The year 2024 will mark the 200e anniversary of the birth of the great Austrian symphonist Anton Bruckner. The commemoration began well in advance. It leads us to look at an approach to the composer’s work which, over the past ten years, has evolved considerably. But for whose benefit: music lovers, musicologists, conductors, or score publishers?
Bruckner, a divisive composer, is a unique case in many respects. He fascinates a good number of orchestra conductors, while a significant proportion of music lovers are impervious and resistant to his music… not to mention orchestral musicians, notably violinists, subjected to a regime of tremolos, who are not happy not necessarily to see it on the program. Conductors are scrambling to record Bruckner, but no one is buying the records, they say in the trade. And yet: what music!
Variable work
The surprises reserved by this composer do not stop there. Bruckner’s work is not fixed. Very few famous composers have reworked their scores so much. For five of his symphonies (the Symphonies notbone 1, 2, 3, 4 And 8), he composed more than one version.
Logically, we could say that the process led him to ultimately produce “final” versions, representing his final vision of the score. But this is not necessarily the case. His music being misunderstood, vilified by many critics, he welcomed the slightest support and was ready to water it down or let it be disfigured simply to get it played.
This led friendly chefs, such as Franz Schalk and Ferdinand Löwe, to add their own two cents. As Pierre-Michel Menger, professor at the Collège de France, writes: “In total, three levels of text instability overlap, at the time when the composer is still active: authorial instability linked to the intense practice of revision by the composer; the interventions carried out by the conductors to adjust the works for their personal use; the work of the few collaborators of Bruckner involved in the edition of his works. This last level added its coefficient of uncertainty, as these editions could deviate from the manuscript scores and approach what we can call not simply a state or a variant, but a revision producing a “version” identified as such. »
This uncertainty led to the main turmoil around Bruckner in the last 15 years: new “critical editions” of the scores began to proliferate, further increasing, under the guise of research and a return to the sources, the confusion in the number of versions of several symphonies.
Moreover, while formerly the first interpretative act of a conductor was the choice of the score, now the great fashion is to throw the various editions out to the listeners. So when chef Jakub Hrůša recorded the Symphony no 4, in 2020, he did it three times, including an alternative finale and excerpts. There 4e Bruckner Symphony by Hrůša, from the publisher Accentus, is a box set of 4 CDs! In any discipline other than music, this would be called fetishism.
Chapels
This path of multiplication of recorded scores was opened by the conductor Gerd Schaller, whose complete Profile, which had just been completed at the time of our previous portrait of the composer, in 2018, has 18 CDs! Schaller will be overwhelmed by the current project Bruckner 2024 by Markus Poschner at Capriccio, which records the 18 official scores of the New Anton Bruckner Gesamtausgabewhose editor-in-chief is Benjamin Korstvedt and the publishing house, Doblinger.
But that’s not all ! There are “chapels” and competition even within this “ business » critical editions. Thus, the LSO label has just published the 7e Symphony by Simon Rattle, who promotes Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs publishing. This musicologist, who died in November 2023 of a heart attack, piloted, in the same city of Vienna, the Anton Bruckner Urtext Gesmtausgabe (Abuga) published by Hermann editions. Simon Rattle is the standard bearer for this company. But without this little element of curiosity, who would be interested in Simon Rattle directing Bruckner? Apart from one 9e Symphony in Berlin, the conductor has never attracted attention for 30 years in this repertoire.
This question therefore arises: who benefits from this proselytism? The musicologists Haas and Nowak, in the mid-20th centurye century, had “reestablished” a solid and pragmatic truth of Bruckner’s music in their scores. Today, some of their successors seem to gravitate towards this music like evangelists celebrating a cult, reviving all the variations and scrutinizing all the rubbish. The publishers of these scores are licking their lips, they who can try to sell at a high price “critical” or “original” editions of a composer who died 130 years ago.
Music lovers lose because the portrait of the composer becomes more and more confused.
Antidotes
To keep a cool head, then, let’s simply look at Bruckner not as an intimidating and confusing mass, but as the greatest breeding ground for deception, usurpation and failure of all forms of the music industry in the last two decades.
On the scores, no member of “common mortals” needs three different versions of the 4e Symphony by the same leader. Moreover, the current revisions of little nitpicking hardly allow us to discern when listening the interpretive idea of the modification of a particular connection or such a dynamic. It is therefore the vision of the conductor and the quality of the orchestra which remain discriminating.
As such, no composer other than Bruckner has been the meeting place for so many rubbish and inept completes. We seem to be dreaming in drawing up the list of “integralists”: Mario Venzago (who wanted to adopt a post-baroque vision), Ivor Bolton (and his Bruckner chamber at the Mozarteum), Rémy Ballot (a sinister disciple of Celibidache), Simone Young, Thomas Dausgaard (mixture of Bolton and Venzago), Marcus Bosch.
The complete work that a professional must necessarily look into is that, in progress, of Markus Poschner recorded with his Linz orchestra and that of the Viennese Radio. But, even in its most interesting aspects (5e Symphony), listening to Poschner brings a clear conclusion. The universe of Bruckner, devout creator, “Ménestrel of God”, composer of great symphonic architectures, nourished by a sap that emanates from his land, is ideally embodied in the sonic generosity of the very great orchestras: Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam, Dresden and Bavarian Radio in the lead. It is, whether we like it or not, this sound that we will idealize and crave.
No need to search from noon to two p.m., the two best integrals are also those which are the least expensive: Günter Wand (RCA) and Eugen Jochum-Dresden (Warner). Their box sets cost little more than a single symphony. In the offerings of the last twenty years, Brillant Classics has just reissued the very commendable complete Marek Janowski, published in 2015 by Pentatone. A step above (quality and price), Accentus has made accessible in 2023 the complete Blomstedt-Leipzig recorded between 2005 and 2012, which crushes the Nelsons version with the same orchestra newly published by DG.
More exciting than Blomstedt, even if he is less equal (fabulous 9eholes in the architecture of the 5e), Christian Thielemann with the Vienna Philharmonic (Sony) brings by far the most interesting modern proposal in a sound luxury that warms the heart.
Note to distinguished collectors that both the Berlin Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Orchestra and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra have published, from their concert archives, fascinating “multi-conductor” box sets, but sources ups and downs. The Amsterdam box set notably includes the almost unsurpassable 5e Symphony by Eugen Jochum, his last concert in 1986. Strangely, both Amsterdam and Berlin found that their orchestra had never played the 8e Symphony only under the direction of Zubin Mehta!