Luogo e data di registrazione		Musikhalle, Hamburg (Germania) - 7-9 marzo 1993
	Registrazione: live / studio		live recording
	Recording supervisor		Gerald Götze
	Balance engineer		Karl-Otto Bremer
	Editing		Suse Wöllmer, Sabine Kaufmann
	Prima Edizione LP		nessuna
	Edizione CD		SONY [RCA VICTOR Red Seal] - 09026 62650 2 - (1 CD - 65' 07") - (p) 1994 - DDD
	Note		A Co-Production of Bertelsmann Music Croup & Norddeutscher Rundfunk Hamburg

Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony Without doubt the greatest and most important composer of symphonies in the second half of the nineteenth century, Anton Bruckner holds a key role between Beethoven, Schubert and Mahler, and not just for the Austrian musical tradition. His significance reaches further afield, both historically and geographically, although - and perhaps precisely because - his style is so singular. It is only in the second half of our century that this is gradually becoming clear, and a performer as deeply in sympathy with Bruckner's works as Günter Wand makes a contribution towards this re-evaluation that can no longer be ignored. Bruckner was, with a very few exceptions, simply not understood in his own time. Even friends and musical sympathizers of this unique man were unable to follow him and out of pure goodwill pressed Bruckner, who was perpetually plagued by feelings of inferiority, to make constant revisions, abridgements and to agree to illconceived “improvements” which he himself perpetrated on his works. However, Bruckner remained firm on one point: the text which he declared “valid” should be handed on unaltered to posterity, uninfluenced by contemporary “good deeds” such as cuts and changes in instrumentation - and he did indeed achieve this goal by leaving fair copies of his scores, dated and meticulously marked without ambiguity, and by making equally unambiguous provisions in his will for their preservation. It was the example of the Ninth Symphony that gave an astonished posterity its first indication of the extent to which the versions of Bruckner's symphonies performed even well into our century were distorted. (Even today there are said to be conductors who prefer the “more effective” reworking to the original version!) In a spectacular concert which caused a sensation in the musical world on the 2nd April 1932 in Munich, Siegmund von Hausegger performed Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony twice in succession: once in the version known up to then, the score of which had been published in 1903 by Ferdinand Löwe, and afterwards according to the text which was faithful to Bruckner's autograph - in other words, the original version. The difference was stunning, and it was clear to every listener that this work (and presumably, as was later confirmed, also other symphonies of Bruckner's) had up to then never been performed as the composer himself had intended. Even Löwe’s reworking, which does not even identify itself as such in the score of 1903 - in spite of all the credit this Bruckner pupil deserves for performing the Ninth and having it printed - thoroughly distorts, indeed falsifies the original artistic intention. The problem was first recognized by Robert Haas, head of the music department of the Vienna National Library (which as the successor of the former Court Library had custody of Bruckner’s unpublished works) and later biographer of Bruckner. Studying the sources carefully and comparing them with the printed scores, he discovered the discrepancies and the substantive differences and persuaded the conductor von Hausegger to carry out the Munich experiment which produced such powerful proof. Our gratitude must go to Haas’ initiative for the first critical edition of the complete works based on Bruckner’s original manuscripts, being undertaken in collaboration with the International Bruckner Society and the Vienna National Library; as well as Haas, the Bruckner researchers Nowak, Oeser and Orel took part in this first complete edition, finished in 1944. After the war the International Bruckner Society published a new edition, which differs only in insignificant points from the basic findings of the first edition of the original text. The main differences between the original version and the reworking are to be found on the levels of form, sonority and dynamics. Small and larger cuts destroyed the original form, and instead of becoming clearer and more obvious, Bruckner’s monumental architecture (based on the most precise symmetry and proportionality, corresponding to his almost manic preoccupation with numbers was made to seem more enigmatic. Similarly, in most reworkings Bruckner’s original “terraced” dynamics, which were inspired by the dynamics of organ registration and which make sharp contrasts between extremes of intensity, are falsified by arbitrarily introduced crescendos and decrescendos. Sections separated by general pauses are often run together, and tempo alterations are introduced through accelerandos and ritardandos, as are other melodic, harmonic and rhythmic “improvements” - all this, be it noted, done with the best of intentions and in many cases even with the explicit or tacit agreement of the composer, who had a strong regard for authority and little experience of performance. He once called the conductors who brought his work to performance with such alterations his “guardians appointed by Wagner”, and he allowed Felix Weingartner “only to make heavy cuts; for it would be too long and is suitable only for a later time”. And on another occasion: “Please do only as your orchestra requires; but please do not alter the score, and leave the orchestra parts unchanged when they are printed: that is one of my most heartfelt requests.” Severe interference also affected the sonority, the instrumentation. Bruckner, in a way similar to his treatment of dynamics, develops the principle of blocks differentiated by sonority into a formal structure of sound groups, clearly separating the basic colours of strings, woodwind and brass; he uses mixtures of these only within the restrictions of his strict formal principles. However, in most of the scores printed before the critical edition, the predominant ideal of those who reworked the