Bruckner: Symphony No. 9. Pittsburgh Symphony
Orchestra conducted by Manfred Honeck. Reference Recordings. $19.98 (SACD).
Holst: The Planets; Elgar: Enigma Variations. Bergen Philharmonic
Orchestra conducted by Andrew Litton. BIS. $19.99 (SACD).
Schumann: Piano Concerto; Mendelssohn: The Fair
Melusine; Piano Concerto No. 1. Ingrid Fliter, piano; Scottish Chamber Orchestra
conducted by Antonio Méndez. Linn Records. $18.99.
Even music that is familiar and has
frequently been recorded can sometimes come across as fresh and new when
performances are sufficiently revelatory – as is Manfred Honeck’s of Bruckner’s
Ninth Symphony with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Not since the days of
William Steinberg has this orchestra sounded so warm, full, and emotionally
evocative – thanks in part to the superb quality of the Reference Recordings
audio, but also to Honeck’s outstanding direction: he seems determined to have
the Pittsburgh players sound as good as members of the very best European
orchestras, and in this case he has succeeded brilliantly. Indeed, the
Pittsburgh Symphony could easily be mistaken for one of the great German or
Austrian orchestras here: it has the full, rich, sumptuous sound, the superb
balance of sections, the sense that every player is a virtuoso lending his or
her particular expertise to the group, plus the warmth-with-precision that only
the very best orchestras attain, and even then often only sporadically.
Honeck’s Bruckner Ninth has these qualities throughout in one of the most
intimately detailed, carefully structured readings of the three-movement
version of this symphony currently available. Honeck gives some hints of his
approach in exceptionally detailed booklet notes that prove he is almost as
good a writer as he is a conductor. The notes also show, for those interested,
how it is possible for multiple performances of the same music to sound so
tremendously different. Notably, Honeck sees the third movement of Bruckner’s
Ninth in a very specific religious context, to the point of indicating ways in
which individual musical phrases need to be played so that words from the Agnus dei of the Roman Catholic Mass,
although never spoken, will lie perfectly atop the rhythms and emphases. Honeck
is neither right nor wrong about this: Bruckner never said he was doing
anything like this, but it is in line with the composer’s deepest beliefs and
much of his nonmusical behavior, and is therefore a wholly justifiable
speculative approach – and a fascinating one. It becomes an organizing
principle of great strength in the third movement. Similarly, Honeck’s notions about
the death-preoccupation and actual journey into the netherworld that he sees in
the first two movements are not correct
but are plausible, and what matters
is that they inform his performance in such a way that the orchestra’s playing
communicates Honeck’s thoughts on the symphony to a very great degree. Officially,
Bruckner put nothing extramusical into his Symphony No. 9, but he certainly put
a great amount of his personality and beliefs into it; and by building this
performance around his knowledge of those elements of Bruckner’s personality,
Honeck erects a monumental musical edifice that is wholly convincing even for
listeners who have not the slightest idea of how and why Honeck conducts the
music this way. This is a breathtaking performance – perhaps literally, since
it was recorded live, but there is nary a breath from the audience – and it is
one against which all recent readings of the first three movements of the Ninth
can be measured. But “there’s the rub,” as Hamlet said: the conclusion of the
third movement here is so perfect emotionally and musically that it evokes a
desperate desire for the fourth movement, which Bruckner did not live to
complete. Honeck’s performance makes it abundantly clear that these three
movements are not a totality, and it
would be a marvelous thing if Honeck were to consider, in the future,
performing the entire Bruckner Ninth
with, perhaps, Gerd Schaller’s excellent reconstruction of the finale.
Schaller’s version is not wholly Bruckner – a complete Bruckner finale of this
symphony will never exist – but it is so full of Bruckner, and so Brucknerian
in the parts completed by Schaller, that a conductor with Honeck’s skills could
produce a transcendent four-movement performance by using it. Schaller himself
is a marvelous advocate for his completed Bruckner Ninth, and Honeck would
surely be another if he brought to the finale as much intelligence and
directorial mastery as he here brings to the symphony’s first three movements.
