The Rattle Bruckner 9th Is Here

[THEHORN]

EMI has just released Sir Simon's live Bruckner 9th with the BPO ,including the latest version of the completed
finale by I Benjamin Cohrs . The team recently performed it in Carnegie hall ; I'm very curious to hear this.
I recently borrowed their Bruckner 4 on library interloan , my first chance ot hear Rattle in Bruckner, and was very impressed by it . The orchestra has never sounded better to my (not inexperienced ) ears , and I would be glad to have a cycle of all 9 Bruckner symphonies from this team on EMI .

[some guy]

It's on Spotify.

[absinthe]

I have listened to this recording twice now but (fateful sigh) doubt I'll play it again.

There's something wrong with the sound and it won't be the BPO. I don't know - it's dense, thick - I don't know if it's balance or the engineering (they could be the same thing, I know) but details of counterpoint are too often buried/blurred. For someone who likes blaring brass it's one grand noise! But at least Rattle makes something of the fugue in the Finale. Otherwise I think the SPCM committee has gone a bit over the top this time.

But here's hoping you enjoy it.

[John F]

Too bad. I heard Rattle and the London Symphony give a very fine performance of the 9th a couple of years ago, only the three legitimate movements, and would have hoped the recording would be as good.

[Chalkperson]

Le Rat proves once again that he is the World's worst Conductor currently wearing long curly hair...

[absinthe]

Le Rat proves once again that he is the World's worst Conductor currently wearing long curly hair...

Yeah, we had one, a Jamaican who did the 109 route from Westminster to Croydon Swan and Sugerloaf.


It's always possible that Rattle might turn out to be a "new Brucknerian" - every age will come up with its interpreters - I hope to last out long enough to hear more mature performances - but I'll borrow the discs first!

[Heck148]

Le Rat proves once again that he is the World's worst Conductor currently wearing long curly hair...

The competition in Bruckner's great 9th symphony is pretty fierce. there are some very excellent versions available...

[josé echenique]

Le Rat proves once again that he is the World's worst Conductor currently wearing long curly hair...

And there´s stiff competition from Dudamel who also loves curly hair.
I wonder how Furtwängler might have looked with curly hair.

[Chalkperson]

Le Rat proves once again that he is the World's worst Conductor currently wearing long curly hair...

Yeah, we had one, a Jamaican who did the 109 route from Westminster to Croydon Swan and Sugerloaf.


It's always possible that Rattle might turn out to be a "new Brucknerian" - every age will come up with its interpreters - I hope to last out long enough to hear more mature performances - but I'll borrow the discs first!

The only thing Rattle knows about Bruckner is that his first name was Anton !!!

[slofstra]

I have listened to this recording twice now but (fateful sigh) doubt I'll play it again.

There's something wrong with the sound and it won't be the BPO. I don't know - it's dense, thick - I don't know if it's balance or the engineering (they could be the same thing, I know) but details of counterpoint are too often buried/blurred. For someone who likes blaring brass it's one grand noise! But at least Rattle makes something of the fugue in the Finale. Otherwise I think the SPCM committee has gone a bit over the top this time.

But here's hoping you enjoy it.

That's hard to believe. Of course, I don't listen to Bruckner (yet), but your description sounds so uncharacteristic of both the current BPO or Rattle. I've seen quite a number of their concerts this year, and whatever else you might say, the BPO's music under Rattle is always rather exquisitely etched. (And I preferred some of the non-Rattlerian concerts to place that in context.)

[slofstra]

Le Rat proves once again that he is the World's worst Conductor currently wearing long curly hair...

Yeah, we had one, a Jamaican who did the 109 route from Westminster to Croydon Swan and Sugerloaf.


It's always possible that Rattle might turn out to be a "new Brucknerian" - every age will come up with its interpreters - I hope to last out long enough to hear more mature performances - but I'll borrow the discs first!

The only thing Rattle knows about Bruckner is that his first name was Anton !!!

I'll make the counter-argument that the current BPO would sound great even if Arthur Fiedler conducted it. Would you believe Guy Lombardo?

