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Posted by Romy the Cat on
12-05-2023
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A friend sent me a link to an interesting video about Bruckner
on analog. I do not know who the guy is; he is a Bruckner devotee, which is
good. I'm afraid I must disagree with his choices, although I certainly
enthusiastically support his appreciation of Carl Schuricht.
A few things, in my view there are no good-sounding Bruckner
LPs, period. I feel his views about good sonics of many Bruckner LPs from 50
and 60 I do not share. Another thing
that bothers me about this presentation. Please stop that nonsense about Bruckner
and Mahler as some kind of German pseudo-intellectual package. That is rubbish.
Their whole marriage started in the late
30s. I believe it was Bruno Walter who published an article about this position.
I think at that time, it was fine as Bruno Walter had done a great job of
promoting Bruckner and Mahler's music. But it, again, in my view, has nothing
to do with reality, and to me, one of the most incredible things about Bruckner
is that his musk is not Mahler's music. I am not a Mahler hater; I like Mahler,
but to put Mahler in the same bracket with Bruckner in any way or form is a monumental
fallacy.
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Posted by Paul S on
12-09-2023
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Romy, thanks for another nudge toward Bruckner. I was not at all aware of Schuricht before your post, and I do like what I heard of his 8th and 9th via headphones, off the computer, although I realize this is a just thumbnail version. You have said several times that there is no good Bruckner from LPs, and I remember you complained a while back that your Jubilee cartridge was acting up, and I wondered if this made Bruckner harder for you to get from LPs. If you feel, as I do, that Sound is very important for Bruckner appreciation, then you also think "the best" recorded performances must be replicable. I have to pay close attention to set up to get the performance from my old London 7th LPs, using my old, refurbished MC 3000 II cartridge.
Best regards,
Paul S
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Posted by Paul S on
02-02-2024
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I think I have 3 versions of Bruckner 8, 2 performances on CD. 1 CD is Carl Schuricht/Stuttgart, 1954, and the other is Herbert von Karajan/Vienna, 1988. The Karajan CD sounds better through my system, and I also prefer it in terms of the performance, itself, at this point. As someone who has wanted to really hear Bruckner for some time I am now awash in B's 8th Symphony. What a magnificent piece of Music! I sort of snuck up on this symphony by listening to a poor mono LP set I've had for a long time. When I finally heard the Karajan/VPO/'88 CD I was totally hypnotized! If this Adagio doesn't lift you, it may be you have no soul! I am amazed that Bruckner adds to his sonorities here in a new way, building on orchestral "chords" by introducing lower frequencies and then bringing in higher pitched sections playing the harmonics of the LF, and then riffing on the resultant chromatics. And the progressions are marvelous! It basically puts the thinking part of my brain out of commission and puts me into a sort of State of Transfixion. It might take a while before I can start piecing this symphony together. I remember in early listening that I could not "get" the fourth movement. Now I get "closure" from the 4th movement, such as it is, since it leaves me floating amongst The Heavenly Host. Lubeck is on the way!
Paul S
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Posted by steverino on
02-04-2024
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Romy,
When you say no good sounding Bruckner LPs do you mean no "great" sounding, or that all Bruckner LPs sonics are average or worse?
It would help if you gave an example of late 19th C Romantic music on LP that you did consider good or better. Also do you think there any good sounding Bruckner CDs?
For myself, if I'm using "good" as above average but not a demonstration recording, I would say the Mehta Symphony 9, the Karajan Symphony 4 on the EMI german gold postage stamp label and the Bohm Symphony 3 are good recordings. I am only talking about the recording not the performance.
I think it is very difficult to make a demonstration recording of any large orchestra playing late Romantic works whether on LP or CD.
I do strongly agree with you that the pairing of Bruckner and Mahler is quite lazy. I think Mahler took one class from Bruckner. He never did much for him as conductor and his music has little relationship to Bruckner's except for some Schubertian tendencies in the interior movements. But music criticism (as opposed to scholarship) is almost always extremely lazy in everything.
