I do not even know where to start. I my comfortably warm and presold to myself world there is only one way to play Bruckner 8 symphony. I have quite a few recordings of the work that I like and I have “The Supper Recording” that makes all there rest Bruckner 8 feel like patting a Papier-mâché made tigers in New Jersey mall.

My Bruckner 8 Supper Recording is Wand with his NDR play live in Lubeck Cathedral. Since Yoshi  brought to me this recording from Tokyo, re-mastered  and pressed by Japanese folks, (much better then US RCA CD) performance just hijacked my soil and I play it almost dally for the last few month. It is unquestionably one the most cherished CD I have, and I have quite a lot of unique CD. Besides the truly mind-boggling Wand phrasing during this performance (I think I heard all Wand’s recordings of the 8th) the sound of Lubeck Cathedral during that event was beyond believe. It was 10c reverberation time and the hall is virtually not playable. Later on Wand recorded the 9th symphony with the same band in the same Cathedral but the sound of Cathedral killed it. With the 8th it is hypnotizing beyond imagination. In my view to hear the Lubeck Bruckner 8 by Wand on the Macondo in the new room is the most advanced listening experience Audio is able to furnish. Trust me; it is not the pride of ownership but the assessment of the person who knows what he is talking about.

So, with all my mental settlement on Lubeck’s Wand I heard today a recording that flipped my little comfortable world upside down. It was Eduard van Beinum with Royal Concertgebouw, playing Bruckner 8 in 1955.    This recording is as far from Wand as it could be. Wand/Lubeck orchestra is a definition of royalty and sophistication. The Wand/Lubeck phases and balance of the Orchestra in space and in time made with so much grace that generation shall study this recording as an ultimate musical aspiration. The Beinum’s Concertgebouw is vulgar and incredibly crude. Furthermore it is very fast with absolutely horrible instrumental balance. Still, among that earthy vulgarity Beinum pull out the play that defines Bruckner 8 in it’s own way.

The initial reaction to the Beinum’s 8th is like to a smelly stench. Then Beinum take you by your nose and stick your nose into a stunning demonstration how to play Bruckner. The people at this site were bitching the Bruckner is wavy and that they need to run to a refrigerator to grab a sandwich while Bruckner develops his thymes.  Listed what Beinum did in 1955 – you will not see him coming – it is an entire hour of  fantastic pressure coming from astonishing play by Concertgebouw and from very different, almost concert-like redoing of  Bruckner 8th.

To me this Beinum does not sound like Bruckner at all. This is a new awareness that Beinum conceived using the Bruckner Symphony. It is not the music by a church organist but rather a dairy of war refugee. The  Beinum Bruckner from 55 has amassing power-transmitting quality.  In a way it reminds me the Parajanov’s “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestor” – you sit in from of the scene and have no idea of what is going on but feel a stream of raw energy coming to you from screen.  This Beinum Bruckner works the same way. Your proverbial sandwich is the very last thing you care when Beinum will do you.

Is Beinum Bruckner from 55 better then Lubeck’s Wand. Imposable to compare! They sound like two different symphonies. The magnitude of each of them so astonishingly high that even the question of comparing them I feel would insult them. The Beinum Bruckner 8 from 55 is ceremonially placed at my shelfs with the best recording ever were committed to recording media.

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