(++++) SOUND WORLDS

Liszt: Études d’exécution transcendante. Yunchan Lim, piano. Steinway & Sons. $17.99.

Jeffrey Ryan: Everything Already Lost; Iman Habibi: False Morning; The River-Lip; Jean Coulthard: Three Love Songs; Jocelyn Morlock: Involuntary Love Songs; Stephen Chatman: Love Songs; Leslie Uyeda: Plato’s Angel; Melissa Hul: Snowflakes. Tyler Duncan, baritone; Erika Switzer, piano. Bridge Records. $14.99.

Steven Ricks & Ron Coulter: Music for Trombone, Percussion and Electronics. Steven Ricks, trombone and electronics; Ron Coulter, percussion and electronics. Panoramic Recordings. $16.99.

Steve Reich: Cello Counterpoint; Fjóla Evans: Augun; Emily Cooley: Assemble; Alex Weiser: Willow’s Song; Shimmer. Ashley Bathgate, cello. New Focus Recordings. $16.99.

     In today’s seemingly unending parade of outstanding young pianists, a few stand out as much for their musicality as for their technical abilities and their competitive accomplishments. Most of the attention lavished on South Korea’s Yunchan Lim has come from his winning the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2022 at the age of 18, making him the youngest performer ever to win gold since that competition began in 1962. Cliburn himself was 23 when he won the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow that propelled him to worldwide fame and indirectly spawned the event that bears his name; and he was notably modest afterwards in asserting that the honors accorded to him really belonged to classical music rather than to a single individual. Lim made no such statement after his victory, but his playing of Liszt’s Études d’exécution transcendante makes the assertion on its own. A new Steinway & Sons CD gives listeners the opportunity to hear the actual live performance given by Lim at the Cliburn competition and to share both in a sense of history and in an interpretation that brought Lim the Audience Award as well as the gold medal. It is really an astonishingly good reading, filled with all the technique and emotionalism that Liszt packed into this exceptional set of 12 studies. The very brief Preludio showcases impeccable fingering and an understanding of pedal use that helps turn this curtain-raiser into a delightful introduction to and promise of what is yet to come. And then, for more than an hour, Lim produces delight after delight as Liszt’s music goes through its always remarkable twists and turns, its tremendous expressiveness designed to emerge from a keyboard command so thoroughgoing that the extreme virtuosity needed to play the études sounds entirely natural, unforced – and, strangely enough in this context, easy. In other words, the extreme technical requirements of the Transcendental Études must, in the best performances, sound as if they are not there at all, or are at most irrelevant – it is the feelings and emotions communicated through technique that need to come to the fore. And this is precisely why Lim’s performance is so good: he showcases without overtly showing off. Yes, his technique is marvelous throughout, whether in the individual-note clarity of the runs in the Molto vivace, the pounding chords of Wilde Jagd, or the evanescent fragility of Chasse-neige. But it is the scenes that Lim paints through his impeccable playing that are the focus of his rendition: the intense drama of Mazeppa, the flickering filigree of Feux follets, the extended emotionalism brought forth through delicate finger work in Ricordanza. Every single one of the études is captivating in its own way, with Lim performing each as a complete work in itself while also approaching every one as part of a larger whole in a way that creates breath-holding anticipation for what will come next. This is a stunning performance, electrifying in its combination of sheer bravura with emotionally trenchant expressivity. The opportunity to listen to it repeatedly on this disc, exploring new aspects of its intricacies on each hearing, is a most welcome one.

