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Beinum recorded the Bruckner 8 in 1955 twice, in April and In June. My comment above goes for June recording.

There is something else I would like to add in context to Beinum 55 vs. Lubeck’s Wand.

The Lubeck’s Wand to me is still the ultimate Bruckner as I would like Bruckner to see. In fact it is beyond the ultimate, it is freak of the nature, the performing accident that epitomizes the whole Bruckner concept. Let me to explain.

Some years back, I was working with a client at Downtown and during the hours of very busy people traffic I, like an ultimate masochist, was practicing my own version of audio sadism. I put headphones on and played my favorites slow movements of Minkus’ ballets while was watching the thousands people running around. These thousands people running around in Brownian motion fashion have own rhythm, own tempo and own beat. It was not difficult to compose in my head a harmonic structure, music that would “pulsate” in that rhythm. Minkus’ music is written for completely different culture of body movement,  Minkus’ rhythm and rushing crowd’s rhythms live in separate universe. They are not even intersecting. So, playing in my head the composed music of the rushing crowd, while listening the Minkus gorgeous, well-developed melodies was a beautiful torturer. It was like trying to hit with a left hand 7/8 beat, with right hand 3/4 beat and then coastally reverse the time signatures between the hands. Perhaps a trained drummer would do it but I am loosing after fist second.

The point of these Downtown examples was that “environment” has harmonies.  During the Lubeck’s Wand the environment, the entire “world” was subordinated to Bruckner’s harmonies. It did not felt that Wand orchestra was playing in some kind of “space” but rather it felt that the entire Universes stood still for that Bruckner’s hour and gave itself up to “pulsate” in the Bruckner’s beat. For sure that all was the part of the Wand’s plan (who did not like Lubeck’s acoustics BTW), Still when the Symphony is played the Sound unfold itself so organically-natural that you suspend all your disbelieve and begin to feel that the World exists only to let you to hear those beyond-psychedelic  decays during the Lubeck’s 8th Symphony Adagio.

The Eduard van Beinum with Royal Concertgebouw have VERY different approach. Beinum does not give a flying fuck about the “environment” , about  the “World” – my kind of guy! He does not even care about Sound in a way. He did not use “Bruckner with Universe” paradigm but rather hw rapes the Universe with his own version of Bruckner Sound. I never ever heard Bruckner to sound as it does during this Beinum 1955 play. Ok, now I am writing it and I feel horny for Bruckner again….

Rgs, Romy the Cat

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