(++++) IN CONCLUSION

Bruckner from the Archives, Volume 5: Symphonies Nos. 6 and 7; Te Deum. NDR Symphony Orchestra conducted by Christoph von Dohnányi (No. 6); South German Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hans Müller-Kray (No. 7); Wilma Lipp, Elisabeth Höngen, Nicolai Gedda, Walter Kreppel, Vienna Singverein and Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan (Te Deum). Ariadne. $29.99 (2 CDs).

Bruckner from the Archives, Volume 6: Symphonies Nos. 8 and 9; Psalm 150. Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eugen Jochum (No. 8); Vienna Symphony Orchestra conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch (No. 9); Hilde Česka, soprano, with Vienna Akademie Kammerchor and Vienna Symphony Orchestra conducted by Henry Swoboda (Psalm 150). Ariadne. $29.99 (2 CDs).

     One of the most ambitious and revelatory projects conceived for the Bruckner bicentennial in 2024 was a six-volume, 12-disc release of remastered historic recordings of all the symphonies and a number of the composer’s shorter works, most of them radio airchecks that had never been released before. The final two volumes of this series on the Ariadne label are at the same very high performance and more-than-satisfactory audio quality level as the first four, showing yet again that even before Bruckner’s symphonies became part of the more-or-less standard repertoire for many conductors and orchestras, there were performers advocating them in the strongest possible terms through sensitive, often compelling readings that set the stage for the vast proliferation of concert-hall and recording-studio versions that were still to come.

     The downside to that proliferation has been a certain argumentativeness and quirkiness in some more-recent Bruckner performances, with disputes over which editions to use, what sort of pacing to employ, and whether or not to conform to the longstanding if largely inaccurate belief that Bruckner’s symphonies are in some sense organ-like works with a cathedral-appropriate sense of majesty and spirituality. The Bruckner Archives performances date to an earlier time when, generally speaking, Bruckner’s place within the pantheon of Romantic-era symphonists was accepted at face value and conductors saw his unusual combination of rhythmic, harmonic and contrapuntal approaches as matters of style within his time period – resulting in readings in which his debt to Schubert and his parallels to and divergences from the sound of Wagner were particularly clear. This adds up to a salutary straightforwardness in the Bruckner Archives symphonic performances, including those in the fifth and sixth volumes.

     The approach is quite evident in the 1961 recording of Symphony No. 6 by the NDR Symphony Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnányi – who also led Symphony No. 5 in Bruckner from the Archives, Volume 4, where he conducted the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. Although Dohnányi was not a conductor usually associated with Bruckner, and in 1961 was not focused primarily on the concert hall (he was General Music Director of Lübeck Opera from 1957 to 1963), this rendition has a pleasant directness and a sense throughout of controlled emotional expression – slightly cool, all in all, with everything in its place and nothing sounding overdone or overextended. Bruckner’s Sixth has never been among his more-popular symphonies, but this approach actually shows ways in which it can reach out effectively through a straightforward presentation that neither reduces nor overemphasizes its intricacies (especially in matters of rhythm) and that allows its lyrical elements, especially in the Adagio, to glow. Very different but equally fine in its own way is the reading of Symphony No. 7 featuring Hans Müller-Kray and the South German Radio Symphony Orchestra (now the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra). Not a particularly well-known conductor nowadays, Müller-Kray led this ensemble for more than two decades. This performance dates to 1955 and, despite sound that is not quite at the highest level despite the general excellence of the Lani Spahr/Siva Oke remastering, the reading effectively hits the emotional high points of the symphony, notably the extended cello-led theme of the first movement, the coloration of the Wagner tubas in the Adagio, and the dramatic power of the finale. The symphonies are complemented by a somewhat odd Te Deum reading led by Herbert von Karajan, a brilliant and strong-willed conductor who sometimes came across as if he knew better than the composers themselves what the composers were trying to say. There is some flavor of that in this 1962 Vienna Festival performance, which was given in the hall where the Te Deum was originally heard. Everything is very much in place and very precisely balanced and paced here: the strength of instruments and vocalists is everywhere apparent. But this Te Deum seems less a deeply religious work than an operatic approach to sacred material – a bit along the lines of Verdi’s Requiem. The sense of drama is apparent throughout and is quite impressive, all the more so when the voices occasionally sound pushed to their limits; but the purpose of all the splendor, the underlying celebration of deep faith, gets somewhat short shrift. This is, in its dramatic way, a highly involving performance, but its way is perhaps not quite the way that Bruckner intended it to take.

