Our Summer BAL 48 - Bruckner Symphony No 9

[P. G. Tipps]

Thanks from me to ferney and others for the insights into this wonderful symphony. One very naive question from someone who knows less about music than Scotty - does the final movement in its current Rattle/BPO form mean that in the end "Tradition" has won as Anton wished?

Well, as the composer himself has often been described as 'naive', you (and, of course, the absent 'Scotty') suddenly find themselves in the most exalted company, anton ...

No, only The Boss won in the end. The incomplete work has an appropriate ending in itself though I rather like the four-movement version as a reasonable demonstration of what the fourth movement coda might have sounded like, though I feel sure the composer would have come up with something that much better if he had been allowed a few more years to think about it. Plus, there is some astonishing and exciting music written by Bruckner before that. Can't wait to hear Harding and the LSO and Rattle and the BPO performing the completed work in the UK in the coming months ... and about time too!

Which reminds me ... as some of the top Bruckner conductors are now themselves 'getting on a bit' Harding is certainly positioning himself well to ultimately fill one of the inevitable future vacancies?

[Barbirollians]

It may be slow but it is wonderful - the VPO/Giulini. It is the opposite of many of my favourites in its slow tempi and even goes into a more mystical realm than late HVK Bruckner but it has had been transfixed this afternoon for the last sixty eight minutes.

[Pulcinella]

Bernhard Klee/BBC Philharmonic recorded live in Liverpool Cathedral and issued as The BBC Music Mag's monthly CD is rather special so worth paying good money for it should it be seen among the usual dross in high street charity shops.

Bryn paid peanuts for a copy recently (and finally got one without a drop-out that had plagued his other copies): see Charity Shop Trawl thread.

[Barbirollians]

Finally , bought a second hand copy of the DG Galleria ( now there is an old label I remember them first appearing in the 1980s of the 1966 Karajan - what a belter if a performance. No wonder ferney was blown away by it as a Bruckner sceptic.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Bryn paid peanuts for a copy recently (and finally got one without a drop-out that had plagued his other copies): see Charity Shop Trawl thread.

I remember the dropout, but the BBC took steps to replace these with good pressings, so the faulty ones should not have remained in circulation.

[Bryn]

I remember the dropout, but the BBC took steps to replace these with good pressings, so the faulty ones should not have remained in circulation.

In the month or so immediately following its publication I was sent not one but two replacement copies, both of which still bore the dropout. Only many years latter did I find the dropout-free copy in charity shop.