Holst’s The Planets is a suite rather than a symphony – its movements have
no musical connection, although they have a clear thematic one – but sometimes
a performance can, through sheer will and intensity, make the seven sections
sound as if they belong together structurally despite the many contrasts among
them. That is what happens in the new BIS recording of The Planets featuring the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra under
Andrew Litton. Through subtle and careful emphasis of Holst’s innovative
orchestration, Litton shows again and again that the movements of this
astrological mystery tour make perfect sense in the order in which Holst placed
them and, moreover, tell a convincing story that takes listeners from the most
earthy (and Earth-ly) events to the most cosmically evanescent. Litton achieves
some of this effect through careful tempo choices – “Mars, the Bringer of War,”
for example, really stampedes and storms ahead here. But Litton does even more
by carefully showing the parallels as well as the differences between and among
sections of The Planets. This is
especially evident in “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity” and “Uranus, the
Magician.” The “Jupiter” movement is the most traditionally harmonized and the
most “19th-century” movement in the suite, full of warmth and a kind
of rough good humor. “Uranus” sometimes seems similar in a way, but Litton
focuses on its unusual sounds and altogether different atmosphere (no pun
intended) to give listeners a wholly different experience. In a somewhat
similar vein, Litton does not let the comparable tempos of “Saturn, the Bringer
of Old Age” and “Neptune, the Mystic” make it seem that the movements have
anything in common communicatively: this Saturn is a wholly inward-focused
character, while Neptune looks outward, outward, ever outward, the eventual
fadeaway of the instruments and female voices (from the Bergen Philharmonic
Choir and Edward Grieg Kor) happening so gradually and subtly that the actual
point of their cessation is virtually indeterminable. Thanks partly to the
excellent SACD sound, this recording is as noteworthy for its softest passages
as for its loudest ones. And the sonic excellence is also a reason for the
quality of Litton’s performance of Elgar’s Enigma
Variations, which are simply wonderful here. From the lyrical and Romantic,
to the gentle and sweet, to the ebullient and dramatic, these variations call
on all the expressive potential of an orchestra – and the Bergen Philharmonic
gives them everything they require. Litton never loses sight of the fact that
this work, unlike The Planets, is
very much a musically unified one – it consists, after all, of variations on a
theme – but neither does Litton shrink from establishing each variation as its
own miniature sound world, expressive of a different scene that in turn
reflects a different one of the personalities honored by Elgar in this work. There
is something a trifle self-indulgent about the Enigma Variations, since they are all about Elgar’s inner circle –
and the final, longest variation is about Elgar himself. But there is also
something delightfully outgoing about them, and Litton does an expert job of
having the music reach out beyond its time and beyond the underlying intimacy
of its concept to become as broadly entertaining as it can be.
Insightful excellence of playing is not
limited to orchestras: sometimes it is the combination of soloist and ensemble
that shines new or additional light on well-known music. That is the case with
a Linn Records release featuring pianist Ingrid Fliter and the Scottish Chamber
Orchestra under Antonio Méndez. The repertoire here is scarcely new or
surprising, but the small size of the orchestra – about three dozen players –
gives the Schumann and Mendelssohn concertos a light, fleet feeling that fits
the Mendelssohn perfectly and provides a different perspective on the Schumann
from the one that it usually receives. Fliter’s technique is light-handed, too,
and the absence of any sense of dramatically pounding the keys for emphasis is,
again, just right for the Mendelssohn and somewhat unusual for the Schumann. Fliter’s
performance of the Mendelssohn is so well-proportioned that it creates the hope
that she will offer the composer’s Piano Concerto No. 2 at some point,
hopefully with the same orchestra. Fliter and Méndez see the music exactly the
same way – this is not always the case with soloists and conductors – and the
result is a tightly knit performance that nevertheless feels spontaneous, its
lightheartedness never lapsing into triviality but carrying listeners along
with a buoyant exuberance that is altogether winning. The Schumann concerto, which
tends to be more weighty in most performances, here has transparency to go with
its heft: the small size of the orchestra helps the middle voices as well as
the main themes come through clearly, and both Fliter and Méndez have a good
sense of the “fantasy” nature of the concerto, which indeed began life as a
piano fantasy that consisted entirely of what is now the first movement. The
interesting thing about this Schumann performance is that there is no sense of
the piano being in competition with the orchestra or straining to be heard
above it, yet neither is there a sense that the orchestra is holding back to
allow the piano to come through clearly. The orchestra’s small size is a reason
for this, of course, but so is the restraint in accompaniment that Méndez shows
throughout. Méndez also offers a very accomplished, lithe account of
Mendelssohn’s The Fair Melusine
overture: all the beauties of the music come through clearly, and the work
flows with all the smoothness that fits with its literary theme and with
Mendelssohn’s elegantly proportioned instrumentation. Even listeners who are
quite familiar with all the works on this CD will find, again and again, that
these performers highlight something new and interesting as they play these
works not only with skill but also with understanding and a strong feeling for
the emotions that the composers sought to elicit.
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