     The other great sacred work in the last two Bruckner from the Archives volumes, Psalm 150, fares better, perhaps because its more-unidimensional atmosphere – it is strictly an ebullient hymn of praise – is more direct and accessible than the somewhat more-nuanced Te Deum. Unlike most other performances in the Bruckner from the Archives series, this one has been available before, on Westminster Records, one of whose three co-founders was conductor Henry Swoboda – who leads the Vienna Akademie Kammerchor and Vienna Symphony Orchestra in this reading, which dates to 1950. Psalm 150, like the Te Deum, is in C major, but Psalm 150 is half the length of the earlier work (the Te Deum dates to 1884, Psalm 150 to 1892 – it is Bruckner’s last major sacred work). The shorter time frame and sustained brightness of the music, with words that are themselves music-focused through references to trombones, harps, drums, cymbals and other instruments, make for a well-thought-through and nicely balanced performance in which Swoboda remains firmly in control of his forces.

     Firm control is also a hallmark of Bruckner’s Eighth as conducted by Eugen Jochum and played by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in a 1957 recording. Unlike many other conductors heard in the Bruckner from the Archive releases, who are skilled but not especially known for their Bruckner performances, Jochum (1902-1987) was a Bruckner expert whose roots as an advocate of the composer date all the way back to 1926, when Jochum made his professional conducting debut leading Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7. He made the very first commercial recording of Bruckner’s Eighth in 1949, using the later-discredited Haas edition of the symphony. By 1957 Jochum was using and advocating the 1955 Nowak edition, and he gives an absolutely first-rate performance of it here, abetted by an orchestra of which he was the founding conductor eight years earlier. All the musical stars align for this first-rate reading, one of the few performances in the Bruckner from the Archives series whose value extends far beyond its historical significance. Jochum takes the full measure of the symphony, to which he brings a sense of very large scale and great drama: this is Bruckner at his most gripping. Nor is emotion in short supply: Jochum plumbs the lyrical and expressive depths of the work from start to finish, turning the Eighth into a deeply moving and very powerful experience – and a thoroughly unified one, which is not at all how this symphony comes across in lesser hands. Of all the remarkable “lost” recordings that this series has rediscovered, this is one of the most outstanding.

     Symphony No. 9 as performed by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch is not quite at the rarefied level of Jochum’s Eighth, but it too is a highly effective and evocative reading that, by the end, will surely leave listeners wishing – and not for the first time – that Bruckner had lived to complete the finale, which he almost finished but which is not performed by Sawallisch or most other conductors in any of its various completions by other hands. Sawallisch, less of a Bruckner specialist than Jochum, nevertheless has a very strong connection to the composer: Sawallisch led the Vienna Symphony for a decade, starting in 1960, and this happens to be the orchestra that gave the first performance of Bruckner’s Ninth (in 1903, seven years after the composer’s death). That première occurred in the Großer Saal of the Vienna Musikverein, which is exactly where Sawallisch and the orchestra made this recording in 1966. Of course, all the musicians involved were different from those at the work’s first-ever performance, but all great orchestras have a kind of “ship of Theseus” air about them in which the past carries, however evanescently, into the present. In any case, the manner of approaching Bruckner’s Ninth seems to have been passed along, whether directly by prior orchestra members to their successors or indirectly under more mystical circumstances, to the players heard here, because the performance is so idiomatic, so sure-handed, so effective in the way it unfolds and builds within and among the three completed movements, that it very nearly makes a convincing case for regarding this as a fully finished work. Certainly Sawallisch thoroughly explores the very deep and sometimes contradictory emotive elements of the symphony, allowing its intense portions to ring forth with great power while keeping its more-delicate elements extremely quiet and reserved. He treats the fascinating, weirdly flickering Scherzo as a kind of interlude between the grand edifices of the first and third movements, letting it explore its own strange landscape while providing a change of scene, if not exactly any respite, from the intensity of the remainder of the symphony. The extreme dissonance near the end of the third movement is handled especially well here, having a tragic (and almost desperate) character that would not be out of place in Mahler’s Symphony No. 6. To almost the same degree as Jochum’s Eighth, Sawallisch’s Ninth provides listeners with a reading on par interpretatively with just about any conductor’s offering in the many decades between these recordings and the bicentennial year of Bruckner’s birth. Indeed, the sixth Bruckner from the Archives release affirms and reaffirms the importance not only of the composer but also of this ambitious project’s determination to showcase mostly unreleased, long-ago performances of Bruckner’s symphonies and some other works. Taken as a whole, the 12 CDs in this exceptional set of releases vastly broaden audiences’ chances to hear and understand just how important a composer Bruckner was – and just how important were interpreters and interpretations dating to a time before Bruckner’s music was as familiar as it has since become.