music was a mixing of sound colours in the manner of a Lisztian-Wagnerian orchestral sonority. To justify this, those who reworked the scores were able to point to Bruckner’s idolatrous admiration for Wagner: indeed, Bruckner adopted from him and developed further many bold chromatic and enharmonic details in the harmony which were new and unheard of at that time. However, in orchestration, Bruckner, as a symphonist worked out his ideas of sonority from the organ, and so deviated considerably from the way in which Wagner the music-dramatist used instrumentation. This problem leads us directly to that of Bruckner’s unwilling participation in the argument between different parties in Vienna: not political parties, of course, but factions in conflict over aesthetic and musical issues. By 1874 - when he dedicated the Third Symphony to Wagner (who received the score and merely sent his thanks by way of Cosima) - if not earlier, Bruckner had been labelled a Wagnerian and hence one of the progressive party. The conservative majority of the Viennese musical world, whose ideological leader was the intellectual critic and art theorist Hanslick, held fast to the (possibly misunderstood) ideal of classicism and its formal canon. This faction considered Johannes Brahms, who against his will thus became the antithesis of Bruckner, to be their contemporary protagonist who seemed to be continuing the work of the three classical titans. Nowadays it is obvious that such pigeon-holing does the later Brahms, at least, a similar wrong and an injustice comparable in its flagrancy to the injustice done to Bruckner, who in the depths of his soul was anything but a revolutionary: he inscribed all his music, as the medieval masters or Johann Sebastian Bach used to do, “soli Deo gloria” - to the glory of God alone. He really had nothing in common with the factions of his time, and he suffered unspeakably from their effects on him, in particular from the intelligent and therefore all the more hurtful attacks of Hanslick. Against this historical background Bruckner’s incessant striving for proof of recognition becomes understandable: for exams and formal academic approval even in old age, for a university position, the title of Doctor and a professorship. The honours and (meagre) demonstrations of the emperors favour on the whole came too late to change or affect in any way Bruckner’s simple life style, which in modern eyes would seem almost impoverished, or at best monkishly frugal. Until his death he remained a great loner, perhaps the greatest in recent music history, and his life’s work even nowadays, almost a century after his death, stands before us isolated and anomalous. With the “restlessness of a mighty mind” (Friedrich Blume), Bruckner made from one symphony to another ever-renewed efforts, on an ever-evolving level, to solve the single problem which hovered before him; to summarize in the monumental structure of large-scale symphonic architecture the totality of the possibilities of form and expression which his era afforded, to God’s praise alone and for His higher honour. He wanted to elevate and concentrate this structure to reach the supreme greatness and sublimity which lay within his grasp. Anton Bruckner’s symphonic works are, among other things, also a monument to monistic certainty of belief in a secular and pluralistic world, and thus the conclusion of a whole epoch of Western music history, which derives the purpose and justification for music from its transcendence, from its ability to reflect the ethical (in the final analysis God’s commandment) in the aesthetic, realized in artistic form. Each individual symphony, and none more than the Ninth, is the reflection of one and the same ideal type, uniting elements of Gregorian chant and Bachian linearity with Beethoven’s powerful sense of drama, Schubert’s Romanticism placed in a new formal setting and Wagner’s chromatically expressive harmony, to form an unmistakably Brucknerian synthesis. Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony could also bear the nickname “Unfinished”, for in addition to the three completed movements he left 181 pages of sketches with more than 400 bars for a final movement which he obviously intended to include, but which remained unfinished. The earliest dated sketch for the first movement is from the 21st September 1887. Bruckner worked on this symphony longer than on his earlier works. The first movement was finished on the 23rd December 1893 and the Scherzo was written between January 1889 und February 1894. The Adagio, on the other hand, was written in it entirety in 1894. The dates (beginning the 23rd April and ending the 30th November 1894) indicate that Bruckner worked uninterruptedly on this, his last completed symphony movement, whereas between the original draft and the completion of the first two movements he had also been busy with the revisions ofthe Eighth and First Symphonies. It is said that he continued to work on the Finale right up to his death in October 1896, although there are no dated documents to prove this. As Robert Haas writes, the Ninth Symphony, Bruckner’s farewell to life, “stands in splendid isolation at the end of the chain of symphonies, with shudders of eternity blowing round it... The dedication to God signifies both the summation of his whole lifetime and the fervent spiritual submissiveness of this confession of a lifetime.” The first movement, with the three groups of themes typical of Bruckner, has throughout - and not only in the development section - a belligerent, powerful, severe and serious effect. The coda intensifies one component of the main movement, turning it into a deeply meaningful chorale for brass. In second place in this symphony is a Scherzo, which, as E. van den Hoogen notes, “makes a mockery of its name and allows no room for the slightest gesture of reconciliation”. In these rugged contours, one finds none of the idiomatic sounds at home in Upper Austria which are occasionally found in other Brucknerian scherzos: this is particularly obvious in the Trio. This is not leisurely and Ländler-like, as is usual in Bruckner; rather, the tempo accelerates further, reinforcing the impression of the movement's character as a