(++++) BITS AND PIECES

Bruckner: Symphony No. 9, including sketches of the finale. Altomonte Orchester St. Florian conducted by Rémy Ballot. Gramola. $24.99. 

Bach: Concerto for Three Violins in D, BWV 1064R; Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043; Orchestral Suite No. 3—Air on the G String; Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, BWV 1041; Concerto for Oboe and Violin in C Minor, BWV 1060R. Elsa Claveria, Friederike Jahn and Darius Kaunas, violins; Frauke Tautorus, oboe; Neubrandenburg Philharmonic conducted by Daniel Geiss. PASCHENrecords. $18.99. 

     The superlative Bruckner cycle led by Rémy Ballot turns out to have some unexpected elements still in store. The main sequence of symphonies was assembled year by year from 2013 to 2023 – with the Ninth appearing in 2015 in a very unusual two-CD set giving the work for orchestra and, separately, presenting Karl Grunsky’s 1911 version for two pianos, which the musicologist based on the Ferdinand Löwe arrangement of 1895. As intriguing as it was to hear the symphony in two guises, both were the Ninth in three-movement form, and it has long been known – indeed, since Bruckner’s own lifetime – that there was supposed to be a fourth movement. Ballot’s decision not to offer any of the fine completions/reconstructions of the finale was disappointing, although understandable. But now Ballot, in another of the inimitable surprises of his Bruckner sequence, has conducted the Ninth with the finale – sort of. Ballot’s new Gramola recording – which comes in at an astonishing 90 minutes on a single disc – offers a 2024 orchestral presentation of the Ninth in three-movement form, followed by the sketches that Bruckner left behind for the finale. Just the sketches: eight short fragments of what would have become the finale if Bruckner had lived to complete it. Arranged in what would have been their order of appearance in the symphony’s last movement, and offered “completely incomplete,” with no attempt to connect them, these one-to-five-minute snippets are all that Bruckner left for those who, in more-recent times, have sought to bring his Ninth to a satisfactory conclusion. Aside from a few additional sketches of just a couple of measures – not enough music to be worth performing – these fragments are everything that we have to indicate where Bruckner might have gone with his fourth movement, except that he would no doubt have incorporated them into the overall plan in ways that he would have modified from what he left behind. We will never really know what Bruckner would have done with these sketches, which last, in the aggregate, about 17 minutes – perhaps two-thirds of the length of the planned finale. What Ballot does, though, is allow listeners to speculate on their own about where Bruckner’s Ninth could have gone, what could have been built using this scaffolding. That is a fascinating musical/emotional exercise – and an unnecessary one for anybody disinclined to contemplate what might have been, since Ballot’s full-fledged performance of the three completed movements is at least as stately, elegant, knowing and emotionally charged here as was his 2015 orchestral presentation. What this CD tries to do is nothing new – as far back as 1960, conductor Max Goberman (1911-1962) recorded Schubert’s “Unfinished” symphony with the sketches of its third movement, which faded to unorchestrated piano material and then eerily into nothingness. But this is a new approach to Bruckner’s Ninth, whose three-movement version has always been magnificent but never satisfactory, no matter how hard some musicians and scholars have tried to argue it into a sense of finality. Aside from the overall beauty of Ballot’s performance with the Altomonte Orchester St. Florian – the primary orchestra used throughout Ballot’s Bruckner cycle – this release is genuinely valuable for allowing listeners to experience Bruckner’s Ninth with as much mystery and uncertainty as they wish. Listen to the work in three-movement form, listen to its three completed movements and the surviving elements of the fourth, or choose a non-Ballot recording such as Gerd Schaller’s to hear the full four-movement version: in any of these presentations, Bruckner’s Ninth continues to engage and enthrall, and Ballot continues to show himself a first-rate Bruckner conductor with an unmatched sense of both traditional and nontraditional ways to bring the Bruckner symphonies to vivid and deeply meaningful life. 

     Bruckner and Schubert symphonies are scarcely the only works whose provenance and final versions are less than 100% clear. A number of pieces by Bach are also uncertain in various ways – and Daniel Geiss and the Neubrandenburg Philharmonic intriguingly tackle some of them for a PASCHENrecords release called “The Bach Project.” The five pieces here are an interesting mixture of the known and unknown. Violin Concerto No. 1 and the famous Air movement from the third orchestral suite are thoroughly authentic in the forms heard here. Things are more complicated, however, when it comes to the other three works. The Concerto for Three Violins in D, BWV 1064R, is known as a three-harpsichord concerto, but is lost in the three-violin form in which it is thought to have originated – so what we have here is a reconstruction, up a tone from C to D. And the Concerto for Oboe and Violin in C Minor, BWV 1060R, has a similar history: in Bach’s final version, labeled BWV 1060 without the “R,” it is for two harpsichords, but its original version was probably for two violins, and it is here offered in that re-created form. As for the Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043, this is Bach’s own, earlier version of what would eventually emerge as his two-harpsichord concerto, BWV 1062. All this reuse and rearrangement of material was entirely normal and expected in the Baroque era – and, indeed, afterwards. What is intriguing, though, is the exceptionally careful way in which Bach mapped a concerto from one instrument or set of instruments to another – care to which later arrangers (of works whose original form remains unknown) were at pains to adhere. The Neubrandenburg Philharmonic regards itself as a constant “work in progress” of sorts, and assembled this CD – all of whose soloists are members of the orchestra – as a 75^th-anniversary offering reflective of its roots and its philosophy. Listeners, however, need know nothing of the genesis of the recording in order to appreciate the verve, elegance and sense of delight with which the musicians handle all the pieces. These performers understand Bach intellectually and also feel his music emotionally: their playing is historically informed, never dry, always well-balanced between soloists and ensemble, and remarkably attentive to detail – the positively jaunty finale of BWV 1041 and the interplay of the oboe’s bounce with the skittering violin figures in the finale of BWV 1060R are just two examples among many here. Interestingly, three of the five offerings on this disc are in minor keys, a fact that lends an aura of warmth to the CD as a whole and enhances the impression of a small chamber orchestra experiencing a sense of connection among its members and bringing forth that feeling, through the music, to an audience at large. There is nothing unusual about regarding Bach as foundational to an orchestra’s sense of self and of ensemble, but the stylish care with which the Neubrandenburg Philharmonic presents these Bach selections shows that the group is thoroughly versed in the careful proportions and well-wrought balance that are two of Bach’s primary characteristics – both in works that have come down to the present in Bach’s final form and in ones whose original versions are missing but that can, with care, be brought back in reconstructions as apt and enjoyable as those heard here.