     Liszt had an unequalled ability to conjure up scenes and feelings from a single instrument – one for whose evolution to its modern form he is more than a little responsible. The piano, one way or another, remains popular as a compositional medium, but more-recent composers than Liszt, including those of today, often rely on combined sound rather than a single instrument to elicit the effects they seek. Sometimes they use tried-and-true forms modified in new ways, as is the case with some of the songs for baritone and piano on a new Bridge Classics CD. Tyler Duncan and Erika Switzer present the works of seven composers, none of them well-known, in a sequence that is not chronological but that reveals some ways in which emotional communication through art song has evolved – or has not – in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. The interweaving of past and present is clearest in the longest work on the disc, a four-song cycle by Jeffrey Ryan (born 1962) called Everything Already Lost. A certain degree of familiarity with the musical past is necessary for full comprehension and appreciation of this work: it uses poetry by Jan Zwicky, but the fourth and longest poem, Schumann: Fantasie, Op. 17, is Ryan’s response to Zwicky’s commentary on Schumann’s musical reaction to Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte. If that sounds like a complex set of nested relationships, that is because it is. Schumann’s emotional themes, reflected from Beethoven, were typical and typically heartfelt Romantic ones of loneliness and absent love. Ryan’s cycle precedes this extended Schumann-focused song, whose 10-minute length is exceptional for a single art song, with three shorter ones in whose words Zwicky contemplates similar themes with less of an intricate focus-on-earlier-music overlay. Tyler Duncan’s firm, rich baritone fits the cycle very well, and Erika Switzer’s sensitive piano accompaniment complements Duncan’s voice to very good effect: Ryan’s cycle was commissioned by this duo and aptly complements their musical relationship. Ryan’s work is placed last on this CD. First on the disc are two songs by Iman Habibi (born 1985), False Morning and The River-Lip, based loosely on translations of the poetry of Omar Khayyām but using a distinctly modern and often very dissonant idiom to communicate their thoughts. Next are Three Love Songs by Jean Coulthard (1908-2000), which date to the mid-20^th century (1948) but partake of a Romantic musical temperament that emphasizes the voice and uses the piano for enhancement rather than contrast or complementarity. Coulthard’s work is followed by Involuntary Love Songs by Jocelyn Morlock (1969-2003). These use poetry by Alan Ashton to describe yearning from afar, surging emotions, and finally the acceptance of strong feelings – although the music is generally somewhat milder than the words. Next on the disc is the second song from Eight Love Songs for High Baritone Voice by Stephen Chatman (born 1950). This song, Something Like That, is appealing in its directness as it considers the various simple and complex elements that constitute what humans call love. Then comes Plato’s Angel by Leslie Uyeda (born 1953), a four-song cycle using words by Canadian poet Lorna Crozier, who delves into somewhat darker and more-thought-provoking matters than are considered  by other composers here – phrases include “huge mind,” “death’s own flower,” “the cat with wings in his mouth,” and “the funeral of the world.” The music is both substantive and subtle, but fits rather oddly with the overall focus of the other material on the disc – although here as elsewhere, Duncan and Switzer effectively get to the heart of the offering. Uyeda’s work is followed by Snowflakes by Melissa Hui (born 1966), which uses a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – the second of a set of three songs that Hui wrote based on Longfellow’s words. The setting is somewhat at odds with the comparatively naïve and straightforward expressiveness of the poem, although the delicacy of the presentation, especially in the piano part, is attractive in and of itself. Taken as a whole, this is a (+++) disc that offers a well-performed set of mostly well-proportioned songs that collectively explore numerous aural landscapes and soulscapes through varying compositional techniques that balance the vocal and instrumental parts differently, often to very good effect.

