Bruckner 2: recorded, but unsung?

[Alan Howe]

A question: all Bruckner's symphonies have been recorded multiple times, but is No.2 really all that familiar? I couldn't identify it when it suddenly popped up on YouTube after I'd been listening to something else. Is it just me - again?

[Mark Thomas]

No, you're in good company. I blow hot and cold on Bruckner - mostly cold to be honest - and I only recognise a few isolated movements from different symphonies and certainly nothing from the Second.

[terry martyn]

Unless my memory fails me, I have attended a Festival Hall performance, with Haitink as the conductor, in the 70s or 80s

I am a big fan of his Symphonies '0' to 3, but can't say I am too fond of the later ones. In a few days, my voyages through my collection will take me to Bruckner and the Tintner boxed set. I think it is going to be a bit of a muddy wade through his last six, and I shall probably have to break up the monotony by giving some Beriot and Brull a spin

[Alan Howe]

No, you're in good company. I blow hot and cold on Bruckner - mostly cold to be honest - and I only recognise a few isolated movements from different symphonies and certainly nothing from the Second.

...whereas I'm definitely a Bruckner fan (but not fanatic!) I have collected many recordings over the years, but Symphony No.2 is still relatively uncharted territory for me. I have Thielemann's new recording on order at present and am wondering whether that'll flip the switch for me...

[Ilja]

I think Tintner does a fairly good job on Naxos. He attempts to solve some of the issues in the piece through clever rubato and dynamic adaptations. But granted, it feels like the most 'vanilla' of the early Bruckner symphonies, with (for me, at least) neither pronounced lows nor highs. It's just there.

[TerraEpon]

Out of curiosity why is this topic pinned?

[eschiss1]

I on the other hand am a great fan of the 2nd (I'm most familiar, I suspect, with the 1892 revision - it has the usual Bruckner problem of having a half-dozen different versions counting minor and major revisions both), and when a several-bar modulation (not just any modulatory bars- I'd call it memorable, but obviously many people here don't find it so) is quoted down to the orchestration in the F minor mass, I recognize it immediately. Maybe most people here think it's unmemorable, but not everyone.

It may be the least frequently performed of his 9, counting only standard versions (so counting only the 3-movement version not completed by other hands of the 9th, not early versions of the other symphonies, etc.) It hasn't been performed at the Proms since 1996, and only twice in all (Aug 18 1971, Aug 1 1996). (OTOH if you're in Leipzig, the Gewandhaus lists 25 performances between Nov. 10 1904 (Arthur Nikisch) and Dec. 8 2019 (2nd version of 1877, Carragan edition, conducted by Andris Nelsons) . (As against 54 for his more often performed 8th symphony or 74 of the 7th. That said, even if the 2nd symphony is the least performed generally, the 1st is the least performed so far - 15 to date - in Leipzig specifically )

[terry martyn]

It has a mysterious feeling to it, from the outset -  music set in clouds.  Under the baton of a maestro such as Haitink, someone who avoids becalming it but doesn't drive it forward frenetically, it can be a very satisfying listen in the concert - hall. I recollect sitting behind the orchestra at the Festival Hall and feeling that I was on a journey to parts unknown.

[Alan Howe]

I've sat there too! In Bruckner 8 (Kempe) in the early 70s. My ears are still ringing...

[Rainolf]

My recommendation for Bruckner's 2nd symphony is the recording with Rémy Ballot conducting the Altomonte Orchestra St. Florian. After this performance I felt that I have heard this work the first time in its full beauty.

A problem of the 2nd Symphony is that you cannot take any version of it as definitive. Bruckner himself published it late in his livetime after having it severely cut, disturbing the ballance of form in movements 2 and 4. For each performance of the work before publication he did rewrite some passages, so it was never the same work that was played. Robert Haas made an arrangement - and a good one -, based on the last version with many passages inserted from earlier versions. William Carragan published two versions, each one problematic from a philological point of view. E.g. Carragan put the Scherzo on 2nd place in version 1. Bruckner had this thought, but before the 1st performance he put the Scherzo after the Adagio. In version 2 Carragan mostly follows the text of the first published edition, but in the Adagio he inserts bars that were cut by Bruckner. So his edition must be called an arrangement like Haas's. 

I do not think that Haas had made the best of the Finale. In Carragan's version 2 this movement is too short. In Carragan's version 1 it is very long, but I think that in this form, with some development-like passages in the recapitulation, not used by Haas, the movement is most convincing - when conducted by a musician who has the overwiew over the Whole.

Ballot has done this in a very convincing way.

 

[Alan Howe]

And there's the problem for the general listener, i.e. the issue of variant versions of Bruckner symphonies. It's an absolute minefield and, frankly, it's being exploited to such a degree at present by experts and record companies that the public has absolutely no idea what they're buying. I don't always agree with Dave Hurwitz, but here he's right: the world of Bruckner scholarship (so-called) has gone mad! 

[eschiss1]

BTW Ilja- as Tintner died a few years ago (actually, way back in October 1999), that would probably have to be past tense

[Alan Howe]

I don't think the past tense is necessary, Eric. It's perfectly possible, for example, to say that such and such a performer does (present tense) something in particular in a piece of music, e.g. Horowitz 'plays it staccato' (as if the recording exists in the present). I imagine that Ilja knows that Tintner passed away a fair time ago.

[Alan Howe]

I'd just add that Ballot's recording is extremely slow as well as being of a longer version. In fact it's on two CDs, with a duration just short of 85 minutes. Schaller, performing the same version, takes just over 70 minutes. Go figure...

[adriano]

Sad news, speaking about Bruckner:
Dr. Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs, the greatest Bruckner expert of these times, passed away on November 21st - at the age of 58.
We knew eachother since many years and I owe him the most valuable infos and advice on Bruckner. He was on the way of editing the new Bruckner-Gesamtausgabe. His own, recent last version of the 4th movement of Bruckner's Ninth Symphony is, in my opinion, the most valuable and seriously researched one.