Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 in d
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra/Manfred Honeck
Reference FR-733
Total Time:  63:12
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Often here we refer to the influence of Bruckner on composers whose music is less familiar to a larger public, or who are being rediscovered.  Now we have an opportunity to explore the great Austrian symphonist’s last work the Symphony No. 9 in d.  Begun as early as 1887, Bruckner was still working on the piece up until his death in 1896.  Thus, the symphony has only three movements as the fourth was never completed.  Some fee that had he spent more time focusing on this work it may have been finished but the composer often went back and revised and edited his works based on critiques he received along the way.  There are a number of sketches for a fourth movement but none which seemed to be coming together and Bruckner even thought adding his Te Deum would be a fitting way to complete the work.  As such, though it still stands as one of the last great masterpieces of the period.  It would receive it first performance in 1903 in a severely edited version by one of his students Ferdinand Lowe.  That particular edition would be the one that first appeared in America under Theodore Thomas’ direction with the Chicago Symphony.

Part of the “Fresh!” Live concert series from Reference Recordings, this new release brings us another stunning recording from Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh with the orchestra conducted by its music director (since 2008) Manfred Honeck.  Over the past few years he and the Pittsburgh Symphony have released highly-acclaimed recordings in this series that has been recorded and masted by Soundmirror.  For those with high-end stereos, the hybrid super audio, with its 5.0 Stereo will certainly surround you with all the Brucknerian glory you can muster.

Perhaps thoughts of eternity and his place in it were in Bruckner’s thoughts as he began work on this piece.  As a composer steeped in religious imagery and traditions, the symphony is infused with symbolic gestures and musical imagery that connect with an exaltation of the Almighty and our human ascent into the heavens.  The music feels less like an orchestrated organ piece as Bruckner’s use of orchestral color is often tied to the functioning of different stops on a large pipe organ.  In this work, some of that is present, but in the quieter moments the lines have a more intricate interaction.  Somewhere in the midst of all this is perhaps a deeper expression of the composer’s own belief system and faith.   Moments of awe and moments of darkness intermingle through the big climaxes in ways that break out often into reflective beauty.  Throughout his orchestral textures still can be explored in specific blocks of sound, but there seems to be something different about them in this work.  Perhaps these inner emotional connections, the religiosity of the music itself, are what often make this one of the more popular of his works.  The first movement still has an almost Wagnerian thematic statement, one that tends to explode out of his brass writing with its harmonic shifts adding to that nod to the grand operatic tradition.   What is more, it does not lag or get bogged down as Bruckner can sometimes.  It ebbs and flows moving to climaxes only to pull back before we get its final powerful bars.  From glances to heaven, the second movement seems to move us to the verge of hell and a rather intense and unusual dance with a figure that seems bound to try and claw its way out.  There are some rather landler-like lighter moments for contrast before those death beats return.

Honeck draws some stunning performances from the Pittsburgh players who are in top form here.  The shaping of phrases is also exemplary.  This is a performance that is deeply informed by a deep understanding of the rhythmic motives, thematic threads and references, and implications of Bruckner’s music.  Of course, he is helped here by a really superb engineering feat that helps enhance the PSO.  Honeck’s extra intensity and energy is aided by the fact that the recording was made from live performances in February 2018.  For this performance he is using the Nowak edition.  Honeck takes a bit more time in the opening movement which allows for some rather emotional drama aided by a slightly more relaxed tempo In places.  His scherzo though falls about in the middle of performances (not too breezy, but not overtly restrained either).  In the finale, he also takes time to let the music unfold naturally and beautifully making for some gorgeous moments that transport the listener.  Reference released (back in 1997) a version of this symphony with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski conducting the Minnesota Orchestra at a time when the conductor was touring and performing using his own detailed editions.  Here, Honeck’s performance seems to be quit similar, though his version runs almost four minutes longer.  Most likely Honeck’s will be a tough new competitor for those looking for an engaging performance that is capured in such great sound.  With some 140+ versions of the work to choose from by every generation of conductor one generally cannot go too wrong, but this release is perhaps the best place to start and upon which other performances will likely be compared.  The trio is really more impish than its opening, though the rhythms of the former hint at the edges.  This movement would be a normal highlight worth the price of the album on its own.  The final movement’s yearning and adoration is about as close to a religious romanticism as one might get and those opening bars and that gorgeous harmonic writing tantalizes so well.  Also worth noting is the way the performance captures both those huge orchestral explosions alongside moments of sparser writing.  Tempos too help provide a very powerful interpretation that flows very naturally.  Truly we move from one “wow” to another.

The release is also helped by Honeck’s own experience as a performer with the Vienna Philharmonic and Vienna State Opera Orchestra lending him an even further unique understanding of this music.  On top of this is his very informative, and personal, notes which accompany the album and make for an engaging introduction to this work.  I can think of no other release where the conductor so carefully has outlined his understanding of particular motives and patterns and how they connect throughout this work.  Each movement has detailed information down to the measure numbers (and even album timings) to help any listener wade through this experience more.  But truly one is best invited to sit back and let this music wash over you with its powerful expression because it is in the way Honeck shapes these performances that one begins to truly appreciate the emotional depths of this music.  One sits enthralled and begins to dream at what a Bruckner cycle with Honeck and the PSO might be.    This is the second Bruckner outing, they recorded the other popular fourth symphony a couple of years ago.  Certainly that will also be worth revisiting as one looks to a performance here that is an important interpretation by Honeck to help distinguish itself in so many ways.