[stenka razin]

I listened to the new Rattle 9th, because of the 'new' final movement. I was not impressed with what the group of 'composers' did with the sketches for the finale. In fact, I am convinced Bruckner never would written the music as heard in this form. No way.
I would pass on this EMI recording. There are so many other great 9th's available. From Jochum to Karajan to Haitink and beyond. Sir Simon is ok, but dispensable.

Regards,
Mel

[Chalkperson]

Sir Simon is ok, but dispensable.

Yup, it's a shame the Berlin Philharmonic did not heed your words when his contract was up for Renwal...

[Chalkperson]

Le Rat proves once again that he is the World's worst Conductor currently wearing long curly hair...

Yeah, we had one, a Jamaican who did the 109 route from Westminster to Croydon Swan and Sugerloaf.


It's always possible that Rattle might turn out to be a "new Brucknerian" - every age will come up with its interpreters - I hope to last out long enough to hear more mature performances - but I'll borrow the discs first!

The only thing Rattle knows about Bruckner is that his first name was Anton !!!

I'll make the counter-argument that the current BPO would sound great even if Arthur Fiedler conducted it. Would you believe Guy Lombardo?

I believe that any dead Conductor, waving his arms about from within his grave, would do a much better job than Le Rat...

[slofstra]

Here's a clip of Sir SiR explaining the completed Bruckner's 9th.

http://www.digitalconcerthall.com/en/concert/2516-2

[Donaldopato]

When I saw the combo of Rattle and the team of Nicola Samale and Giuseppe Mazzuca (who made the most hideous completion of Mahler 10, even redoing parts of the Adagio) I knew this turkey was doomed.

[some guy]

Well, everyone can listen to it and decide for themselves, but I can hardly believe that anyone would call any moment in this performance as "exquisitely etched." Unless "exquisitely etched" is something you do with a sledgehammer.

Some people prefer Bruckner interpretations that make you think that whoever wrote this music was a brutish peasant. I know some of these people personally. And however much I deprecate those interpretations, I acknowledge that these people have to be free to please themselves. But I draw the line at calling the breaking up of a sidewalk with a 9.1 kg sledgehammer "exquisitely etched." And I hope no one ever does.

[THEHORN]

Not having heard the new Rattle Bruckner 9th, I can't say whether it is a "sledgehamer " performance, but
his recording of the 4th,also with the BPO, was far from being this kind of rendition . It was beautifully played ;
the BPO is an orhcestra with a powerful but highly refined and cultivated sound .
Having heard the Yoav Talmi/Oslo PO recording of the Carragan finale and the Inbal /Frankfurt one of the earlier Mazucca/Samale version, I am convinced that these are perfectly plausible recreations of what the finale might have been , and am no longer satisfied with performances of the torso alone . Some don't like any version and reject them out of hand, but I am a true believer .

[stenka razin]

Not having heard the new Rattle Bruckner 9th, I can't say whether it is a "sledgehamer " performance, but
his recording of the 4th,also with the BPO, was far from being this kind of rendition . It was beautifully played ;
the BPO is an orhcestra with a powerful but highly refined and cultivated sound .
Having heard the Yoav Talmi/Oslo PO recording of the Carragan finale and the Inbal /Frankfurt one of the earlier Mazucca/Samale version, I am convinced that these are perfectly plausible recreations of what the finale might have been , and am no longer satisfied with performances of the torso alone . Some don't like any version and reject them out of hand, but I am a true believer .

I have to respectfully disagree with you. A lifetime of listening to the three complete movements has made me feel that this moumental and heart breaking Symphony is just about perfect.

I have listened to the finale in the Rattle performance again after reading your response and I still am not convinced that the group completion of this magnificent work is needed. But, I truly can understand where you are coming from in wanting to have a proper 4th movement finish to Bruckner's towering masterpiece. To each his own, my friend.


Regards,
Mel

[John F]

Some don't like any version and reject them out of hand, but I am a true believer .

I'd say a "true believer" would be one who accepted the symphony as Bruckner left it, without posthumous "improvements." In that sense, I'm a true believer. But to each his own.