     The piano is essentially a percussion instrument, but the sonic environment created by voice-plus-piano can be more or less emphatically percussive – as can that of the piano alone, as Liszt demonstrated. Contemporary composers who want to emphasize percussive sounds often find themselves modifying the piano itself, writing for it in new ways, or moving beyond it altogether to create percussion experiences through different means. Electroacoustic composer/performers Steven Ricks and Ron Coulter opt for a kind of hybridization of percussion and electronics (in Coulter’s case), and of trombone and electronics (in Ricks’), to produce the effects they want to evoke. The seven jointly composed, jointly performed works on a new (+++) Panoramic Recordings CD show how Ricks and Coulter implement their particular search for auditory engagement – at least on the part of an audience already committed to experimentation and avant-garde sounds. The opening Tap, Rattle, and Blow is aptly titled, since tapping, rattling and trombone blowing are important elements of its aural world. Late Night Call is a kind of “found music,” combining now-rare-or-obsolete sounds such as those of a dial-up modem and poor TV or radio reception. It may serve as a reminder, to those who remember the sounds in the real world, that it is good to have moved beyond them (beyond most of them, anyway). Mechanic’s Choice is strongly percussive, with an emphasis on gong sounds mingled with those of other objects that can be directly struck, their reverberations then enhanced electronically. Charming Ways incorporates snippets of words spoken on TV and radio into a mixture of trombone notes and the sounds of rubbing and scraping. Button Drop is the most strongly percussive work on the CD, mixing the comparatively straightforward sounds of a typical battery of percussion with modified, electronic ones that complement and extend the directly played material. The longest work on the disc, which bears the overly enigmatic title I-S3eM and lasts 17 minutes, includes sections that fade in and out, ones that emphasize different registers (high and low), and ones that allow somewhat unexpected material (such as trombone sounds) to peek through a kind of aural curtain established by the electronics. The last work on the CD, Slurry, mixes several elements heard earlier, including spoken bits, high flute in birdsong mode, bells, trombone emissions, and a mallet-struck keyboard (the glockenspiel). Although not intended as a summation of what has come before, Slurry is a good 10-minute overview of or introduction to the entirety of the recording. Listeners unsure of whether or not they would be interested in an hour-plus of these creations by Ricks and Coulter may find it useful to start at the end of the disc and sample the works that appear earlier only if they find the concluding one congenial.

     Still another contemporary approach to creating an unusual sonic environment is explored by cellist Ashley Bathgate on a (+++) New Focus Recordings CD that includes, and takes off from, Steve Reich’s Cello Counterpoint. Reich wrote a number of works that he gathered as a “counterpoint series,” of which Cello Counterpoint is the fourth. Reich’s idea was to have a single cellist become a cello octet by performing with seven pre-recorded tracks. This creates an aural environment consisting of familiar acoustic instruments assembled in an unfamiliar electronic way, through the merger of a live performer with a previously assembled, electronically reproduced septet. The “layering” concept is interesting as an intellectual experiment, although its expressive potential is at best ambiguous. Still, Reich’s Cello Counterpoint is an intriguing piece in itself. In four movements, it contains tonal and tonally ambiguous elements and, in the second, slow movement, a canon for seven separate cellos. It is worth hearing in part for the nature of its sound and in part for the way its four-movement structure helps it sustain throughout its 11-minute length. Bathgate, who plays all eight cello parts, performs admirably with her pre-recorded self, clearly having a strong sense of how Reich structures the piece and how it can work on a CD – when all eight cello elements, not just seven, are heard in recorded form. The main thrust of this disc, though, is not the Reich work that is the disc’s foundation but music by three other composers who use the Reich solo-and-seven-electronic-tracks combination to create different works within the same aural world. These pieces prove less interesting than Reich’s. Fjóla Evans’ Augun, based on an Icelandic song, mixes consonance and dissonance, scraping and spiccato, and extended repetition of a basic motif. Emily Cooley’s Assemble breaks down the eight cellos into smaller groups and sets them to doing different things, bringing them together only at the end. As for the two Alex Weiser works, Willow’s Song serves as a 90-second introduction to the much longer Shimmer, although Willow’s Song was originally created for a different purpose. Here it offers some mildly lyrical material set against a chordal background, after which Shimmer picks up the shorter work’s conclusion and considerably extends it. Shimmer keeps the solo cello in the forefront, playing against individual members of the ensemble as well as the group as a whole. Given the fact that the group is really a solo multiplied, and that that solo is the same cellist who is the solo performing with and against the group and its members, there is a whole convoluted philosophical underpinning to this approach – none of which, however, has much impact on the impact of the music. Weiser’s work has some interesting elements in its treatment of the eight-cello totality, but it is somewhat too thin to sustain for the 14 minutes needed for his two pieces together. Actually, this is a very short CD – only 41 minutes in total – but it seems longer, largely because there is a somewhat monochromatic sound to the entire project despite the cello’s inherently broad range and wide expressive potential. Cellists and fans of cello music will find the CD intriguing, but for a more-general audience, its overall effect is on the bland side, the music, Reich’s excepted, seeming to be more of an intellectual exercise than any sort of attempt to broaden anyone’s auditory horizons.

(++++) GETTING ALONG

Who Needs Friends? By Jia Liu. Nancy Paulsen Books. $18.99.