dance of death - a highly original movement, rhythmically, harmonically and melodically almost bizarre. The ensuing Adagio extends the symphony’s thematic diversity, structural dimensions and intensity of sound-colours. In spite of - and perhaps precisely because of - its overall character as a magnificent swan-song, it penetrates into new worlds. The main theme touches all twelve semitones of the chromatic scale, and the downright sinister climax of the concentration of sound turns into a dissonant chord which piles up no less than seven of the twelve semitones on top of one another, just before the beginning of the blissful conclusion in E major. Bruckner himself called the tuba phrase in the second theme his “farewell to life”, and Robert Haas, his biographer, still writing under the influence of Romanticism, considers the entire final movement “a celebration of eternal desire” at the end of which “the gates of heaven open”, and he speaks of the “relaxation of the conclusion in the inebriation of death". Certainly the quiet conclusion by the horns over the pianissimo chords of the tubas and trombones and the pizzicatos of the strings, calmly swaying and undulating into silence, is uniquely beautiful - a final swan-song in the true sense of the word, which nothing else can follow. Altogether the three finished movements of this Ninth Symphony evidence an unparalleled boldness, spaciousness and uniqueness of structural design. Their architecture spans a broad range, “like a gigantic mountain landscape” (Kloiber). In a radio conversation with the author of these lines, Günter Wand once admitted “it took me a very long time not just to recognize the magnificent arches of the architecture of Bruckner`s works - even that took me a long time - but to achieve the necessary calm to convey them in performance. In Bruckner’s work, in these gigantic blocks from which the architecture of his symphonies is fashioned, the thing that moves me e in (I might almost say) an unreal way - is something like the reflection in the music of a cosmic ordering, something which I feel is not measurable in human terms. And I would love to try to let this background to Bruckner’s music, this reflection of divine order, become obvious, to make it clear.” Wolfgang Seifert (Translation: Byword, London) Some Thoughts on Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony Concern with the primitive forces of rhythm, the conflict of odd and even in the dimension of time, is a characteristic of all the symphonies of Anton Bruckner. It plays an important part in the shaping of themes where duplets and triplets follow one another, taking up an equal length of time. It is even more important in the form of rhythmic counterpoint, when forces which by nature repel one another are at length compelled to coexist in the same period of time. This rhythmic dualism is quite peculiar to Bruckner and it represents a driving force in the mighty beat of his symphonic style, coming from within and setting all aglow. We are dealing now with a content which points far beyond the techniques of rhythm in music. This dualism seems to have a symbolic force, standing for the irreconcilable elements in human nature and for the longing to transcend them. It is Bruckner’s firm grasp upon the interdependency of time and space which forms the mortar binding together the blocks of primitive stone out of which his symphonic cathedrals are built. The architecture of Bruckner’s music is different from that of the classical symphony in which the thematic material underwent development. In Bruckner’s music it means the confrontation of thematic blocks and the achievement of a satisfying balance between them, a balance both in terms of tone-colour and in terms of the time-space dimensions. The confrontation of odd and even rhythmic values and the attempt to fuse these together in the same period of time can lead to tremors and eruptions which are truly volcanic and, indeed, seem not far removed from cosmic events. Sometimes note values are doubled or trebled as, for example, when triplets in quavers are transformed directly into triplets in crotchets and minims. The effect of this is not so much to slow down the tempo as to increase the feeling of space (cf. the finale of the Fourth Symphony). There are passages in Bruckner’s music where the laws of tension and relaxation seem no longer to obtain. Different rhythmic impulses of a similar quality are formed into layers, some of which then move at double the pace of the others. A strange phenomenon is produced; the form has musical motion, yet the effect is static. It is like viewing the stars of the nightly firmament, which take their courses but seem to stand still. It is only for moments that Bruckner’s music moves into such dimensions. The “development” in the first movement of the Ninth and the ppp stretto in the fugal finale of the Fifth are examples. In all this we do not have the feeling that such effects of rhythmic energy are studied or calculated - as if they were a display of particular subtlety on the composer’s part. (For that, we may look to the oboe’s 4/4 departure from the prevailing 6/ 8 metre of Mozart’s Oboe Quartet.) On the contrary, the compelling power of these inspired passages in Bruckner seems formed by nature and totally in keeping with the natural form and beauty of those unique themes. The Ninth is rougher in sonority in comparison with the earlier symphonies and sometimes it seems as if Bruckner were consciously dissociating himself from them. It is due to his completely uncompromising treatment of polyphony, something which offends some ears at first hearing. It expresses renunciation of the world and an inner truthfulness which, after so many ecstatic visions of glories beyond the grave, is not afraid to express the dissonances of the deepest chasms. This fearful cry, in which man’s weeping for paradise lost seems to echo on to the end of time, can find of its own no solution, no deliverance. Silence follows. Then the step is taken towards the security of the faith. The music seems to throw off the bonds of matter, and from now on until the transfigured conclusion the music pulses in the certaintz of the NON CONFUNDAR IN AETERNUM. Günter Wand