Bruckner: Symphonies Nos. 1-9 - Gunter Wand

Symphonies 1 And 3: I have not listened to these and am throwing them out for editorial reasons.Symphonies 2, 4, 7, 8 and 9: Magnificent performances in good editions.Symphony 6: This recording was pretty much condemned in Gramophone. I like it a lot, though the first and last movements are a little faster than usual, but then again it would be wrong to conduct this work too slowly, trying to imbue it with the kind of long lines and grandeur of No. 5. The problem I have with Wand’s No. 6 is that there is too little contrast between the two main tempos in the first movement, although the overall handling of tempo is not inflexible, and the slow movement and scherzo are beautifully done. I very much enjoyed listening to this performance and will certainly be keeping it.Symphony 5: This recording was initially dismissed by Gramophone as being noisy, while later admitting that the digital remastering had done some good. Wand is magnificent in movements 1, 3 and 4. The problem I have with his performance of the slow movement (I have not listened to it, but I have heard Wand blitz through it in later recordings) is that as with other conductors he is much too fast, turning a movement marked ‘Adagio, Very Slow’ into a brisk Andante that seems faster than the first movement which is, of course, ridiculous. So, I also own Jochum’s recording of the Fifth from 1964 with the Concertgebouw. He muck’s up movements 1, 3 and 4 with manic increases in tempo, but his version of the slow movement (just shy of 19 minutes) is wonderful – that brass playing, glorious! So the other day I listened to Wand for the first movement, switched discs to the Jochum for the Adagio, then back to Wand for the rest. Fantastic, and the sound is not so different as to be discombobulating. I will also do this with Horenstein’s splendid recording because he also takes the Adagio too quickly.The sound on the above Wand recordings is consistently clear and outstanding. Heartily recommended, with reservations.

Despite not being well known as other star directors, and the orchestra is not considered as first rate as the Berlin, Vienna or New York, this Bruckner cycle is really excellent. The first symphonies and the last ones are the best among these versions (the 9th is superb, and the acoustics of the place of recording are excellent). Wand is also good at Beethoven and other austro-german composers. He definetely deserves more credit.

I'm absolutely thrilled with this box set, nine superb symphonies and excellent value for money.

Is that none of his symphonies are mediocre. I only really started paying attention to him a couple of years ago as a result of all the discussion about him on the Amazon Classical Music forum. I got the Jochum EMI set, listened to them all, identified some of the particularly beautiful bits, and knew I had made a friend for life. But as I find so often, its only when you come to something the second time around, presumably after some subconscious alchemical assimilation has taken place, that the really deep connections start to be made. I caught the second movement of Wand's seventh on Radio 3 a few months back, and I immediately went home and ordered this set. This time around has been such a wonderful and life enhancing journey. I've gone through them in order, one at a time, playing them over and over. And now I'm starting to get the same kind of familiarity with them as I have with Beethoven's, Mahler's and Shostakovich's. Most recently it was the 7th, the one I heard on the radio that started the whole thing off. Ironically, it proved the most difficult one to crack so far. There was even a point where I wondered if I had finally found one that I didn't really like, but eventually it clicked (really just a case of slowing my 'mental metabolism' down enough to cope with a slow first AND second movement). I am due to start 'work' on the eighth now, and find myself waiting for the properly receptive moment.For me, Bruckner's message is so powerfully positive, and I suppose has a spiritual purity akin to Beethoven's. There is struggle but never despair. There is never really any doubt that triumph will come in the end. The failure and hopelessness that are such a strong feature of Mahler and Shostakovich find no place in Bruckner. There is a reviewer for one of the Naxos Bruckner discs who argues that certain conductors are more suited to Bruckner on account of their being Christian or Catholic. On the one hand I take these to be spurious arguments, having no doubt that there are valid secular interpretations to be had. But on the other, that central certainty one finds in Bruckner really does imply a faith that moves mountains, and that cannot realistically be located in the single human spirit. Continuing the comparison with Beethoven, I discern an overwhelming feeling for nature in both, but I would say that Bruckner's is the more human and humane, in that with him one never loses the perspective of man in relation to nature to whom he is equal and within which he is at home, this alongside man in relation to a personal, loving God, arranged in a balanced triangle. Beethoven I feel to be more fundamentally atavistic. The nature we experience through him, particularly in the 'cosmic dances' such as the finales of his 7th and 8th, is a nature in which a deistic god is immanent. It is a godhead which will sweep tiny men from the face of the earth without a thought, whose only gift to men is the capacity to briefly glimpse the essential joy at the heart of his universe, if he is brave enough to grasp for it. Humility was alien to Beethoven the symphonist, while Bruckner's brim with it, and seek to show us the indomitable will that a person of might derive from it. Thus Beethoven and Bruckner might be seen as forming a whole of complementary opposites, each expressing the Masculine and Feminine modalities of Will.As for Jochum vs. Wand. Well, as is inevitably bound to be the case, I am finding that, movement by movement, I might prefer one to the other, and at times even find myself liking both for different reasons. But my gut feeling right now is that if I had to pick one in a hurry for the desert island it would be the Wand's I would grab for. Though having done so, I know I would have a permanent twinge of regret for having lost the shear annihilating power of Jochum's brass, in the opening movement of the sixth. I have begun ordering the Naxos Tintner's, again having heard so much good of them on the Amazon forum. I await them with bated breath. But meanwhile I have the vast and glorious worlds of the Jochum and Wand versions to explore.