In Bruckner's day, it just wasn't done to end a symphony with a slow movement, on purpose. Schubert's 8th symphony was the only precedent I know of, and its unusual form apparently needed to be explained with the title "Unfinished." Premiered in 1865, about the time that Bruckner began to compose symphonies, it wasn't then taken as a precedent. But since Bruckner's death, composers such as Mahler have deliberately ended symphonies with long slow movements. Retrospectively this may give us a different view of Schubert's and Bruckner's symphonies that end similarly, even if they weren't originally meant to do so.

I have the notion that Bruckner, and Schubert, had insuperable difficulties in adding to these "unfinished" symphonies because the slow movements concluded what those works had to say, and only convention impelled the composers to try to add to them. How do you "finish" a work that musically and artistically is already finished? Bruckner tried harder and longer than Schubert did, and his work wasn't abandoned (as with Schubert) but cut short by his death. Who's to say, however, that given more than the two years he had, he would have been able to compose a finale he thought worthy of the symphony? All we know is that he didn't.

[THEHORN]

The situation with the Schubert unfinished and the Bruckner 9th is completely different ; Schubert left only a few bars of a thrid movement scherzo sketched out, and there is nothing for a finale at all .
We still don't know exactly why the symhpony was left unfinished ; there has been a lot of specualtion but absolutely no
explanation .
Schubert may have intended to complete it but simply never got around to it . Who knows ?
But with the Bruckner 9th; the finale was very close to completion , and it appears that after he died in 1896,
some pages of the manuscript were taken by individuals who wanted souvernirs of the composer .
The musicologist Brian Newbold made a highly questionable "completion" of the Schubert unfinished by composing a scherzo out of the few bars of sketches of the thir dmovement, and using part of Schubert's incidental music to the play "Rosamunde", which happens to be in B major, appropriate for a symphony beginning in B minor as a makeshift finale . This has been recorded by Sir Neville Marriner in his set of the Schubert symphonies with completions of the material from other projected symphonies by Newbold .
I've heard the completed unfinished, and it's interesting but not at all satisfying .

[John F]

But with the Bruckner 9th; the finale was very close to completion , and it appears that after he died in 1896, some pages of the manuscript were taken by individuals who wanted souvernirs of the composer.

Nonetheless, Bruckner was unable to complete that movement, though he had begun the symphony nine years before his death and finished the other three movements with two years left to live. Even for a slow worker like Bruckner, this is more than enough time for him to have completed the work if he had really known how; none of his other symphonies needed more than three years' work from start to finish, not even the massive 8th. For me, then, all the signs point to composer's block.

You can believe otherwise if you wish; there's no way of knowing one way or the other. But the valedictory eloquence of the adagio, which Bruckner called a "farewell to life," is so great that I can't imagine a finale worthy of it, even from Bruckner himself, and certainly not from the likes of Carraghan, Samale, Mazzuca, Phillips, and/or Cohrs.

[maestrob]

The situation with the Schubert unfinished and the Bruckner 9th is completely different ; Schubert left only a few bars of a thrid movement scherzo sketched out, and there is nothing for a finale at all .
We still don't know exactly why the symhpony was left unfinished ; there has been a lot of specualtion but absolutely no
explanation .
Schubert may have intended to complete it but simply never got around to it . Who knows ?
But with the Bruckner 9th; the finale was very close to completion , and it appears that after he died in 1896,
some pages of the manuscript were taken by individuals who wanted souvernirs of the composer .
The musicologist Brian Newbold made a highly questionable "completion" of the Schubert unfinished by composing a scherzo out of the few bars of sketches of the thir dmovement, and using part of Schubert's incidental music to the play "Rosamunde", which happens to be in B major, appropriate for a symphony beginning in B minor as a makeshift finale . This has been recorded by Sir Neville Marriner in his set of the Schubert symphonies with completions of the material from other projected symphonies by Newbold .
I've heard the completed unfinished, and it's interesting but not at all satisfying .

I have that Marriner/Schubert set and agree with you about the "completion" of VIII. My impression of Marriner and Schubert on modern instruments is that, unlike Schumann and Mozart, Schubert's early symphonies work better on the instruments they were written for: yet I enjoy VIII & IX better with a modern orchestra: go figure! (Just to clarify: I enjoy Mozart & Schumann on BOTH original and modern instruments.)

