Post by erik on Mar 30, 2024 18:18:29 GMT -5
This week's Classical Albums Spotlight focuses on a 1997 recording by Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra of the most popular symphony by the late 19th century Austrian composing giant Anton Bruckner, namely his Fourth Symphony (the Romantic).
Bruckner: SYMPHONY NO. 4 IN E FLAT MAJOR (ROMANTIC)
Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra/ESA-PEKKA SALONEN (Sony]
In contrast to such titans of Austro-German classical music as Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Mahler, Anton Bruckner’s symphonies have had a much harder time becoming part of the repertoire, save for the German orchestras. A lot of the reason for that is not so much the wide landscape that these symphonies cover (though they do indeed cover a lot of ground) but with the fact that these are architectural marvels, primarily built on fairly massive brass chorales. It also has a lot to do with the fact that, of the nine known symphonies Bruckner composed, only two of them are under an hour in length. But the Fourth Symphony, known as the “Romantic”, is one of those typically elongated Bruckner wonders of architecture that is so heavily recorded and heard in concerts. It has one of the more portentous openings of any post-Beethoven symphony, with its shimmering, far-away strings and solo French horn, which soon escalates in the typically massed Bruckner Wall of Sound. The second movement is, while not exceptionally slow, certainly solemn in nature, being in the key of C Minor. The “hunting call” of the French horns is very much evident in the vigorous Scherzo section; while Bruckner tops it all off with a very wide, and of course massed, soundscape that ends up very much interstellar, predating some aspects of Mahler.
For a very long time, Bruckner’s Romantic Symphony, like its compatriots in the Bruckner symphonic canon, had been largely the province of all the mainline European orchestras; but towards the end of the 20th century, that started to change. One case in point is this 1997 recording by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of their then-Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen. Keeping the tempos fairly steady without seeming plodding, always a risk with Bruckner, Salonen and the orchestra (who had recorded this same work in 1966 under Zubin Mehta) remain faithful to the composer’s grand, but not overly grandiose or bombastic, intentions while making the seventy-minute running time of the work not seem trivial or dull. Bruckner’s symphonies will still take a while to attain the same status in America as they do in Europe; but Salonen and the L.A. Phil have made the case that they can.
Bruckner: SYMPHONY NO. 4 IN E FLAT MAJOR (ROMANTIC)
Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra/ESA-PEKKA SALONEN (Sony]
In contrast to such titans of Austro-German classical music as Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Mahler, Anton Bruckner’s symphonies have had a much harder time becoming part of the repertoire, save for the German orchestras. A lot of the reason for that is not so much the wide landscape that these symphonies cover (though they do indeed cover a lot of ground) but with the fact that these are architectural marvels, primarily built on fairly massive brass chorales. It also has a lot to do with the fact that, of the nine known symphonies Bruckner composed, only two of them are under an hour in length. But the Fourth Symphony, known as the “Romantic”, is one of those typically elongated Bruckner wonders of architecture that is so heavily recorded and heard in concerts. It has one of the more portentous openings of any post-Beethoven symphony, with its shimmering, far-away strings and solo French horn, which soon escalates in the typically massed Bruckner Wall of Sound. The second movement is, while not exceptionally slow, certainly solemn in nature, being in the key of C Minor. The “hunting call” of the French horns is very much evident in the vigorous Scherzo section; while Bruckner tops it all off with a very wide, and of course massed, soundscape that ends up very much interstellar, predating some aspects of Mahler.
For a very long time, Bruckner’s Romantic Symphony, like its compatriots in the Bruckner symphonic canon, had been largely the province of all the mainline European orchestras; but towards the end of the 20th century, that started to change. One case in point is this 1997 recording by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of their then-Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen. Keeping the tempos fairly steady without seeming plodding, always a risk with Bruckner, Salonen and the orchestra (who had recorded this same work in 1966 under Zubin Mehta) remain faithful to the composer’s grand, but not overly grandiose or bombastic, intentions while making the seventy-minute running time of the work not seem trivial or dull. Bruckner’s symphonies will still take a while to attain the same status in America as they do in Europe; but Salonen and the L.A. Phil have made the case that they can.