Luogo e data di registrazione		Lübecker Dom, Lübeck (Germania) - 22 & 23 agosto 1987
	Registrazione: live / studio		live recording
	Producer		Gerhard Arnoldi
	Recording Engineer		Friedrich-Karl Wagner, Karl-Otto Bremer
	Prima Edizione LP		Nessuna
	Edizione CD		DEUTSCHE HARMONIA MUNDI - CDS 7 4917 2 - (2 CD's - 32' 27" & 53' 44") - (p) 1987 - DDD
	Note		The final two concerts of the 1987 Schleswig Holstein Music Festival were performance of Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 8 on 22nd and 23rd August in Lübeck Cathedral. The concentrated attention of the capacity audience in the cathedral was such that this recording of those performances is almost free from any extraneous noises. Eine Co-Produktion mit dem NDR

Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 in C minor (1884-1890) First performance: 18th December 1892 In September 1887 Anton Bruckner sent the score of his newly completed 8th symphony to Hermann Levi, who had conducted the Munich premiere of his 7th Symphony on 10th March 1885. Levi turned the work down and the result had a shattering effect. Gone was the enthusiasm (encouraged and inspired by the success of the 7th Symphony) with which Anton Bruckner had conjured up his latest work, and his utter dejection was overcome only very gradually - it would be two and a half years before yje 8th Symphony would take its final form. Bruckner made such fundamental revisions - to the first movement in particular - that it is a wonder that he was able to summon up the creative energy to do this: it is almost inconceivable how he managed to rework the same material for a second time to form a completely new and much more cohesive whole - what self-discipline and compositional professionalism after such resignation and helplessness. The 8th Symphony rose transformed like a phoenix from the ashes and the dedicatee, Kaiser Franz Joseph I of Austria, paid for the work to be published. The first performance in the Große Musikvereinssaal with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under Hans Richter was a great success. Bruckner had won over the public with a work that was both outwardly and structurally his most complex work. With the possible exception of his 5th Symphony, Bruckner had never before achieved such a synthesis of all the elements in a work which follow through all its movements into the Finale. The power of its content is arresting from the beginning: out of nothing we hear the first and third horns in octaves with the violins; immediately, under them, the low strings begin the powerful recurring motive with the interval of a minor second in the rhythm of an upbeat semiquaver followed by a crotchet. The second is then expanded to a minor sixth (up to an E flat) which is then followed by three falling semitones (D - D flat - C) - the falling motive ends the coda of the first movement and is also heard in the powerful tutti of the last bar of the Finale as its final affirmation as the central idea of the symphony. Already in the first movement there begins a process of continuous motivic development: the main theme evolves gradually and is transformed by means of the use of contrasting duplets and triplets against each other (often known as the "Bruckner Rhythm"). The theme is repeated fortissimo and the second subject follows, based almost entirely on the "Bruckner Rhythm". Then the violins have a "broad and expressive" melody which is immediately transformed in its repetition by the wood wind. In the recapitulation of the second section, Bruckner creates a new rythmic cell in the first oboe which only a few bars later leads into the start of the third theme. The subdividing function of the interval of a second from the beginning of the Symphony now becomes apparent - firstly before the entry of the third theme (on the flute), and then before the transition to the development (oboe I, cellos and basses). The exposition ends with the falling chromatic motive, a melodic transformation of the main theme (horn and oboe). The above serves to give a sufficiently detailed description of the main idea of the symphony. The principle of the work is to employ constant thematic variation in order to intensify the vastness of the work's construction (and indeed of its scale); to operate on the almost self-generating material with rhythmic expansion or contraction, melodic development and inversion and different contrapuntal layers; to build a giant construction in the symphonic cosmos from only a few notes and basic rhythmic elements: this is the principle which pervades the work. Everything is continually flowing - within the context of an expanded classical form - constantly giving new insights and always moving towards new constellations. The jump of a sixth (going both up and down) in the first theme leads into the Trio and the ghostly isolated interval of the minor second haunts the thick texture of the wind instruments in the Scherzo, while the crashing timpani motive of upbeat followed by downbeat is also a main feature of the Finale. Nothing is lost in this world picture which to a certain degree is entropic. The expansive Adagio has an expanded rhythmic base which disguises, but does not deny, the presence of the everchanging pattern of duplets and triplets and which are often tied together. The main theme of the movement is derived from the minor second/minor sixth; the written-out double trill, which separates the second theme in the first movement, returns in the first fortissimo (and recurs in corresponding places). The ascending chords played by the harp form a link back to the Trio. And at the climax of the Adagio, a variant of the main theme of the Allegro moderato is heard. Even the pianissimo coda is reminiscent of the close of the first movement: in almost the same rhythm the tenor tubas intone the initial interval of a minor second. Anton Bruckner's skill in composing another multi-layered metamorphosis out of the basic material of the first three movements, and then finally crowning it with the juxtaposition of all the main themes is quite amazing. The full complement of wind instruments in the first theme clearly refers back to the opening theme of the symphony (ie. double dotting and the use of the minor second and minor sixth jumps); the second theme, on the other hand, makes use of the melodic lines of the second theme of the Adagio. Logically this allembracing movement should ultimately give on overall impression of simultaneity - as a result of the manysided interweaving and development of those opening intervals over 80 minutes. The clearcut montage of blocks of music lends the movement a certain transparency: rhythmically pointed, clearly separated sections with their typically Brucknerian changes of register allow the listener to grasp a type of sonata form whose recapitulation (like that of the first movement) only becomes recognisable with the appearance of the second subject. The borders are as fluid as the stream of transformations which begin as early as the third bar of the symphony. And the limit of the classical-romantic form is reached; a form which still proves itself to be valid, and which even now is subject to permanent variation: just as at one time the gothic master-builder would construct giant arches with apparent ease from the colossal weight of his raw materials, so Anton Bruckner expanded his last completed cyclic construction in a way which could only be described as architectural. © Eckhardt van den Hoogen, 1987 (Translation: David Ashman)