Bruckner: Symphony No. 9, with reconstructed Finale, updated version. London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Gerd Schaller. Profil. $20.99.
Schubert: Symphonies Nos. 8 (“Unfinished”) and 9 (“Great”). Park Avenue Chamber Symphony conducted by David Bernard. Recursive Classics. $20.99.
Gerd Schaller is taking himself and Bruckner aficionados worldwide on a remarkable journey with regard to the composer’s final, not-quite-completed symphony. And therein lies an oddity: the journey is so remarkable in connection with the work’s finale that it is all too easy to overlook the excellence of Schaller’s handling of the first three movements. There are now no fewer than four Schaller recordings of the four-movement Ninth: two with Philharmonie Festiva (2016 and 2018), one with Schaller performing his own organ transcription of his own completion (2020, amazing on many levels), and now one with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Schaller thinks and rethinks his conceptualization of the Ninth’s finale in all four cases, resulting, for one thing, in differing performance lengths (24½, 25, 24 and now 22 minutes), and for another, in subtle but clearly audible tweaks here and there in the finale’s notes as added by Schaller and in the movement’s instrumentation, balance and dynamics. Schaller’s completions, plural, are remarkably careful, attentive and knowledgeable in and of themselves, and although others have also tried their hand at finishing the unfinished Bruckner Ninth, Schaller’s well-polished conclusions are and will likely remain the standard for a considerable time, along the lines of Deryck Cooke’s piecing-together of Mahler’s Symphony No. 10 – now half a century old and as impressive as ever. Schaller is actually quite modest about his Bruckner Ninth completion, which is why he keeps tweaking it; and modesty is called for, not only because of the inherent hubris of the project but also because what Schaller has done is definitely not what Bruckner would have done. Indeed, if Bruckner had finished the fourth movement and then followed his usual pattern, he would have returned to and modified the first three movements after completing the last one, and the whole symphony would differ from what we have today. And that brings us back to those first three movements: Schaller’s handling of them is balanced, knowing, well-paced, emotionally convincing and altogether excellent in all his recordings, with a veneer of even greater connectivity among the movements in the new Profil release than was evident before. Schaller’s understanding of Bruckner’s Ninth runs very deep indeed – a reason all his completions work so well and then, in their turn, reinforce and modify his handling of the first three movements. Nothing here fails to deepen the mystery of this symphony, which Bruckner had ample time to finish – he worked on it for nine years and, although he was an inveterate reviser, was not in the habit of failing to hammer a work into completed form before revising and revisiting it later. We will never know just why Bruckner was so dilatory where his Ninth was concerned, and will never know how he wanted the finale – or the likely-to-have-been-revised first three movements – to sound. But Schaller’s exceptionally well-thought-through, well-conducted and well-performed recordings – with the London players sounding remarkably warm, full and engaged on the newest release – are the standard against which all other performances of the “completed” Ninth need to be measured, including any future ones in which Schaller himself continues to contemplate, dissect, assemble and reassemble this ever-remarkable symphonic capstone.
Bruckner’s debt to Schubert remains an under-explored element of his music, although it has at least been acknowledged and somewhat discussed in recent years. Schubert’s Ninth shows Bruckner’s affinity for the earlier composer’s musical thinking particularly clearly, although Bruckner’s Ninth is not one of his more “Schubertian” symphonies. Schubert’s “Great” (so called to distinguish it from the “Little” No. 6 in the same key of C) is a towering achievement in its own way, although Schubert never heard it and its influence on later symphonic development was minimal. It is not Schubert’s Ninth but his Eighth that is labeled “Unfinished,” although Schubert, very much unlike Bruckner, was an inveterate non-completer and left multiple symphonies and other works in partial or truncated form. Schubert’s Eighth and Ninth are often released together, a custom that works on a single CD only when the Ninth is rendered less than it can be through omission of many of the repeats for which Schubert called. However, the pairing does at least give listeners a sense of the two most forward-looking of Schubert’s symphonic works; and when they are played with care and paced well, as on a new Recursive Classics release featuring the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony under David Bernard, the result is deeply engaging and emotionally convincing. The “Unfinished” is the more-compelling performance here. In the first movement, the first few notes are not as warm and deep as they could be, but the speedier ones that follow move with a pleasant sense of forward motion, and the gorgeous main theme comes through in all its beauty. The overall tempo is well-chosen; the horns are precise, if not particularly warm; and the lower strings are especially good. Bernard keeps the momentum going – in some performances it can flag and the movement, which is far more expansive than earlier Schubert opening symphonic movements, can become episodic. The two finished movements of the Eighth move at essentially the same speed, their differences subtly indicated by their tempo indications of Allegro moderato and Andante con moto. Interestingly, the second movement follows the first immediately on this CD, making it seem even more a continuation or (in its first portion) an additional episode of the multifaceted first. Here, though, the songfulness is of a different character from that in the first movement, with a somewhat greater tinge of melancholy, to which Bernard pays close attention. The orchestra handles the chordal passages well, insistently but not overwhelmingly, and the quieter and more-delicate sections are especially engaging. There is a sense of subsidence, of resignation, toward the end – which is really no more of a satisfactory conclusion than the end of the third movement of Bruckner's Ninth.
As for Schubert’s “Great” C major, this performance is more of a mixed bag than that of the “Unfinished.” Omitting most repeats does the music no favors, although it does reduce the sheer physicality required of the musicians. In Bernard’s reading, a fuller and rounder horn sound at the beginning would have been better, but the pacing is good – a true Andante – and then there is a nicely handled transition to the main theme. The movement’s dotted rhythms are kept clear, and everything percolates along nicely. The strings and winds are more impressive than the brass, which lacks some richness and roundness of tone. It is difficult to give this movement cohesiveness: it tends to sprawl and meander. But the coda has the right level of joviality, stopping short of celebratory joy. The second movement is also nicely paced, a true Andante with appreciation of the modifier con moto. The winds have a pleasant touch of piquancy, and there is good solid rhythm throughout. But then matters peter out at the very end, in a too-great slowdown that is ultimately not convincing. The third movement has a bright and quick start and a jaunty feeling throughout. The gentle lilt of the trio is winning – a fine contrast. The fourth movement is very quick indeed at the start: it actually feels almost too fast for the orchestra to keep up, but for the most part they manage well. There is some smearing of the sectional sound, notably in the brass, for instance just before the entry of the second theme, which is less songful and lyrical here than ideal. The ebullience of the material is perhaps somewhat forced: what emerges here is a more-driven movement that, somewhat surprisingly, is rather Haydnesque at this tempo. But it is almost frantic at times, closer to Presto than to its Allegro vivace tempo indication. It is undeniably exciting, but there is little chance for the music to breathe, and the brass is at its limit by the time the coda arrives. There is much to enjoy in the performance of each individual movement in this interpretation, but it seems to lack an overview, an overall vision for the symphony: yes, the movements are quite different, but here they seem more disconnected from each other than usual. The fine sense of style and strong musical commitment, however, are apparent throughout, and just as Bruckner’s Ninth represents in many ways a summing-up of his symphonic oeuvre, so does Schubert’s Ninth of his works in the form – with both cases standing as posthumous tributes to the composers, the Bruckner first performed (three movements only) more than six years after the composer’s death, the Schubert 11 years after the demise of its creator.
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