Marx: Ein Herbstsymphonie
Grazer Philharmonic/Johannes Wildner
CPO 555 262-2
Total Time:  67:00
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Johannes Wildner has been bringing a number of important orchestral pieces to disc with different orchestras on the CPO label.  This time he resurrects the music of Austrian composer Joseph Marx (1882-1964).  Though somewhat forgotten today, Marx was a well-respected teacher, critic, and composer of more traditional music.  His was the challenge faced by composers uninterested in the serial techniques appearing in the works of Arnold Schoenberg.  As such, his own music tended to be overlooked as it eschewed atonal construction.  He is perhaps best known today for a host of art songs, essentially continuing the tradition from Hugo Wolf.  Of course, his penchant for maintaining a more romantic symphonic tradition came into conflict with those supporting more avant-garde music and by the time the New Grove Dictionary appeared in 1980 he was written off as a mostly “local composer”.  It was in the 1920s that he focuses most on symphonic writing and it is from this place that the work on this album, the Autumn Symphony, comes.  One can hear so many of the Romantic Period’s primary subjects of nature and the supernatural coupled with that almost mystical religiosity artists linked with the outdoors.  It makes this new release an important link with the other modern tonal composers of the early 20^th Century.

The symphony was premiered under more tumultuous circumstances by Felix Weingartner and the Vienna Philharmonic where there were both protests and enthusiastic applause.  A fall performance under the direction of Clemens Kraus in 1922 to enthusiastic audiences in Graz.  Each of the movements has its own descriptive subtitle growing from a rather short opening movement until reaching the near half-hour length of the final movement, “Ein Herbstpoem”.  It is really like having a large symphonic collection of tone poems.  As one might suspect, it is a massive undertaking.  Despite some later revisions to the score, this release features the full, and unabridged, version of the score as originally presented in 1922.

The first movement opens with an almost magical quality that soon blossoms into a truly unabashed romanticism that has tinges of Impressionistic orchestral color.  The unusual modulations in the harmony also bears some resemblance to the sort of post-Wagnerian shifts one hears in the French versions of the aesthetic, but Marx’s music is more closely aligned with the likes of Scriabin.  His melodic ideas are simply gorgeous and immediately grab the listener as they transfix the ear with the way they are so richly accompanied.  The main theme, introduced by cellos, grows into a gorgeous statement that will then be transformed through the movement.  The music is extremely dense with orchestral colors that then also have quite intimate moments.  In some respects, the music might best be described as a blend of the orchestral dramatic writing of Korngold and Waxman (at least that which they applied to their 1930s Hollywood scores).  To that end, the sort of romantic rhapsodic writing is quite stunning.  The delicate orchestral colors in the quieter moments display an even greater depth of ability.  We move into the supernatural thematic realms in the second movement, a light “Dance of Noonday Spirits”.  It may feel like a variant of the way Mahler would treat Viennese landler.  We are treated to Marx’s brilliant orchestral colors and shimmering musical moments.  A reflective moment occurs in the third movement titled “Autumnal Thoughts”.  The orchestration here is reduced (removing many of the keyboard colors of piano and celesta, as well as harps and other percussion).  He uses a sonata form with two distinct themes and a somewhat rhapsodic development section.   We move through deep, full orchestral moments to a sort of final calm.  The final movement, “A Poem to Autum”, gives us the folkish explorations of a harvest dance festival.  It is a sprawling movement around 26-minutes in length and featuring a somewhat episodic construction.  Some rather unique aspects include a xylophone solo, moments that seem more like improvisations, a hymn-like chorale, a landler-like section, and even a reference to the first movement’s theme now recast in a more reflective vein.  In a way it is like one large circle that brings us back to the opening of this massive orchestral journey.

The Graz players shine in this truly brilliant orchestral work.  They manage to make this music come alive and keep it from feeling like a large meandering work.  It is also quite telling that the music feels fresh and unlike other pieces.  This is a mark of Wildner’s understanding of the piece not as a derivative work, but of as an important musical piece of its time by an excellent composer.  His dance-like moments are really rather remarkable.  In some ways it is like listening to what Korngold might have done had he taken a more Mahlerian approach to his orchestral style.  It really is a work that feels like it is in that historical transition that would move us into the ultra-romanticism of the early 20^th Century.  There is a sort of mystical quality to the music that is reminiscent of Scriabin as well which further captivates the listener and comes across well in this performance.  Climaxes are well-shaped against these often fascinating moments of orchestral color exploration that Marx includes throughout the work in his transitions into new themes, or in recapitulations of previous ones.  Truly an amazing work that many will find themselves wanting listen to almost immediately after the final bar.  There is really a lot of truly gorgeous music here, excellently performed in this welcome addition to Marx’s discography.  A composer whose music certainly one will want to explore more.