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1 CD -
3984-24488-2 - (p) 1999
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Anton
Bruckner (1824-1896) |
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Symphony No. 7 in E major
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60' 01" |
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- I. Allegro moderato |
19' 10" |
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1
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- II. Adagio: Sehr feierlich und
sehr langsam
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20' 48" |
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2
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- III. Scherzo: Sehr schnell -
Trio: Etwas langsamer |
8' 53" |
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3
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- IV. Finale: Bewegt, doch nicht
zu schnell |
11' 09" |
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4
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Wiener
Philharmoniker |
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Nikolaus
Harnoncourt |
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Luogo
e data di registrazione
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Musikverein,
Vienna (Austria) - giugno 1999 |
Registrazione
live / studio
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live
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Producer
/ Engineer
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Wolfgang
Mohr / Martina Gottschau / Friedemann
Engelbrecht / Michael Brammann /
Christian Feldgen
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Prima Edizione CD
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Teldec
Classics - 3984-24488-2 - (1 cd) - 60'
01" - (p) 1999 - DDD |
Prima
Edizione LP
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Anton Bruckner's
Seventh Symphony
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Performed
for the first
time under Arthur Nikisch
at a Gewandhaus concert rn
Leipzig on 30 December 1884,
Anton Bruckner's Seventh
Symphony in
E major was the first
of the composer's symphonies
to win him immediate acclaim
and international
recognition, soon becoming known
not only
in
Europe but
even
as far
afield
as America.
By this stage in
hrs career, Bruckner was already
sixty and had been writing symphonies
for some twenty years. He
was now living in
Vienna, where he was the
regular butt of scornful and
devastating reviews on the
part of the city's leading
music critit, Eduard Hanslick,
whose antipathy towards
Bruckner was in
inverse
proportion to his friendship
for Brahms. As a result, the
great acclaim accorded to
the Seventh
Symphony in
Leipzig and elsewhere
was a novel experience for
Bruckner, but no less
delightful for
all that: "He stood there in his simple
clothes in front of the
excited crowd, bowing
again and again in his
helpless, awkward
manner," wrote the critic of
the Berliner Tageblatt
on 10 August
1885 after
a performance of the work in
the city. "Now a wistful smile
would
play
around the old man`s lips,
as though
the result of
effortfully suppressed
emotion, now a curious light
filled his eyes, and his
face - by no means
attractive, but sympathetic
and innocently
trusting - glowed with warm
and heartfelt pleasure."
Bruckner was
a slow
composer who spent almost
two whore years working
on his
Seventh Symphony and no
fewer than fourteen months
honing the opening
movement alone.
The autograph
score bears
witness to
the different
stages in
the
compositional
process. Generally Bruckner
wrote clearly, in
a clean and legible script,
but the score
Contains numerous revisions:
some
passages have been pasted
over, others havec been
erased and yet others
scraped away, thereby
offering a graphic picture
of the
composer's
evident need
to revise his
works. Yet he must have
regarded the Seventh
Symphony as
somehow
finisched, since
it
survives in only a single
version, unlike his other
symphonies - notably the
Third - which have come down
to us in a whole series of
often radically differing
versions. Only one passage
exists in divergent
recensions: bars 177-82 of
the Adagio. This passage
remains a bone of scholary
contention,
for it is unclear whether
the famous cymbal crash
and, with it, the timpani
and triangle, belong here
or not. According to Josef
Schalk, they were merely a
concession to Arthur
Nikisch, who conducted the
first performance and who
had asked the composer
to give greater emphasis to
the climax of the Adagio.
If this is so, they are not
really by Bruckner himself:
they are not an authentically
Brucknerian
idea.
On the other hand, Bruckner
noted down this brief
passage on a separate strip
of paper and added it to
the score, which he then
bequeathed to the Austrian
National Library. Was
this an oversight
on his part or was it
intentional?
Advocates of the
cymbal clash
argue that Bruckner could
have removed and even
destroyed the slip of paper,
which was
merely inserted
loosely
into
the score, if he had so
desired. The opposing
faction, by contrast,
prefers to adopt a more
puristic approach and rejects all
such additions,
drawing attention to a
(possibly inauthentic)
note added to the scrap
of papper, "gilt nicht"
(i.e., invalid), and
arguing that Bruckner
made this change only
because he was prevailed
upon to do so by a third
party.