Dirt and Bugsy 1: Bug Catchers. By Megan Litwin. Illustrated by Shauna Lynn Panczyszyn. Penguin Young Readers. $4.99.

Dirt and Bugsy 2: Beetle Mania. By Megan Litwin. Illustrated by Shauna Lynn Panczyszyn. Penguin Young Readers. $5.99.

     Grown-ups know how difficult it can be to make friends in adult life, and may look back fondly to the comparative ease with which they remember forming friendships as children. The rose-colored glasses of hindsight are not, however, entirely clear. Jia Liu has figured out that making friends can be harder for some kids than others, and can actually be looked at as a skill to be learned. And so she has created Who Needs Friends? It is a simple, easy-to-read, brightly illustrated book that, like so many kids’ books on potentially difficult topics, uses animals as stand-ins for children in order to make its message more appealing. It is the story of a bird named Merlin – apparently a young owl, but one that is active during the daytime. Merlin decides one day to fly into the forest and latch onto some friendships. However, the first hint that things may not go Merlin’s way shows up immediately, as Merlin cheerfully calls out, “Hi there! I’m Merlin!” – while the many woodland birds on branches, in nests, and in and around trees are all talking and singing to each other incomprehensibly (Liu creates all sorts of unreadable symbols for their communication, often mingling those symbols with musical notes). Undeterred, Merlin decides to put his best feet (and wings) forward, telling the other birds a story, talking about a game he likes to play because he is so good at it, and otherwise coming on just a bit too intensely. The other birds put up with him for a little while but soon go their own way, returning to their previous interactions and leaving Merlin to declare, “I DON’T NEED FRIENDS!” Friends, he decides, are noisy and demanding and insist on doing things together instead of providing the “true freedom” you get when you are on your own. But as Liu quickly makes clear in both words and art – showing a disconsolate Merlin alone on a high tree limb, with no other birds nearby – Merlin is not really happy being all by himself. And then things change: it rains, and Merlin notices a single nearby bird struggling to grab a large worm for a quick snack, and Merlin offers to help. Sure enough, Merlin and the other bird, Billy, can grab the worm together and share it. And then, quite naturally, they start to talk together and make jokes and play games that they both want to play, and Merlin realizes that “it sure is good to have a friend!” So all ends happily – and to be sure the friendship lesson is learned, Liu includes some back-of-the-book recommendations for making friends, such as “don’t be a bossy bird,” “listen as much as you squawk,” and “share your worms.” Those might not translate directly to human children seeking friendship, but kids will certainly get the basic ideas right after reading Who Needs Friends? And of course the answer to the book’s title question is twofold: Merlin does – and so do kids.

     Merlin and Billy build their friendship on shared interests – and that sort of sharing can involve just about anything. Even bugs. The friendship explorations of two kids named Dirt and Bugsy are of the insect kind – as Megan Litwin and Shauna Lynn Panczyszyn show in two Level 2 easy-reader chapter books called Bug Catchers and Beetle Mania. Thin, written in very simple sentences that are shown in large type (as befits Level 2 books), these little stories are explicitly about something the friends love doing together and implicitly about the notion of building friendships on activities of mutual enjoyment. In Bug Catchers, the boys search for, find, catch and release bugs of all sorts, enjoying themselves outdoors until it starts to rain – at which point they invent a “bug barn” to keep insects dry during the storm. “They make big rooms and small rooms and rooms in between.” But then they realize that they have no bugs for the barn! So they search and spy and dig and lift and sift and “catch all kinds of bugs in no time at all,” giving each one an amusing name (“King Flappy,” “Miss Lolly Pop,” and so forth) and creating some games to play while the rain continues – after which they let all the bugs go, to be caught again another day. Then, in Beetle Mania, the friends specifically focus on finding beetles, which turns out to be easy because there are so many of them. Dirt and Bugsy quickly accumulate a collection – but what should they do now? They decide to play a sorting game, but Bugsy wants to sort by color and Dirt wants to sort by size. Uh-oh – a small disagreement! The boys try to work things out, deciding that “sorting is harder than catching.” Then they get a new idea: sort the beetles into ones they love and ones they don’t love! Of course, all the beetles end up in the “love” category, so everyone is happy – presumably including the beetles, which the boys release at the end of the day so they can scurry and flap and crawl away, once more with the idea that Dirt and Bugsy will catch them again at another time. Kids who already have friends – not necessarily bug-catching ones – will enjoy these simple outdoor adventures, and perhaps come up with some ideas of their own for sharing mutual areas of interest with their own friends.

