tis the season, where do we order them?
They will be available on the CT.com website shortly. I will let everyone know! Thanks for asking.
Will there be a review of the 8th soon? The 1890ties version has been released meanwhile and has the potential to become my number one - that so far was Günther Wand's live recording from Lübeck cathedral.
And by the way: If you want to think of your opinion about your so called " Bruckner's most worst symphony": a very nice number zero was released, too... 😉😉😉
Of course. It's in my stack of stuff to do.
This will actually be the third complete Bruckner cycle recorded by the "Bruckner Orchestra Linz".
In the 1990s, they recorded a complete set under Kurt Eichhorn and Martin Sieghart on the Camerata label.
This was followed by a complete set under Dennis Russell Davies on Arte Nova (reissued on RCA/Sony).
(both cycles included a lot of alternate versions).
John F Berky Bruckner Society of America has a very thorough discography on his website.
Links are no longer allowed, so you will have to figure it out for yourself.
Yes, but Eichhorn was often ragged and Davies was deathly dull.
That second subject from the finale always reminded me of the liebestod (mild und leise)… anyone else hear that?
Yes, for the first four or five notes the resemblance is very plain, and (I suspect) purely coincidental.
Wow, this really POPS...Perhaps close to what an Eduard van Beinum 6th might've been, had he ever conducted it
(he didn't...sigh).
Bruckneerrrr, (Screech).... Sorry, just makes me smile....😃
I have to disagree with you on the supposed clarity of the timpani in the First movement excerpt. It actually sounded non articulate and even stodgy. The timpanist needs to use an ultra staccato mallet in this movement. Just my opinion
Like I said, depends on the playback. Sounds very clear on my system.
@@DavesClassicalGuide I need to get a new sound system or at least check my hearing. Thanks, David
It certainly is an attractive performance, full of engaging nuance and shaping, and I DO agree with you about Poschner "getting away" with many of those invented subito dynamics, but the more I listen, the more I find the fussiness DOES get in the way too often. At the end of the 1st mvt I really like the sudden resumption of tempo (Tempo wie anfangs) but then at bar 361 and 363 I really didn't like the strangely fussy downplaying of the brass on the 3rd beats. I guess that's nitpicking, but the 2nd mvt is what bothered me the most. Sure, no need to overdo the portentous element, but I find his approach SO downplays this as to end up way too glib. He makes a point of NOT sustaining musical lines (too much HIP going on for me in that regard), but the real head scratcher is around the 9 minute mark (bar 101 for about 10 bars)....why does he so underplay the forte and fortissimo in the brass? The trumpets sound like they have fallen asleep. I think Bruckner gives very clear directions as far as dynamics in the movement, but I don't hear them in this performance. I find Poschner serves up equal parts engaging illumination, nimbly turned musical corners and fussy navel gazing. I will say it's not boring, and it's certainly unlike anything I've heard in the work. So, I WILL keep on listening, and hopefully those neighing horses will stay away!
Fair enough.
A "LInz Bruckner Orchestra" also recorded the Sixth with Georg Ludwig Jochum, the brother of Eugen Jochum. The recording is quite good for its day (early 1940s), but Georg Jochum was simply too politically compromised, so he has been pretty much erased from history. I don't know how much more culpable he was than more famous conductors who got a second chance. The Linz Bruckner Orchestra was a big project, part of Hitler's effort to make Linz a showcase of National Socialism. The allies basically dissolved the orchestra after the war. It surprises me that the present orchestra uses a name that evokes that particular bit of history.
I'm surprised any orchestra would name itself after Bruckner, never mind Linz.
Rogner is another example of swift unsentimental non- memorialized Bruckner. Suitner similarly. The communists hated Bruckner. Note to self: always go for a communist performance of Bruckner...