As for Rattle's Bruckner, well, he's just not my favorite conductor in Romantic repertoire, and I'm a purist anyway, preferring Bruckner IX in its "incomplete" form. Certainly Bruckner himself could have shaped a proper finale, but the sketches he left are so fragmented (unlike Mahler X which reconstruction by Deryck Cooke was taken from a continuous draft and approved by the Mahler estate IIRC) that I find the whole project uninteresting.

[Elpenor]

I have that Marriner/Schubert set and agree with you about the "completion" of VIII. My impression of Marriner and Schubert on modern instruments is that, unlike Schumann and Mozart, Schubert's early symphonies work better on the instruments they were written for: yet I enjoy VIII & IX better with a modern orchestra: go figure! (Just to clarify: I enjoy Mozart & Schumann on BOTH original and modern instruments.)

There's a great CD by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Mackerras of the 'other' Schubert Unfinished Symphonies, of which 'No. 10' is particularly fascinating.

[absinthe]

Nonetheless, Bruckner was unable to complete that movement, though he had begun the symphony nine years before his death and finished the other three movements with two years left to live. Even for a slow worker like Bruckner, this is more than enough time for him to have completed the work if he had really known how; none of his other symphonies needed more than three years' work from start to finish, not even the massive 8th. For me, then, all the signs point to composer's block.

That's a little unkind if I may say though I in no way question your view. He wasn't exactly sitting around thinking 'blow this symphony, I need a rest'. In 1890 he was diagnosed with various throat complaints later (1892) it was arterial sclerosis, hepatitis and diabetes. The Last Rites were administered shortly after but then...he recovered a little. 1893, he was working on the Scherzo.

He finished the Adagio while still ill in 1894 and thereafter his health went down hill - pleurisy, pneumonia. Around then he had to move homes to somewhere more suitable but went down with pneumonia again. And yet he still tried for the Finale, more or less writing his last in August just before passing on. I think the sacraments were administered three times altogether.

Quite aside from illness you know what he was like - lacking in confidence and nervous; still a non-entity in the Viennese music scene. Yet he soldiered on as best he could.

Point is, if one declares efforts to rebuild the Finale invalid then the same applies to the whole work, knowing Bruckner to be an obsessive revisor. All those who love the Adagio cannot know that Bruckner would have left it in that form, were he given the chance to complete the work and review the whole. So I'm convinced he gave the finale a good try and in spite of the "souvenir hunters" left a substantial chunk of the opening in orchestral score with other sections in various stages of draft.

What we know he completed plus what we can take a fair guess at what could be reconstructed, is to me very beautiful music, at times searing, dissonant and at others, lyrical, transcendental (if Mystical). My gratitude goes out to Phillips for preparing the scores that Harnoncourt performed in a workshop. I trust Harnoncourt. For that reason I feel I can trust Carragan. I don't trust the SPCM bunch who this time have gone too far. (Well, they went too far some time ago by erasing a few bars that Bruckner wrote.) Like many inquirers I have no access to the source material and believe efforts have been made to ensure that aficionados can't easily get to it.

[John F]

Point is, if one declares efforts to rebuild the Finale invalid then the same applies to the whole work, knowing Bruckner to be an obsessive revisor. All those who love the Adagio cannot know that Bruckner would have left it in that form, were he given the chance to complete the work and review the whole.

And yet his first versions are not drafts but completed works which he was ready to have performed. Even the 8th, whose revisions are among his most radical, was revised only when Hermann Levi rejected it for performance. Bruckner did not destroy the original version, and while most accept the revision as superior (I do), Franz Welser-Moest performs the first version instead. If that were all we had, it would surely be considered among Bruckner's greatest works.

There is nothing about the three completed movements of the 9th to suggest that they are in draft form, or that they need revision. At least, nothing that I can hear. The revision they eventually got, posthumously, at the hands of Ferdinald Loewe, is scandalously bad.

No question but that Bruckner's poor health in his last years must have made composing much harder for him, at times impossible. But it's not just the physical effort of writing, but the mental effort of inventing it and thinking it through, that can be blocked when you're in pain or feeling miserable. Of course this is just my guess, and while I wouldn't claim that my guess is better than anyone else's, I don't yet see a reason to abandon it.

[Heck148]

I tend to side with the "Bruckner 9 is complete as the composer left it" advocates...