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Posted by Paul S on
02-18-2024
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As
for the Musical Part of this CD, it could hardly be more amazing. I understand
that the performance was taped live by German Public TV, and this might well
mean that there is a great DVD of this event. Harmonia Mundi was also involved,
and I will try digging into this in the near future, to see if there are any
leads to other good recordings of this performance. Here Wand commands a very
large orchestra that is composed of crack musicians who are also athletes. They
must have been exhausted after that performance, as Wand really drives them.
Wand deftly tailors the sound and the Musical structure both to include the
reverberation in the cathedral. He also uses the many sections of this
orchestra to get special chromatics, texture, dynamics, consonance, harmony and
dissonance. His timing is impeccable, very “organic”, and very much in sync
with the space. Many music loving musicologists have raved at length about this
performance, and I add my up-vote to theirs. I have said that this CD does not
tax my system, but I should add that all components must be fully warmed up and
at their best for me to get the best from this CD, because there is a lot of
There there. Then the Music is huge, powerful, downright enveloping, and truly
awe inspiring, with the touted “presence ambiance” from beginning to end,
including the quietest to the loudest passages. This performance takes nearly
90 minutes, including the parts and the Whole of this great, mighty Symphony.
This performance sets the bar pretty high for B8 aspirants.
Paul S
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Posted by Paul S on
11-20-2024
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I struggle to find words adequate to describe Bruckner 9
performed by the VPO, guided by Carlo Maria Giulini in 1988. I think I have to
use the term “Celestial” to conjure the sheer scale and the magnificence of
this symphony. Giulini has a good idea of how he wants the symphony to sound,
and the VPO delivers for him, Big Time. It is very much a matter of power and
scale here, but it also involves the voicing of ever-shifting ensembles that
continuously range up and down the frequency/sound spectrum, loud to soft and
back with no hesitation, and I am sure it is a real exercise for the musicians.
Something wonderful about the performance to me is that the musicians are so
adept that they never sound strained or show-y, but the symphony just sort of
appears continuously out of the sky (Celestial). People complain about DG
sound, but the sound and atmosphere of the live performance are well captured
here, and it does not diminish the important spiritual nature of this symphony.
Run, don’t walk to get a copy of this.
Paul S
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
11-20-2024
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Yes, the Bruckner 9 by VPO and Giulini in 1988 is one of those few recordings
why I do practice High-End audio. The opening of the 3rd movements is probably the
best play I ever heard committed to recording media and one of the best compositions
by mankind, in my view. The sound of DG of course is typically horrible, dry,
grainy burned-out, the typical DG crap.
However, there is a trick. Milq/Macongo can rectify it. One
of the reasons because I for years tuned my playback to play exactly this
recording. However, my playback needs to have exceptionally good electricity
day to play it. When it does happen a few times a year I always pull my Giulini
B9 and I always play it and it sounds
spectacular. I have seen some very strange effects with sound when I play this
recording on a good electricity day. I remember it was good 15 years back and
it was in the middle of a snow blizzard. The electricity was amazing and I
pulled my Giulini’s B9 and it sounded beyond belief. On that night, adding +10-12DB to my ULF channel
did not make any difference in the auditable result. Very interesting….
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Posted by Paul S on
11-21-2024
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Funny you should especially mention the opening of the 3rd (and final) movement (Adagio) as being demanding of your system. Bruckner uses a lot of high-pitched violin tremolo, huge banks of violins, often flanked by FFFF piccolos at the highest frequencies, and at the opening of the 3rd in B9 Guilini/VPO '88 this sound should be well sorted and "in space". Like you, I need everything in the system to be at its best in order to have space around those HF notes/chords. I cannot "get" this Music unless my gear has been played at least an hour ahead of it, and bad electricity sinks it. You mention you have kept this Music as a pole star over time. I recently changed S/PDIF IC hoping to better sort Bruckner HF. Too bad that examples of "well recorded" massed violin HF are thin on the ground.