(++++) SHORT AND SOMETIMES SWEET

Eric Coates: Orchestral Works, Volume 3—Television March; The Three Men; Cinderella; The Dam Busters; Last Love; Sweet Seventeen; The Three Elizabeths. BBC Philharmonic conducted by John Wilson. Chandos. $20.99.

Ives: Sets Nos. 1-10 for Chamber Orchestra; Set for Theatre Orchestra. Orchestra New England conducted by James Sinclair. Naxos. $13.99.

     Small things in music can have great importance – witness the four-note motto that opens Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. Small complete pieces of music can have great staying power and be highly memorable, too – Strauss polkas, the Alla Turca finale of Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 11, the finale of Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, etc. And then there are longer pieces that are essentially assemblages of brief sections – a form that Eric Coates (1886-1957) found particularly congenial. Three of the seven works on a new Chandos release of Coates’ music – the third volume in a series featuring the BBC Philharmonic conducted by John Wilson – are essentially made up of shorter works combined to good effect, while the remaining four pieces are brief and complete unto themselves. Like the two earlier CDs in this series, this one features excellent playing and knowledgeable conducting, but an odd arrangement of the material: the enclosed booklet discusses the music chronologically, but the order in which the works are heard on the disc is arbitrary – their dates are 1946, 1935, 1929, 1954, 1939, 1954 and 1944. Despite the peculiarities of sequencing, the music holds up very well indeed. Coates wrote light (or at least light-ish) music, with a number of the pieces he created after 78-rpm records became available being designed to fit neatly on one side of a disc (Leroy Anderson followed the same pattern). Television March, The Dam Busters, Last Love and Sweet Seventeen are all in the three-to-five-minute range, and all make their points effectively and with plenty of panache, then take their leave before they can become even slightly cloying or overextended. Television March and The Dam Busters are martial and bright without sounding jingoistic, while Last Love and Sweet Seventeen are sweet, lyrical and genuinely (if naïvely) moving. The longer works come across well precisely because they are assembled from so many attractive bits and pieces. Cinderella, a 16-minute suite, consists of no fewer than 11 well-differentiated sections associated with different elements of the famous fairy tale – whose warmer, more romantic elements are the ones Coates chooses to emphasize. The Three Men portrays men from the country, the city and the sea to fine effect, with a great burst of humor in the third section: it is built on an old sea shanty whose last three notes are identical to the first three notes of “Three Blind Mice,” which Coates accordingly introduces and runs with for absolutely no reason except fun. More seriously, The Three Elizabeths portrays Elizabeth I, Elizabeth of Glamis (Queen Consort when the piece was written in 1944), and the then-young Princess Elizabeth – who would become Elizabeth II eight years after Coates composed this work. The music is always engaging and always respectful, its moods ranging from the heroic to the idyllic to the celebratory, its individual sections merging effectively into what is essentially a tone poem celebrating and showing considerable admiration for the British monarchy.