I find the final Adagio [mvt III] to be a perect farewell statement...

A fabricated finale might be interesting, but I find what Bruckner left to be entirely adequate and convincing.
There are some very fine recordings:

Solti/CSO
Walter/ColSO
Giulini/CSO
von Matacic/CzPO

all give gripping accounts of this masterpiece.

[absinthe]

Many listeners still prefer the 3 movement reckoning - performance history has cemented it fairly fast. The reconstructed Finale shouldn't be forced on anyone.

But I see no reason why recordings of the 9th can't hereafter include one of the recent performing versions of the Finale; as Rattle has - and Schaller with the Carragan offering although the Schaller recording was such a disappointment for more reasons than the Finale. Such a recording would almost certainly be on 2 discs so if the label put the Finale alone on disc 2 then listeners bound to the 3 movement version need never play disc 2. Everyone's happy (assuming they like the recording at all).

The problem might come with concerts - allowing an interval enough for people to leave after the third movement. We have to cross that bridge when we come to it.

[Alberich]

For some informed opinions by knowledgeable people who actually have listened (as have I) to the recording, and who have more to say than the above infantile potshots (so predictable) at Rattle, visit:

http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/in ... 742.0.html

For me, it is sufficient to quote the final entry in the thread:

For a long time I thought that a symphony dedicated to God the Almighty should end when He has decided it should. But after having listened to the completed symphony performed by Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Symphonic Orchestra [sic] I was shaken. Whilst the symphony, ending with the adagio, ends in agony it now ends in triumph. This is Bruckner's real elevation to heaven; the victory of a pious mind over death. Really upsetting - I was shivering after the symphony had ended.

[John F]

There's no need to insult the members. You have your opinion, they have theirs, I have mine. Knowledgeable people can and do disagree about this, both here and at the "Unsung Composers" forum you've linked to. What suffices for you may not suffice for others and certainly doesn't for me.

[Alberich]

There's no need to insult the members. You have your opinion, they have theirs, I have mine. Knowledgeable people can and do disagree about this, both here and at the "Unsung Composers" forum you've linked to. What suffices for you may not suffice for others and certainly doesn't for me.

Hey - if the posters can insult a world-recognized conductor (viz: inanities from poster called "Chalkperson") why cannot they be treated similarly? And as far as what suffices for you - well, yawwwnnnn.

[absinthe]

There's no need to insult the members. You have your opinion, they have theirs, I have mine. Knowledgeable people can and do disagree about this, both here and at the "Unsung Composers" forum you've linked to. What suffices for you may not suffice for others and certainly doesn't for me.

Hey - if the posters can insult a world-recognized conductor (viz: inanities from poster called "Chalkperson") why cannot they be treated similarly? And as far as what suffices for you - well, yawwwnnnn.

They obviously Rattled your cage. Haven't you got a day job?

[John F]

There's no need to insult the members. You have your opinion, they have theirs, I have mine. Knowledgeable people can and do disagree about this, both here and at the "Unsung Composers" forum you've linked to. What suffices for you may not suffice for others and certainly doesn't for me.

Hey - if the posters can insult a world-recognized conductor (viz: inanities from poster called "Chalkperson") why cannot they be treated similarly? And as far as what suffices for you - well, yawwwnnnn.

Sir Simon isn't here, and he's a public figure and subject to criticism. We are here, we are not public figures, and we are members of a group whose official house rules include being civil to each other. Got a problem with that?

[some guy]

I've been listening to music since I was an infant and to "classical music" since I was nine.

I've listened to everything by Bruckner in multiple recordings many times and to many things live in concert.

I've heard two reconstructions of the last movement. Both struck me the same way, as pastiches. Sure, they both sound vaguely Brucknerian, but neither sounds like anything else Bruckner ever wrote. Neither sounds like a completed piece by Bruckner. They sound like exactly what they are, pieces of music cobbled together from bits and pieces of Bruckner's, without any of the musical integrity of even the weakest of his finished works.

