BRUCKNER SEVENTHS
posted by James Reel
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.