     On the other side of “the pond,” where royalty had long since been cast off, music of even greater pithiness than Coates’ was a specialty of Charles Ives – when he was not creating large and super-complex works, that is. A fascinating new Naxos CD that is brimful of world première recordings features all 10 of the collections of miniatures for chamber orchestra to which Ives gave the title of Set. These are not to be confused with his three Sets for full-size orchestra – which have also been released on Naxos in interpretations by conductor James Sinclair. The 10 newly recorded works – it makes sense to call them “set pieces,” pun intended – are essentially songs without words. But there is nothing Mendelssohnian in Ives’ handling of that form. He stretches the component parts of each Set every which way, and does not hesitate to include the same song (with different instruments and emphases) in multiple pieces: The Indians shows up in four versions, The New River (The Ruined River) in three, Ann Street in two, and so forth. Ives’ miniatures are very small indeed: the longest Set, which runs just over eight minutes, contains six movements, while the shortest runs three minutes and contains three parts. Ives’ freewheeling dissonance and polytonality are everywhere in evidence here, and Sinclair, who is well aware of Ives’ propensity for having different instruments play specific parts at different times, uses the obviously very flexible Orchestra New England to fine effect, showcasing the ensemble’s overall strength as well as the quality of its separate sections and, at times, individual members. Much of Ives’ flexibility in instrumentation derives from his appreciation of theatrical musical performances, and in addition to the 10 Sets assembled from his own songs, this disc includes Set for Theatre Orchestra – which also reuses some of Ives’ own music but, in addition, tosses in various hymns and popular tunes of the early 20^th century. Interestingly, for all the bouncy exuberance and in-your-face dissonance of most of the Sets, the greatest emotional heft of this disc lies in its quieter portions. For example, In the Night, the third and last movement of Set for Theatre Orchestra and the final track on the CD, is calm and elegiac; and the third and last movement of Set No. 9 of Three Pieces is nothing less than The Unanswered Question, one of Ives’ most famous and thoughtfully mystical works, in a version that differs from the standalone one but carries the same level of metaphorical heft and fades away into the same unsatisfied and perhaps unsatisfiable quietude. Ives’ proclivity for giving listeners’ ears a real workout is everywhere present in the Sets, and so are his love of popular tunes, his sincere use and appreciation of sacred music, and his willingness to challenge an audience to perceive his music as simultaneously naïve and profound. To this day, Ives’ works sound like those of no other composer: the Sets, like so many of his compositions, richly repay multiple hearings, their brevity both concealing and elucidating thoughts and feelings that, starting small, seem endlessly to expand.

(++++) FROM ONE MASTER TO ANOTHER

Bruckner: Symphonies Nos. 3-9. NDR Sinfonieorchester (Nos. 3, 7, 8) and Münchner Philharmoniker (Nos. 4, 5, 6, 9) conducted by Günter Wand. Profil. $29.99 (8 CDs).

     Almost as remarkable as the fact that Günter Wand (1912-2002) had a 65-year career as a conductor – a position for which he was almost entirely self-taught – is the fact that Wand did not begin to conduct Bruckner until he was more than 60 years old. That this would lead to performances of great maturity and thoughtfulness is perhaps not surprising – but that Wand’s readings would be so carefully calibrated, so measured, so vivid, while at the same time so diligent in their attention to Bruckner’s scores, is wonderful to discover or, for those already familiar with Wand’s Bruckner recordings, to rediscover. Profil’s inexpensive (and, to be honest, inexpensively packaged) re-release of Wand’s later versions of Bruckner’s Symphonies Nos. 3-9 glows with the conductor’s dedication and meticulous attention to detail, and is packed with revelations about the music.

     These were not Wand’s first forays into Bruckner’s symphonies: he had recorded Nos. 1-9 in the 1970s and early 1980s, prior to doing these versions of Nos. 3-9 (unfortunately failing to redo Nos. 1 and 2). Wand was chief conductor of the NDR Sinfonieorchester from 1982, and a frequent guest conductor of the Münchner Philharmoniker, so he knew those orchestras’ capabilities well – and the players knew him and his expectations, too, as is abundantly clear from the precision of their playing and the attention they bring to phrasing, rhythm and sectional balance throughout these readings. The recordings were made over a 15-year time period, from No. 3 in 1985 to Nos. 4 and 8 in 2000; No. 5 dates to 1995, Nos. 6 and 7 to 1999, and No. 9 to 1998. Except for No. 3, these are live recordings – perhaps one reason they all have such a strong feeling of audience connection.

     Every one of these performances has multiple things to recommend it. In No. 3, the initial trumpet fanfare sounds like a call to arms, and the entire work – this is the 1878-1880 version, which is most commonly performed – is remarkably cohesive. Wand excels at this: he paces the symphony, and indeed all these symphonies, with a sense of inevitability that can be hard to come by in Bruckner, whose works can come across with a kind of stop-and-start approach that takes some getting used to and that led to some harsh criticism of the composer in his own time (notably from powerful music critic Eduard Hanslick). Wand was always an advocate of musical originalism, insisting that the score was the ultimate authority over any performance, and his handling of Bruckner’s Third shows just how well that approach can work: the symphony is much more tightly knit in Wand’s reading than it can be in other presentations.