The three completed movements that constitute the ninth are about as good as it gets. This is Bruckner at his very best, breaking new ground but absolutely masterful and confident. Speculation about why he didn't get a performable (and congruent) finale finished aside, the patchwork finales that we've been presented with so far do not sound like a piece Bruckner would have written. Any given moment in these finales sounds like Bruckner, of course. He wrote (most of) those notes in (mostly) that order. But the movement as a whole? Its arc, the way it moves through time, the shifts and changes from one bit to another? None of that sounds like Bruckner. And of course that is because none of it is.

I, for my part, cannot imagine a person seriously conversant with Bruckner's style(s), seriously attuned to Bruckner's sound world, seriously familiar with Bruckner's thought as revealed in those nine gorgeous beasts could possibly think "This is Bruckner's real elevation to heaven; the victory of a pious mind over death. Really upsetting - I was shivering after the symphony had ended."

That sounds more like fantasizing coupled with some serious wishful thinking. (And why was such a triumph described as "really upsetting"? "The victory of a pious mind" replacing the "agony"--more fantasizing--of the adagio is upsetting? Hmmmm. I'm just not getting "informed opinion by knowledgable person" out of all that.)

[Chalkperson]

There's no need to insult the members. You have your opinion, they have theirs, I have mine. Knowledgeable people can and do disagree about this, both here and at the "Unsung Composers" forum you've linked to. What suffices for you may not suffice for others and certainly doesn't for me.

Hey - if the posters can insult a world-recognized conductor (viz: inanities from poster called "Chalkperson") why cannot they be treated similarly? And as far as what suffices for you - well, yawwwnnnn.

Why is it an inanity ? it's my long held opinion and I am entitled to air it, Rattle has turned a World Class Orchestra into one that makes very average Recordings, nothing wrong with the players, just the Conductor...

[absinthe]

I've heard two reconstructions of the last movement. Both struck me the same way, as pastiches. Sure, they both sound vaguely Brucknerian, but neither sounds like anything else Bruckner ever wrote. Neither sounds like a completed piece by Bruckner. They sound like exactly what they are, pieces of music cobbled together from bits and pieces of Bruckner's, without any of the musical integrity of even the weakest of his finished works......

....This is Bruckner at his very best, breaking new ground but absolutely masterful and confident. Speculation about why he didn't get a performable (and congruent) finale finished aside, the patchwork finales that we've been presented with so far do not sound like a piece Bruckner would have written. Any given moment in these finales sounds like Bruckner, of course. He wrote (most of) those notes in (mostly) that order. But the movement as a whole? Its arc, the way it moves through time, the shifts and changes from one bit to another? None of that sounds like Bruckner. And of course that is because none of it is.

I, for my part, cannot imagine a person seriously conversant with Bruckner's style(s), seriously attuned to Bruckner's sound world, seriously familiar with Bruckner's thought as revealed in those nine gorgeous beasts could possibly think "This is Bruckner's real elevation to heaven; the victory of a pious mind over death. Really upsetting - I was shivering after the symphony had ended."

That sounds more like fantasizing coupled with some serious wishful thinking. (And why was such a triumph described as "really upsetting"? "The victory of a pious mind" replacing the "agony"--more fantasizing--of the adagio is upsetting? Hmmmm. I'm just not getting "informed opinion by knowledgable person" out of all that.)

Opinions come in two basic flavours, valid and invalid, I recall someone said here. Which flavour is all that?

They sound like exactly what they are, pieces of music cobbled together from bits and pieces of Bruckner's, without any of the musical integrity of even the weakest of his finished works......

Might be best to succumb to intelligent observation, such as from Harnoncourt...or Bruckner maybe? Perhaps a closer look at what's going on might clarify a few things. Like he finished in score a good 8 or 9 minutes of this music - a bifolio or so missing, then got down to the fugue. He started to revise the movement. Unless he was really off his rocker (which I doubt) he would not start revision until he got at least very close to the end of the music.

And, uh... there are reconstructions from at least 4 people/syndicates (excluding Marthé). Now, I'm in no position to comment on your hearing but I believe the bods behind these reconstructions are no ignorami. They appear to have devoted considerable scholarship to Bruckner's work. I don't personally like all they've done but that is my opinion alone. If anyone objects to this "cobbled up" whatever it was you called it, they are not obliged to listen to it.