The
introduction to the
Seventh Symphony is
typically Brucknerian,
with its string
tremolando preparing
the way for the first
subject which, at
twenty-one bars, is
arguably the longest
of any symphonic
subject written before
that date. By laying
the foundations fot
the main
theme, these
introductions are
among Bruckner's
most distinctive
features as a
composer. But no
less significant for
the overall
structure of his
individual symphonic
movements is a kind
of editing technique
particularly
noticeable in the
case of the second
subject, which
Bruckner was later
to use in his Te
Deum and which
has since become known,
in consequence, as the Te
Deum theme.
The
Scherzo is dominated
by a striking theme
on the trumpet
which, once again,
is entirely
characteristic of
the composer, with
its ascending
octave to e,
followed by a
descending fifth
to a
thrice-repeated o
(the first note
doubly dotted)
and, finally, by a
return to the
initial note.
Frequent
repetitions of
this theme ensure
that it becomes
ingrained in the
listener's memory.
The
final movement
is
surprisingly
succinct and,
apart from that
of the
"Nullte" (i.e.,
the Symphony
no. "0"), is
the shortest
of all
Bruckner's
finales. Here
the waves of
sound that
invariably
lead to the
orchestral
climaxes in
his music are
briefer and
more concise
than in any of
his previous
symphonies.
Bruckner's
Seventh
Symphony was a
success from
the very
outset - not
that this
persuaded the
single-minded
Hanslick, who
had his own
ideas of "the
beautiful in
music", to
take a more
favourable
view of
Bruckner's
compositional
style. For
him, the work
was a
"symphonic boa
constrictor"
of which he
could make
little sense.
It was
Bruckner's
organ playing
that first
brought the
two men
together, and
their initial
contacts seem
to have been
entirely
cordial. As a
composer of
sacred music,
Bruckner
earned
Hanslick's
respect, but
as soon as he
began to take
a serious
interest in
the field of
the symphony,
Hanslick
applied
different
standards, as
set forth in
his book On
the Beautiful
in Music:
as a form of
absolute
music, the
symphony
reigned
supreme, but
in order to
justify that
status it had
to meet
certain
criteria,
criteria that
Hanslick found
embodied in
Brahms's
symphonies,
but not in those
of Bruckner. As
a friend of
Brahms and an
opponent of
the New German
School (among
whose members
he wrongly
numbered
Bruckner on
account of the
latter's veneration
of Wagner), he
had little
choice but to
reject the
Austrian
composer's
works out of
hand. In
addition, he
had had to
give way to
Bruckner in an
interminable
tug-of-war
over the
question of a
teaching post
at the
University in
Vienna, a
circumstance
that seriously
affected
relations
between the
two men and
made it
impossible for
Hanslick to
adopt an
objective
attitude to
Bruckner's
works: he
could never
judge them
impartially.
Bruckner
suffered so
badly from
this rejection
that in the
wake of the
Seventh
Symphony's
successful
première in
Leipzig, he
wrote to the
Vienna
Philharmonic -
wich had
already given
the first
performances
of the Second,
Fourth and
middle
movements of
the Sixth
Symphonies - and
specifically asked them
not to perform the piece
"for
reasons that stem solely
from the deplorable local
situation
with regard to the
leading
critics, a situation
that could only detract
from the successes that
I
have recently enjoyed
in
Germany". None the less,
Hans
Richter conducted
the work at a
regular Philharmonlc
Concert in
the city on 21
March 1886,
when it
attracted conflicting
notices
on the part of Vienna`s
critics.
According
to Hanslick, the audience "put
up little
resistance;
some of them fled after
the second movement of
the symphonic
boa constrictor, and their
flight
turned to a fullscale
exodus following
the third
movement, so that only a
small band of
listeners
remained
to enjoy the
finale". But
even Hanslick
had to concede
that "this plucky legion
of
Brucknerians applauded
and cheered with the
fource of thousands.
There has certainly
never been an occasion
when a composer has been
called out on to the
platform four or five
times after every
movement". Although he
found the work
"unnatural" and
"inflated", Hanslick
admitted that he could
not judge it properly.
It is no wonder, then,
that Bruckner was so
terrified of Vienna's
critics. His fear is
immortalised
in countless
anecdotes, a number of
which have come down
to us in multiple
versions, suggesting
that they may contain
at least a kernel of
truth: on receiving
the Order of Franz
Joseph, Bruckner was
apparently asked by
the emperor what he
desired more than
anything else and is
said to have replied
to the effect that he
wanted the emperir to
stop Hanslick from criticising
his music. But even
without the
emperor's
intervention,
Bruckner was
eventually able to
triumph over his
critics.
Renate
Ulm
Translation: Stewart
Spencer
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Nikolaus
Harnoncourt (1929-2016)
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