Somehow my editor at Fanfare has gotten it into his head that I'm a Bruckner fan, so he sends me most of the new Bruckner SACDs to review. Here are two reviews I've penned in recent months of recordings of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony.
BRUCKNER Symphony No. 7 • Bernard Haitink, cond; Chicago SO • CSO RESOUND (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 67:31) Live: May 10-12 and 15, 2007
This is, I think, Bernard Haitink’s third and finest recording of the Bruckner Seventh, a symphony that has been appearing on disc with increasing frequency. In Fanfare 31:3 I reviewed the Yannick Nézet-Séguin SACD on Atma, and observed that “while the music maintains motion, it never really gains momentum. For one thing, there’s very little tempo variety within or between the first two movements (by the way, Nézet-Séguin uses the Nowak edition, complete with cymbal crash and triangle). The remainder, though well organized, lacks the tension and detail of, for starters, Jochum/EMI.” Haitink, in contrast, although he is never a conductor to push and pull at a score, brings out those inner details with great finesse. From the very beginning, the performance promises to be patient, with careful dynamic shaping helping the music’s argument to unfold easily. It’s not a performance of sudden, high contrast, though. In the Adagio, for example (including the disputed but effective cymbal crash), the orchestra glows, but doesn’t really burn; this is a matter of Haitink’s interpretation rather than the Chicago Symphony’s sound. Throughout this performance, the brass playing is brilliant and the woodwinds are full of character, which goes without saying for this orchestra, but the strings also hold their own, which was not always the case in the Solti era. If you prefer a non-interventionist approach to Bruckner that, even so, illuminates the most telling details, this beautiful new performance will serve you well—especially if you want a surround-sound Seventh. The sonic perspective is from the middle distance, with everything in place but not as hyper-present as in some SACDs. There’s a bit of air around the orchestra, but the hall is not strongly reverberant.
An odd detail in the simple but attractive packaging: Inside the front cover, there’s a little blurb about the cover art, an image called “Underpainting.” According to the note, “Like the layers of sound within this symphony, the visual composition overlays color to build perceptions of depth, volume, and form. Emotive cues radiate from beneath, emanating a subtle glow that infuses the color palette. Variations in saturation, tone, and hue evoke the contrast between defined and open space.” True enough, of the music, the performance, and the well-chosen abstract cover art. But nowhere can I find a credit for the artist.
BRUCKNER Symphony No. 7 • Herbert Blomstedt, cond; Leipzig Gewandhaus O • QUERSTAND VKJK 0708 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 69:45) Live: Leipzig November 23–25, 2006
Each month brings an SACD issue of Bruckner’s Seventh, and the latest entry comes, effectively, from the source. The work was first performed by the Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1884 under Artur Nikisch, a conductor who would lead the orchestra in all of Bruckner’s symphonies, including a full cycle during the 1919-20 season. That, of course, was long ago, but the current generation of the orchestra has a natural feel for the music, at least under its recently retired music director, Herbert Blomstedt.
Blomstedt has always struck me as a disciplined, solid, middle-of-the-road conductor without much of a personal profile. His recordings of Nielsen and Sibelius are, on every objective level, excellent, but not as interesting as those of, say, Bernstein (which many listeners will regard as a point in their favor). So I was never inspired to investigate his previous Bruckner recordings on Decca and Denon, or the earlier releases in the Querstand mini-survey from Leipzig (the Third and Eighth are already out, but seem not to have been reviewed in Fanfare). A little discographic research shows that Blomstedt’s various performances of the Seventh (always Haas/1885) have, along with Karajan/EMI, always been among the slowest treatments of this edition among major conductors other than the sui generis Celibidache. (Note that the total time of this disc includes 1:18 of fore and aft applause, separately tracked.) Still, a minute or two over the course of a work that lasts more than an hour doesn’t make a huge difference.
What does make a difference is Blomstedt’s ability to sustain the line and flow of this score. He maintains firm rhythmic definition, but not to the point at which it becomes the sole driving force; Blomstedt allows melody and, to a slightly lesser extent, harmony to be equally motivating factors. Indeed, Blomstedt has an almost Italianate ability to make the strings sing (just listen to the phrasing of the first movement’s initial theme). He’s less successful at decongesting the brass climaxes, but the orchestra plays for him with character, and the sound is captured with great clarity—less swimmy than Nézet-Séguin on Atma (see Fanfare 31:3), less dry than Haitink on CSO Resound (reviewed in 31:4). I gave Haitink, another straightforward interpreter, a favorable review, but frankly, and to my surprise, I find Blomstedt a bit more interesting.