[John F]

If the finale really was so nearly finished and it was all that clear how to construct it from Bruckner's materials, why have there been "at least 4 people/syndicates" creating 4 different versions? It doesn't figure.

[absinthe]

Because of divergencies in how the few gaps might be filled in; most of the coda is missing; and showmanship on behalf of the SPCM-Home-Scavaging Inc. Much like Mahler's 10th. You'll hear "Ah but he finished the work in particell but for a few bars. That was easy!" and yet at least 4 people/syndicates have had a crack at produciing a "performing version." Deryck Cooke dared not use the term "completed".

Some time ago I quoted figures: the number of bars that Bruckner intended to compose on his first run through - as you know he numbered all the folios which with a couple of exceptions were pre-barred 16 to a bifolio by Bruckner's "secretary", Meissner. We have the number he actually composed either in full score or in his known shorthand style allowing confident reconstruction; the number that could be extrapolated from extant m/s to cover some of the missing bifolios or expanded from particell sketches, so we have a very good idea of how many bars/folios are missing. We know Bruckner started to revise the intro and exposition since early bifolios were expanded upon forcing page renumbering. But please don't make me quote all those figures again right here (I'll look for that post in the morning) - it's almost 3am here and while happy to respond to your questions, feel ill-disposed to rummage through my notes.

However, saying that 4 people/syndicates have had a go (producing at least a dozen versions) isn't saying they were all necessary. I would champion just one worker who seems to have stayed close to Bruckner's drafts without pretended he composed the thing himself. Clearly that won't yield a movement of the proportion Bruckner possibly intended but it does allow me/us to hear the music Bruckner did compose.

If Harnoncourt is telling the truth, the first 278 bars were either fully scored or in Brucknerian shorthand that allowed confident reconstruction. Then, yes, folios are missing. But the development goes past the fugue, much in full score. From Harnoncourt's commentary I estimate that about 48 bars are missing excluding the coda.

Unlike some guy hearing pastiches that sound vaguely Brucknerian cobbled together from bits and pieces, this work was revelationary to me - a glimpse of what Bruckner was aiming for - what he was facing (spiritually) perhaps - and how well it extended from the first three movements. As Harnoncourt says: awaken your curiosity; open your mind. No trouble there as it is beautiful (if at moments fearsome) music. The quieter exposition of that double-dotted rhythm is all but heart stopping to me. It's a tragic irony that Bruckner was taken from us as he was about to cap his life's work; this symphony almost a coda to all before it. (And no doubt the gnostic and/or spiritual among us could comment on why he wasn't allowed that extra two months...but I won't!)

Trouble is, people like some guy feel they can pass a glib judgement over what? c250 years? of effort on the part of musicians who were not ignorant.

[Alberich]

Unlike some guy hearing pastiches that sound vaguely Brucknerian cobbled together from bits and pieces, this work was revelationary to me - a glimpse of what Bruckner was aiming for - what he was facing (spiritually) perhaps - and how well it extended from the first three movements. As Harnoncourt says: awaken your curiosity; open your mind. No trouble there as it is beautiful (if at moments fearsome) music. The quieter exposition of that double-dotted rhythm is all but heart stopping to me. It's a tragic irony that Bruckner was taken from us as he was about to cap his life's work; this symphony almost a coda to all before it. (And no doubt the gnostic or spiritual among us could comment on why he wasn't allowed that extra two months...but I won't!)

Trouble is, people like some guy feel they can pass a glib judgement over what? c250 years? of effort on the part of musicians who were not ignorant.

Amen.

[John F]

Sorry, absinthe, you can't persuade me against my own considered judgment, against which your argument seems like special pleading. You may be right, you may not be, but I'm not convinced and most likely won't be.

[THEHORN]

Photos of Furtwangler as a boy show he had somewhat curly hair , but he lost it early and became bald .

[absinthe]

Sorry, absinthe, you can't persuade me against my own considered judgment, against which your argument seems like special pleading. You may be right, you may not be, but I'm not convinced and most likely won't be.

Kinell! I don't have to come here to persuade, certainly not plead. What bluddy arrogance!
YOU asked ME and I bothered to spend time replying.
I don't give a shit. I've already said you don't have to listen to the bloody thing if you don't want to.
I'll say nothing more on Bruckner.