     Symphony No. 4 is large-scale from the start, the first movement building carefully and with increasing strength. The metrical precision is notable, as are the quieter passages, which are relaxed but never static. The quiet portions of the second movement are remarkably effective, and the pizzicato elements are super-clear. The delicacy of the timpani’s emphases is surprising and works well. The third movement really does start by sounding like a call to the hunt, after which Ländler elements come to the fore. Again the pizzicato material is excellent. The Trio is slow and gently swaying, an almost-tipsy country dance with pervasive lyricism before the repeat of the Scherzo brings a conclusion of high drama. In the finale, the extended opening crescendo builds toward intensity mixed with expressiveness. Mood changes seem to flow naturally: the movement has a cohesiveness that overrides its frequent aural and tempo differences. Ebb and flow are nearly constant, but Wand has a clear and coherent sense of how the individual parts fit into the totality. Every resounding tutti comes as a wake-up call to the movement's progress. Then the full-stop pauses provide "thought time" before Bruckner advances the next ideas. As the movement approaches its climax, Wand pulls ever more sound from the orchestra, resulting by the end in a feeling not so much of triumph as of great accomplishment.

     Symphony No. 5 starts to build from the very beginning: this work is hard to sustain through all movements, but Wand manages to do so. Everything here needs to be anticipatory, but still has to make sense in its place. The second movement’s pizzicato delicacy at the start ties well to the opening of the first movement. Wand takes full advantage of the strings' warmth, which is especially impressive in this movement. Then the woodwind-dominated passages two-thirds of the way through provide a particularly welcome pastoral feeling, a sort of gentle relaxation. The third movement, the only one in this symphony without a pizzicato beginning, features excellent contrasts of delicacy and strength; and Wand’s tempos seem to fit this sonata-form movement perfectly. The finale starts very tentatively and thoughtfully, then strides forth confidently. There is high drama starting six minutes in, as the character of the whole movement changes and it starts to build toward its and the entire symphony’s eventual climax. From here the movement strides forward boldly and with growing intensity, its periodic forays into gently flowing lyricism serving to accentuate its growing power. The conclusion, when it arrives, is beautifully proportioned and highly dramatic and convincing.

     Wand also brings his sure sense of flow to Symphony No. 6, a work that gives a lot of conductors – and a lot of audiences – considerable trouble. Wand fits this stepchild of a symphony clearly into the Bruckner canon, managing to find the thematic and rhythmic ways in which it belongs; the ways in which it develops in new directions (a number of the themes are particularly beautiful); and the ways in which it is unique (notably the sonata-form Adagio and the comparatively slow and essentially themeless Scherzo). The deep seriousness of the second movement is notable: the funereal portion (involving the third theme) contrasts especially well with the wistful and wishful initial theme. By its end, the second movement is glowingly evanescent. Then Wand pays special attention to the rhythmic underpinnings that give this Scherzo its unique character. As for the finale, which is smaller-scale but more tightly knit than that of Symphony No. 5, Wand's sensitivity to mood changes comes to the fore: his ability to control and elucidate Bruckner’s opening and closing movements is one of his most-salient characteristics.

     Symphony No. 7 has excellent flow from the start, building solidly for five minutes until the third thematic group's more-flowing nature emerges. The emotional contrasts of this first movement come through with rare clarity. The second movement is very stately and moving: Wand has a true understanding of the indication sehr feierlich (“very solemn”) – and brings forth the movement’s great thematic beauty as well. Wand omits the cymbal clash and triangle at the movement’s climax: some conductors even today continue to consider them inauthentic. The third movement lightens the symphony’s mood significantly, although it is scarcely "light" music. Its rhythmic strength is notable throughout. And Wand handles the fourth movement with more delicacy than is usual in Bruckner, in part by de-emphasizing the percussion. Indeed, Wand downplays percussive elements throughout this reading: this symphony uses very little of it, and Wand minimizes most of what is there. In contrast, Wand highlights the brass elements, which are especially well-done.