Councilman Steve Leal this week sent an email to City Manager Mike Hein, demanding his resignation. Now, other council members have weighed in on the flap.
City Manager Mike Hein
Mayor Bob Walkup and Councilman Rodney Glassman say they're leaning against dismissing Hein if the vote comes to the council. The rest of the councilmembers say they want to wait until they hear more facts. Most of the debate centers around the lack of progress being made in the Rio Nuevo Downtown Redevelopment Project.
During my period of blogus interruptus, I lost several opportunities to point you toward material I publish hither and yon. Whatever did you do for entertainment and edification while the blog was gone? Well, you probably thought of something. But now I can gradually catch you up on some of my other efforts.
In the February issue of Strings, I asked violinist Anastasia Khitruk to dig into the solo scores of Ivan Yevstafyevich Khandoshkin, a Russian contemporary of Mozart. We play Khitruk’s Khandoshkin CD from time to time on KUAT-FM, so you might enjoy getting some background info here.
In the same issue, I have a feature on an up-and-coming fiddler, now in his 20s:
When Jason Roberts was an 11-year-old kid in Texas, he pulled a busted-up fiddle out of his late grandfather’s closet and let his mom casually talk him into taking a few lessons. Today, 20 years later, Roberts is a top western-swing fiddler and a veteran member of the Grammy-winning band Asleep at the Wheel. Bandleader Ray Benson says of Roberts, “He is the best musician I’ve ever worked with, and I’ve worked with the best.” Pretty high praise from the man behind a band that’s gone through nearly 100 musicians in its 30-year history.
The sweltering month of June usually is a very slow time for politics in Tucson, but not this time around. A couple of new developments this week have the local politicos talking.
City Manager Mike Hein
The big news this week came from an email sent from Tucson City Councilman Steve Leal to Tucson City Manager Mike Hein, asking Hein to resign. If he doesn't, Leal promises to devote a council meeting to try to get him fired. I guess email these days is the preferred method for saying "you're doing a bad job." What if the letter got lost in a pile of spam about male pharmacies, Nigerian letters, and other things? Maybe Hein can pretend he simply didn't see the email and ignore the whole thing.
The Arizona Daily Star reports Leal actually meant to send the email Friday before Hein's vacation, but the mail wasn't sent until yesterday, so no comment from Hein has been made yet. Even though some other council members have been critical of Hein, Leal sent the letter on his own behalf. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
In other government news, the much talked about joint Tucson/Pima County courthouse $155 million construction proposal has been "suspended," with the county saying it doesn't have enough money to build it. Times are tough for everybody these days.
My favorable review of Live Theatre Workshop's production of Prelude to a Kiss will appear in this Thursday's Tucson Weekly, but I think I'd like the play even more if it had a darker ending. If you're ignorant of how the play turns out, and want to remain that way, don't read any further.
The story concerns a young couple in love, Peter and Rita. On their wedding day, an old man gives Rita what would seem to be an innocent kiss, but it causes the two of them to switch souls. The essence of Rita, which is what Peter really fell in love with rather than just her attractive physique, is now trapped in the yellow-toothed body of an old man dying of cancer. And it's the essence of the old man that lies within the body of the woman Peter takes to bed every night.
The play has a happy ending, with the souls winding up back where they belong, but I'm thinking it would be much more moving and, yes, even more romantic if the souls could not switch back, and Peter elected to stay with his soul mate--young Rita in the old man's body--for the few months remaining until that body dies and Rita is lost forever. (It's sort of the reverse of Love Story, wherein a disagreeable old coot has invaded the body of Ali McGraw.)
Of course, if the play ended that way, it wouldn't have become a sentimental favorite in less than 20 years. This is why its author, Craig Lucas, is a successful playwright, and I'm just a critic toiling for an obscure alternative weekly.
It's not a lot, but gas prices are down in Arizona. Really, it's nothing to get excited about, but the average price for a gallon of self-service unleaded regular-grade gasoline fell by a 1/2 cent since yesterday. I know, that's like saying the high temperature is only supposed to be 107, instead of 108.
Also of note this morning, one of my favorite comedians of all time died over the weekend. Below is a great example of the work of George Carlin...baseball vs. football. It's a clean routine, but if you click beyond that, you're on your own. Enjoy!
