...plus sundry orchestral pieces, from the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra under the young US conductor, Robert Trevino, on cpo:
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/max-bruch-symphonien-nr-1-3/hnum/8977576 (https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/max-bruch-symphonien-nr-1-3/hnum/8977576)
Symphony No.1 is here presented for the first time in its original five-movement version.
I already have the Masur and the Conlon.....
Me too. But I'll have these as well!
I have all the Bruch I thought I'd ever need, or want, but this five movement 1st intrigues me. The first published edition has only four movements. Anyway, CPO doesn't charge and arm and leg for their recordings, so add it to the pile. Give me something new to listen to during the apocalypse upon us.
I'm reminded that this 'apocalypse' would have been the daily experience of most of our population in previous centuries when disease after disease stalked the land. We are a pampered generation...
Good point. I shall attempt to restrain my choler...
In the post-WW1 Spanish Flu epidemic, around 250,000 Brits died. So far, our total stands at 233 - although it'll rise into the thousands.
Our American friends, of course, can rely upon Mr Trump, who will no doubt amelioratise the situation tremendously. :-[
The Honeck Third is my favourite recording of that symphony, the Conlon my favourite of the second. I have yet to find a favourite of the first.
My personal favourites are the Conlon performances which I find more committed than Masur. Wildner on EBS is also very fine.
I'm surprised by the unknown 5th movement of the 1st symphony. Makes me wonder how much of Bruch's beautiful music is yet to be explored. I do know he wrote a lot of choral music...
He did indeed write quite a lot of choral music (as well as trhee operas and some songs) but pretty much all his instrumental music is on disc. Granted I'm unsure about piano music though he wrote very little.
Bruch's string octet (1919?) was reworked? by him for string orchestra? Anyone who knows of a recording of that composition?
I must say I have been a little underwhelmed by some of Bruch's choral music - not all, by any means, but on the whole I prefer his purely orchestral works.
I agree with Gareth.
My preliminary impression of this new set is that it is very fine indeed. The commitment of the conductor to the music comes through in highly energised performances. The Bamberg Symphony also emerges with flying colours, producing playing of precision, beauty and power in equal measure. With five orchestral excerpts thrown in, this is a very generous set (149:04 in total).
In fact the five bonus orchestral items - three excerpts from Bruch's opera Hermione, the overture to Loreley and the Prelude to Odysseus - are more than mere makeweights. What they have in common is evidence of the composer's capacity to write music which conveys a sense of rapture - the very characteristic of his 1st Violin Concerto which has made it so popular over the years. Furthermore I have never heard the climax of the slow movement of the 3rd Symphony played as passionately and powerfully as it is in this new set. Wonderful!
Comparisons are often made with Brahms, usually to Bruch's detriment, but this is one feature of Bruch's music which, IMHO, Brahms cannot match.
"...amelioratise..." ;D ;D ;D
British comediatization at its best, Alan.
Back to Bruch. I have the three symphonies cond. by Conlon on EMI; hearing the 5th movement version will be interesting.
I'm looking forward to this when it's available for download. You know, I personally think his second symphony in f minor is his greatest work, even better than the VC no.1. I'll go a bit further and say it compares favourably with Schumann's and Brahms symphonies. It a powerful work I find.
Greatest work? I don't know, but his Second Symphony is certainly the work of Bruch's to which I listen most frequently. There's a solemn dignity and restraint to it - suffering, nobly born - which I find always moves me. Nobilimente, to borrow an Elgarian description, might describe it best.
Yes! Nice description Mark. There's no composer that can lift my spirits more than Bruch, his does the trick most of the time with me. I also much prefer his instrumental pieces over his lacklustre chorals works, which is ironic because thats what he was known for in his day.
I agree wholeheartedly. Mind you, I have a huge soft spot for VC3 as well...
I just wanted to weigh in because I got the set yesterday.......one thing is for sure: these Ouvertures/Entr'actes/etc etc are a thing of wonder.
So beautiful and refined, just a delight.
I went through the lot of them 3 times already-
The execution by the Bambergers, which sound pretty fantastic to mee, also bodes very well for the symphonies. which I love dearly.
You lucky devil, I'm still waiting for a digital download. I've worn out the Conlon(my favourite) and Masurs sets that I never want to hear them ever again!
so..I just finished the set.
Of course, it's just a first impression but..I am very impressed.
I would say that, as a complete cycle, this for me becomes the reference.
For either recording issues or matters of interpretation, I've never really loved much the Conlon or the Masur, and this quite supersedes the Johannes Wildner set.
I found this latest set altogether convincing.
Very refined echt-German sound from the clearly inspired Bambergers, but not a thick, dark sound, rather the opposite, very dynamic and "alive".
Beautiful terracing of orchestral layers and dynamics, and this is the conductor's merit...even the darkest moments of the 2nd are clarified without loss of impact or drama.