Paul S
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
11-22-2024
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 Paul S wrote: | | Funny you should especially
mention the opening of the 3rd (and final) movement (Adagio) as being demanding
of your system. Bruckner uses a lot of high-pitched violin tremolo, huge banks
of violins, often flanked by FFFF piccolos at the highest frequencies, and at
the opening of the 3rd in B9 Guilini/VPO '88 this sound should be …. |
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Paul, it has nothing to do with the number of violins, with frequencies
or with sound. The opening is VERY complex from musical, ethnical and philosophical perspective.
The way how sonically one can make it to sound is completely up to the owner of
the any given system.
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Posted by Paul S on
11-22-2024
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Granting that I misunderstood your post, without getting too windy, it is in fact sound that I process that conveys the Message, and for me the Sound and even parts of Sound are relevant to the interpretation of the Music. Agreed it might be any instruments playing anything, but my experience with interpreting B9 from the CD in question is as stated. As I have speculated many times, there are probably people who could get a lot from B9 hearing it streamed through earbuds. Not I. Re-reading, it still reads to me as though you especially tuned your playback to deliver the Message to you from the B9 CD in question?
Best regards
Paul S
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Posted by Paul S on
12-19-2024
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From the start this recording sounds to me as though Jochum is "accommodating" his orchestra. While the rendering is deft in terms of promoting the main themes, much of the special-to-Bruckner alternate themes, complex groupings and chromatics are subdued here, seemingly in the interests of getting the recording done in as few takes as possible, or perhaps I am reading into it and this is just the way Jochum hears the symphony, himself. Not to denegrate the playing, which is good enough, rather it is not Giulini/VPO. I had listened to 1/2 of this Adagio with headphones before I ordered the LP, and I liked the way the strings took the lead so decisively, in a spare, "modern" way. Too bad it did not come across as well via my big rig. For all we might suppose, the LP here has much less "dynamic range" than the Giulini DG CD. Again, I think this has more to do with the interpretation than the recording, per se, but I thought I'd mention it. If this is David Hurwitz' favorite B9, I wonder why. I should listen to him (and this recording) again. I am still a long way from understanding this symphony, but I have 4 other versions of B9 that I like at least as well as this one. The LP is an original from Angel (EMI), with good surfaces.
Paul S
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Posted by dady on
12-22-2024
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Dear Romy, this morning, after a long time away from listening, due to an explosion of lead acid batteries in my rustic house, which left me with a detuned ear, the high D of my flute sounded like an out-of-tune E flat, imagining that a fortissimo from a Bruckner symphony was a cracker of noise inside my brain. This led me to listen to music with few harmonies and jazz and some chamber music where low sounds predominated. Having said this as an excuse, I have accidentally entered this post in which Bruckner and Mahler are compared or put in the same box.
Music is a psychoacoustic process that gradually educates sectors of our cerebral cortex, I only feel this, I have not read it, I am an intensive care doctor, still active, soon to retire. Tired. However, the phenomenon of music is, I believe, the most important thing in terms of experiences that I believe go beyond the simple cortical interpretation by our brain. I have been listening to music since I was a child and I have gone through all the musical currents, reaching dodecaphony, which I still cannot experience as art. When we say that Bruckner is better or worse than Mahler, we are making a comparison of two different currents, Mahler is the inexorable continuation of Wagner, it is possible that in another period of my life I would not have understood it, the same happened to me with Anton. They are different styles, I am not a musicologist and I cannot speak of the complexity that they developed but I can assure you that Gustav is something sublime, overflowing and very, very exciting. The climates that are achieved with his music are of a higher dimension. But on the other hand, I can assure you with my hand on my heart, that this is a passage of my existence, perhaps on another, a different day with previous experiences, which I cannot establish a correspondence to make them coincide, something changes inside, and Bruckner appears again. Or the genius of Hamburg, the romantic Brahms, the musician above all others. And at some unexpected moment the genius of Leipzig emerges again, performed on piano for example. So to be able to affirm that one is better than another you have to be very prepared, I think you would have to be an orchestra conductor or a musician. Although the definitions would come from the theory and analysis of harmony and/or counterpoint. Regarding Bruckner on LP it is a bottleneck, the dynamic range of a symphony cannot be extrapolated to an LP.
Anyway, I take this opportunity to greet you and other readers of this post to which I will surely return soon.
Esteban
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