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In the Forum: Musical Discussions
In the Thread: If you are in Bruckner: Lovro von Matacic

Post Subject: Bruckner and conductors/versionsPosted by Romy the Cat on: 4/12/2014

Hm…. Listening Bruckner more than I am willing to admit publicly without fear of incriminating myself I need to say that have slightly different approach to Bruckner. First of all I do not differentiate different revision of Bruckner symphonies. I know that Bruckner scholars would go crazy and would educate me about many different versions but honestly I care less. For sure I acknowledge that there are different versions and for sure I have my preferences but I still with great pleasure listen the non-favorite editions and they are fine by me. It is not the edition itself but HOW the given editions were played. If it was respectfully and creatively done then why would I care the presents of more or less superfluous differences.

Next are the conductors. Yes, Matacic was a great conductor but can we make this judgment based upon his phenomenal, truly mind boggling B7 with Czechs in 1967? I do not think so and there are many reasons why.

First of all the Matacic’s B7 from 1967 is not great all together but has truly wonderful first two movements, with second movement being unmatched in my view among anything that was ever committed to recording medium. The same Matacic did not do so great B8 or B9, so can I consider him a great Bruckner interpreter? The Bruckner Master - Gunner Wand never made any good B7, B5 or B9 but succeed only with B1, B4 and B8. Another Bruckner specialist – Karajan recorded million times Bruckner but only his one single B5 sound right to my years. Celibidache. Another Brucknerian played B8 endlessly but only one version was right where it has to be. Giulini left the chistomatia-like B9 but did not do as great with anything else. So, I do not think that greatness of conductors has a lot to do with anything, in many instances it is just the stars aligned in some very special way and “it” just happened.

This brings me to the second reason. We deal with recordings and in our case the stars alignment for conductors, musicians, halls and audiences is not enough – we need to be lucky that after the stars did all their duties then we have the recording did not fuck everything up, that unfortunately so frequently happens in today worlds. Why do you think some people are so love those mono recording from 70 years back, do you think the technologies were so great then? Of cause not! What was great then that the recording personal then had very little impact to the recording and editing process ( and if they did then they did not have barbarian editing method invented) and we as result have much better recording then.

The Cat

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