Also, Robert Trevino's tempi strike me as perfectly judged, he's not a speed merchant, but absolutely no slouch either, they just sound right to me.
The recording is also superior to cpo's generally good average: this one is very present and detailed.
Some individual releases I have retain their unique charms: I still think that the LSO in the late (and much missed) Hickox's unfinished set is a treat of luxury orchestral playing; I would not be without the very special elegance of Marriner's 1st for Hanssler and the monolithic Schmalfuss 2nd still casts a dark spell......but this set goes now at the top, and Wildner goes to retirement.
Yeah shame I had forgotten Richard Hickox never finished his Bruch cycle for Chandos. He was definitely one of the most underrated of conductors, always willing to unearth unsung repertory.
Thanks for that lively review, hyperdanny. It sounds like that this is an essential purchase - yet another!
I just listened back-to-back to Trevino's and Marriner's firsts, and it's remarkable how the reinstatement of the 7-minute intermezzo changes my perception of the whole piece.
Bruch is Bruch, but looking for analogies one could say that the 1st changes from Mendessohnian to Brahmsian.
Certainly, the 2 interpretations are already geared that way to begin with: Marriner is all sparkle, Trevino emphasizes weight, but in the end, I think that it's the restoration of a genuine slow movement (and a beautiful one to boot) that does the trick.
Fascinating.
What was the reason for the removal of the intermezzo, does the booklet say?
well, you know what, Kevin? the otherwise VERY comprehensive booklet (in typical cpo fashion) does not quite say.
It goes to great lenghts to say that Bruch excised it when he conducted the 2nd performance with the Gewandhaus, and how this unbalances the work and so on and so forth...but I could not find an actual "why"..maybe Bruch never publicly stated a reason, so it's not known?
For sure not because he didn't like it..the booklet makes several examples of how bits and pieces of it resurfaced in other parts of his output (plus, it is IMHO audibly beautiful)
l will have to retrieve Christopher Fifield's wonderful Bruch book to check if he says more..
What I gather from just the Google preview of Fifield (p.361) is that Bruch did initially intend to re-use the intermezzo from the first symphony in the third, interestingly.
Ok that's interesting info about the intermezzo. I was baffled when I read the description of their being an extra movement for the first symphony, never heard of that before until then.
Ok just ordered mine last week. Thanks for the heads up!!
I went back to check the book, and this is how I understood the issue.
First of all, the existence of a discarded movement of the 1st is not mentioned in the "main text" of the biography..the reason evidently being that it was not known (or it was forgotten, if you prefer) when the book was originally written.
In fact, the subject is then brilliantly chronicled by Maestro Fifield in the "Afterword to the new edition", in a piece titled "Bruch in Sondershausen" (pages 358 to 392), that summarizes later research findings from 2001.
Fifield (p.361) talks about the "discovery of the Intermezzo in the orchestral library of the Lohorchester in Sondershausen" and states references from 1868 concert programs and articles that confirm "the Intermezzo in B major as coming from his first symphony".
So, as I understand it, the origin of the music is indeed in the symphony.
Then he explains that after the excision the movement had a very short concert life as a stand alone piece, and after that Bruch planned to "recycle" it in various pieces , even in the third symphony (!), but never did.
And it "has lain in Sondersahausen ever since" (p.362).
Fifield seems to implicitly agree that the excision was a loss, since he says that the penultimate movement Grave is "a somewhat unsatisfactorily short slow movement" (the cpo booklet says explicitly that the Intermezzo provides just that, a "real" slow movement).
Fascinatingly, the "why" of all this is not provided, I guess that Bruch did not leave it, so we'll never know.
But I am very glad we got this music back.
It's neat when biographers discover lost music -while working on longterm biography projects- - I can think of other examples (Beaumont's Zemlinsky) Anyhow, looking forward to hearing this 5-movement first. (Who knows, maybe I'm lucky and it's at NML and I can try it out for free soon...)
(Sorry, I assume Fifield discovered it, but I am making an assumption.)
Yes, he did.
then he's a remarkably self-effacing man, because in the book he does not boast about it..and he well could!
He mentions it in his later book The German Symphony between Beethoven & Brahms - a terrific read, by the way..
Quotethen he's a remarkably self-effacing man
He is indeed. A fine conductor and a really lovely man. I am happy to know him, if only slightly.
Indeed , at page 220 of The German Symphony between Beethoven & Brahms, mr. Fifield says that he himself discovered ( or, I would say, rediscovered) the manuscript in the Sondershausen library while guest conducting there in 2001.
Such is the wealth of information and revelations provided by that invaluable book that this one must have slipped through the cracks.
And I totally concur with Mark: it's a terrific read.
