Eliahu Inbal


1 LP - 6.43259 AZ - (p) 1986
1 CD - 8.43259 ZK - (p) 1986

ANTON BRUCKNER (1824-1896)




Symphonie Nr. 7 E-dur 63' 28"
- Allegro moderato
19' 24"
- Adagio: Sehr feierlich und sehr langsam 23' 31"
- Scherzo: Sehr schnell 9' 39"
- Finale: Bewegt, doch nicht schnell 10' 54"



 
Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt
Elihau Inbal, Leitung
 






Luogo e data di registrazione
Frankfurt (Germania) - settembre 1985

Registrazione: live / studio
studio

Producer / Engineer
-

Prima Edizione LP
Teldec - 6.43259 AZ - (1 LP) - durata 63' 28" - (p) 1986 - Digitale

Prima Edizione CD
Teldec - 8.43259 ZK - (1 CD) - durata 63' 28" - (p) 1986 - DDD

Note
Co-Produktion mit dem HR, Franfurt.












Perhaps even more than the Third Symphony with the quotations from Wagner opera woven into its original version, Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony is his true “Wagner Symphony”. And this not just on account of the “funeral music” in the Adagio, which Bruckner composed in 1833 after leaming of the revered master’s death. The musical language as well, the melodic realisation of some ideas, or the extensively used alteration harmonics give the Seventh a particular affinity to Wagner’s music. “Bruckner is the latest idol of the Wagnerians” - thus the personal opinion of the critic Eduard Hanslick, who held Bruckner in no high regard, after the Seventh Symphony’s Vienna premiere with Hans Richter.
Bruckner had worked on the symphony for two years; in September 1883 the score was finally ready in a fair copy. But a perfonnance was still out of the question at this point, leading the oomposer’s pupils Joseph Schalk and Ferdinand Löwe to play the new work for those interested on two pianos in Vienna’s Bösendorfer Saal on 27th February 1884. The first orchestral performance was not to take place until the end of that year in Leipzig. On the occasion of the Second Symphony’s première, Arthur Nikisch was still seated among the violinists of the Vienna Philharmonic. Now, at the age of just 29, he held the conductor’s baton at the perfonnance of the new Bruckner Symphony on 30th December 1884 in Leipzig.
After a flickering tremolo on the violins, the majestic main theme is introduced in the third bar; oboes and clarinets bring in the close-knit second subject. Dissonant tension is finally resolved with the soothing third subject, which wipes out all solemnity for a few moments with its dance-like character. Bruckner elaborates the three contrasting themes in the development with stretti and inversions. The Coda, too, is striking; over the pedal-note E on the kettledrum soars the opening of the main theme at the end like a colossal dome.
,,Sehr feierlich und sehr langsam“, very solemn and very slow: thus begins the Adagio with a theme played by the low strings and Wagner tubas, which is then continued “sehr markig”, with great emphasis, on the full-sounding G string of the first violins. A few bars of “brooding” chromatics lead into the more relaxed F sharp major theme. In the reprise Bruckner endeavours to bathe the intensively expressive main subject in a milder light through a veil of sextuplets on the first violins, before sounds of profound sadness are heard again in the Coda, the “funeral music in memory of the Master’s passing away”. A few years ago Constantin Floros pointed out remarkable similarities with the funeral march in “Götterdämmerung”.
The Scherzo is constructed according to the classical scheme. The trumpet intones a signal-like reveille over an urgent unison figure on the strings: the rhythm of the trumpet call passes over to the kettledrum at one point, and even whisks spookily through the Trio. - In the Finale the main subject with its striking vigour finds its ‘final fonn’, as if carved out specially, in the unison of the third subject. In between Bruckner brings in a chorale in solemn four- part writing for the strings. A last point worthy of note is the reference back to the first movement: a few bars before the end, the opening of its main subject surges through the Coda’s flood of musc.
This recording of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony follows the score published in 1954 by Leopold Nowak, i.e. that of the autograph manuscript in the Austrian National Library. Like Robert Haas and Alfred Orel, Nowak too was interested in the original version of the symphonies in each case, although for the Seventh this differs from the first printed edition only on minor points
.
Hans Christoph Worbs
Translation: C. R. Williams