Classical home listening: a good week for Bruckner fans
• Bruckner struggled with his last completed symphony, the almighty Eighth, reworking initial efforts and leaving posterity to debate – fervently in some quarters – which version or edition is best. The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, which gave the premiere in the Golden Hall of the city’s Musikverein in 1892, has long been associated with the work and has made many classic recordings, notably those by Wilhelm Furtwängler (1944) and Herbert von Karajan (1988). Now, as the first instalment of a new Bruckner cycle, taken from concerts last year at the Musikverein, the Vienna Philharmonic, under conductor Christian Thielemann, has recorded Bruckner’s Symphony No 8 again (Sony).
It’s the VPO’s first cycle with a single conductor, due for completion in 2024, the composer’s bicentenary. (Brucknerians will want to know that Thielemann has used the Haas – or “mixed” – edition.) Tempi are broad but not slow – this is a few minutes quicker than Thielemann’s recording with the Dresden Staatskapelle. Sound is resonant and glowing, the buildup of tension and release perceptively handled, each solo impeccably played by some of the world’s best musicians. The Eighth is a huge work, and this performance will take many listenings to reveal its full shape and detail, but so far, so good.
• There’s more Bruckner in the form of his sonorous choral music. The late Stephen Cleobury’s final full-length recording with the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, where he was director of music from 1982 to 2019, was of Bruckner’s Mass in E minor and Motets (King’s College), with wind and brass players from the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. It’s refreshing to hear this music sung with the urgent energy of boys’ voices, the textures almost raw. Their Locus iste soars gloriously in the King’s chapel acoustic. If you prefer a more blended sound, that’s provided by the mixed voices of Collegium Vocale Gent, with the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, conductor Philippe Herreweghe, in their own new album of the Mass in E minor, with Bruckner’s Te Deum (Phi). Choose either or both.
• Conductor Oliver Zeffman has commissioned eight composers – Thomas Adès, Julian Anderson, Ilya Demutsky, Du Yun, Helen Grime, Nico Muhly, Freya Waley-Cohen, Huw Watkins – to write Eight Songs from Isolation, a 40-minute opera film (Apple Music), with leading singers including Sarah Connolly and Iestyn Davies.