I just gave the set a first listen (normally I wait for CPO recordings to show up on Spotify, but I didn't have the patience now). It's interesting to hear to the "full" First Symphony, and the intuitively the "new" intermezzo sounds like an improvement to me. It serves as a good bridge between the opening Allegro and the Scherzo; I always thought this was a strange transition. Another "nice-to-have" is the incidental music to Hermione, which I don't think existed in a commercial recording until now. Sofar I've only given the 2nd Symphony (my favorite, to be honest) a thorough listen, and Trevino is quite expansive in the first movement but doesn't stray too far from others in the other ones. I'm not entirely sure this works, though. Playing is fine, as was to be expected from the Bamberg, but for now the Leipzig/Masur combo remains my favorite recording.
Quotebut for now the Leipzig/Masur combo remains my favorite recording.
We were always fortunate to have a top-flight orchestra and conductor in this music.
Yesterday I finally got around to listening to the other symphonies. Whatever reservations I had (and they were slight) about Trevino's 2nd were taken away entirely by the other two. Having the "full" First Symphony is great, and it is clear that Bruch made a bit of a mistake taking out the lovely second movement (Intermezzo: andante con moto). But more importantly, it is played with a crispness and sense of rhythm that absolutely suits the piece. The Third is far more expansive in approach and I feel that the tempi used by Trevino are just about perfect. I played Hickox' account with the LSO afterwards, and that sounded a bit rushed by comparison. Also, the recording engineer has done a great job, and the Bambergers sound much fuller than the LSO.
The CDs contain a few pieces that are rarely heard: some excerpts from Hermione, Op. 40, and two overtures (to Odysseus and Loreley). Although everything is testimony to Bruch's sense of melody, I would say that they're really mostly filler material, with the exception of the Vorspiel to Odysseus. That is really a sumptuous piece of music.
I think it could become the reference set for these symphonies. Interestingly, although it's not appropriate for this forum, Trevino has just done a complete set of the Beethoven symphonies for Ondine which, from excerpts at Presto, sounds terrific.
I listened to that. Truth is, though, that to make a Beethoven set stand out you need it to be exceptional (in whatever way). Trevino's set is very good, but it has to compete with a load of other very good sets, and it's not really exceptional. The big exception is the eight, which is among the greatest I've heard.
You're probably right. If one is to buy more Beethoven, it needs to be exceptional.
Anyway, Trevino's Bruch is exceptional, it seems to me...
I'm still waiting for a digital release, if any ones has details about that please post it here. Thanks.
I'ts not even on Spotify at the moment. Speaking of Spotify I hope people have tried it because I've found it a nice little program.
CPO releases generally appear on Spotify with a 2-month (or thereabouts) delay. Now always though; depends on the agreement between CPO and the orchestra.
Spotify generally adds new releases at the same time as their digital retail release (in the case of cpo usually a couple of months after the physical one). I use the service all the time now to audition new digital purchases.
This set releases next week Friday digitally(3 July) I can't wait.
Is there a reason this topic is sticky? (I assume someone hit the wrong button...)
To keep on topic, thanks Kevin. Can't wait to sample this juicy sounding release...
Unstuck. Thanks, TerraEpon.
Do yourself a favour and take your old sets of Bruch Symphonies down from the shelf and put them in the cupboard because the new CPO set is now the definite performances of these works available. There's a nice Elgarian swagger in the fast movements and an almost Brucknerian serenity in the slow movements. I've never heard these works more convincingly played, they deserve to be in the repertory in all the major orchestras. Rich full sound too, captures tiny details in orchestration that went unnoticed in previous releases. Recommended!
That's my assessment too. It's a wonderful set for all the reasons Kevin states.
Thanks. It's just what I was hoping. But, there's so much music to listen to, I don't know how anyone finds the time! :D
There's an informative and fascinating article about Bruch in the current issue of Gramophone Magazine, and also a review by Richard Bratby of this recording of the symphonies. To quote:
This is music of rolling vistas, sunlit hillsides and good wine, and the sound of the Bambergers suits it beautifully. The strings have a satin sheen (for silk you'll need to go to Masur and the Gewandhaus, still the benchmark in these works) and the all-important inner-voice blend of cellos, clarinets and horns gives the overall tone quality an unforced radiance. Trevino caresses those inner voices, shaping phrases with feeling but generally finding the right moment to pick up the tempo and start tightening the argument.
Here's the gramophone review(hit the refresh button a few times if it doesn't work)
https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/bruch-symphonies-nos-1-3-trevino
No luck with that here. But I'd read the hard copy anyway.
Has anyone heard this set -
Bruch: Symphony No. 2 & Violin Concerto No. 3
Andreas Krecher (violin), Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra, Georg Hanson
(https://i.ibb.co/RvS1WHK/bruch.jpg) (https://imgbb.com/)
https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8619084--bruch-symphony-no-2-violin-concerto-no-3 (https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8619084--bruch-symphony-no-2-violin-concerto-no-3)
It's a reissue, of course, bringing together two separately released CDs. Here's a very favourable review at MusicWeb of Symphony No.2/VC3:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2000/mar00/bruch.htm (http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2000/mar00/bruch.htm)