     Symphony No. 8, so long that it sprawls over two CDs in this release, can be intimidating on several levels. But Wand quite clearly has no fear of this symphony's size: his pacing is deliberate and very even. The performance uses the controversial Haas mixed edition – issues of editions are very fraught in this symphony. The key for Wand, though, is conviction, and he certainly has it; also cohesiveness, and he has that too – the entire first movement develops with a sense of organic growth. The second movement (the Scherzo) is also large-scale, with a constant feeling of expanding horizons throughout the performance. The very leisurely pace of the Trio creates some respite, as if at a sylvan scene. The third movement starts with great warmth and careful attention to the unusual opening rhythm. Then it builds steadily, as if Wand here reflects Bruckner constructing an edifice: there is a sense of constant growth and spread. The fourth movement provides strong contrast of tempo and intensity, genuinely surprising after the very long post-climactic portion of the Adagio. Expansiveness permeates this performance. There is a sense of organic growth through the movement as well as a joining-together of the whole symphony, as Bruckner gathers themes and rhythms from earlier and reaffirms, joins and expands them. Then the trumpet call halfway through the movement creates an even greater sense of drama, and the following material becomes anticipatory of the movement's eventual climax. There is some meandering after the climactic material, but Wand keeps the movement on track toward a conclusion that is surprisingly compressed, considering the overall length of the symphony.

     Wand’s performance of the three completed movements of Bruckner’s Ninth is truly exceptional. The word misterioso definitely applies at the start of the first movement, which has beautiful flow combined with a sense of inevitability as it moves through differing emotional sectors. Wand very skillfully manages the series of climaxes that build to the eventual highly dramatic one at the movement's end. The second movement’s use of pizzicato has an entirely different effect from its use in Symphony No. 5: here, the technique is a major contributor to a weird "flickering" effect that neatly reflects the misterioso material of the first movement. Then, when the pounding rhythm of this Scherzo appears, Wand has the orchestra hit it very hard, which makes for a very effective differentiation from the quieter sections. The fleet Trio then contrasts strongly with the Scherzo, as it should: Wand has a very sure sense of the differing sound of these parts of the movement. The third movement represents a change of character yet again. It is very beautiful and has a very clear sense of musical flow. The movement goes through a large number of emotions, each of which Wand brings out to good effect. The monumental climax six minutes before the movement's end is absolutely thrilling. The juxtaposed quiet passages that appear afterwards come across as an exhalation of breath, an ebbing of waves of overwhelming emotion that fade gently into peace suffused with warmth and light. A performance this well-thought-out makes it a real shame that the fourth movement of the symphony remained incomplete at Bruckner’s death: all these Wand performances predate more-recent attempts to fine-tune editions of the symphonies, which in the case of the Ninth often means offering some version of the near-complete finale in attempts (some more successful than others) to let audiences hear where Bruckner wanted the symphony to go.

     Bruckner is very well-served by Wand. Unfortunately, Wand is not well-served by Profil. The box of recordings simply places each CD in a flimsy paper (not even cardboard) sleeve. The eight-page booklet contains nothing but the dates of each recording and the list and timings of each movement – nothing at all about either Wand or Bruckner, nothing about the editions used in these performances, nothing really informational at all. And as thin as it is, the booklet is pervaded by errors: for instance, the famous Majestoso designation for the first movement of Symphony No. 6 here appears incorrectly as Maestoso, and the designation for the first movement of No. 7 is given as “Allegro moderat” [sic]. This sloppiness is unbecoming an important label and gives the impression that this re-release is a throwaway, perhaps for listeners for whom Wand is already well-regarded but not for serious Bruckner aficionados in general. If that is the thinking underlying this release, it is badly mistaken: these are excellent, often exceptional performances that may not benefit from the very latest Bruckner scholarship or the most-up-to-date sonic capabilities, but that can stand interpretatively with any more-recent release of these specific symphonies. Wand was an exceptional Bruckner conductor who fully deserves to be remembered for the quality with which he conducts this music – not downgraded because of the lesser quality with which his excellent performances are packaged here.