David Dalle
Thursday July 11th, 2024 with David Dalle
Bruckner's 3rd symphony; some tunes I heard on CKCU in the past week.

This week we continue my Bruckner symphonic cycle with his magnificent 3rd symphony. Bruckner composed the work in 1873, and it became his most revised work. This was perhaps due to its first performance. The conductor Johann Herbeck, a friend of Bruckner, volunteered to conduct the symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1877, but, sadly, Herbeck died a month before the scheduled premiere. Surprisingly, the premiere was not cancelled and Bruckner himself stepped in to conduct the work. However, he was not really a competent orchestral conductor. The Vienna Philharmonic was already very hostile to Bruckner's music, and they were extremely uncooperative and rude toward Bruckner. At the premiere itself, it started as a full house as it was the farewell performance of the musical director of the court orchestra, Joseph Hellmesberger. It was a long concert with the 3rd symphony being the final piece on the program. Many people had left before the symphony even began. During the performance, there was constant heckling, booing, hissing from the continuingly diminishing audience. At the final note, the orchestra promptly left the stage, while only around 25 people remained in the hall, this was mostly a few students and champions of Bruckner, including a 17 year old Gustav Mahler, but also a few cruel individuals who stayed to laugh and mock a humiliated Bruckner. The reviews in the Viennese press continued the humiliation. Bruckner was so distraught from this debacle he stopped composing for nearly a year, and he revised the 3rd symphony mercilessly over the next 13 years so that the work exists in six versions! Most performances for the first 60 years after 1890 used the 1890 version, and most recordings of the past 50 years use either the 1877 or 1889 versions. But we will be listening to the original, 1873 version which was first published in 1977, in a recording by Austrian-born conductor Georg Tintner. Tintner was only the second to record this version, and he wrote: "To my mind this work as originally conceived suffered by its progressive mutilations more and more." Before we get to the symphony, I have a few things to say about Georg Tintner. He was born in Vienna in 1917 and was the first Jew to sing in the Vienna Boys Choir, which was directed at the time by Franz Schalk, who had studied with Bruckner. He studied composition and conducting at the Vienna State Academy. After the Nazi Anschluss of Austria in 1938, he fled Austria and ended up in New Zealand. He spent nearly five decades conducting opera in New Zealand and Australia before he ended up in Canada in 1987, where he conducted Symphony Nova Scotia. His third wife tells of a man obsessed with music and little else. Tintner would always have a music score with him, at breakfast, with company over, always reading music. He did not record very much during his career until he was given the opportunity to record a Bruckner cycle with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for Naxos, starting in 1995. It seems like he had waited his whole life for this chance. The recordings of all eleven symphonies, as well as some different versions of specific movements, was done with extreme care and thoughtfulness. Tintner wrote all the notes and explains why he chose the editions used for every symphony, and his deep love and understanding for Bruckner's music shines brilliantly. This cycle is exceptional, and was extremely well received. It would be my first recommendation for anyone who wants to learn the symphonies. Georg Tintner completed the cycle in 1998, and was awarded the Order of Canada that year. All throughout he had been struggling with cancer and he took his own life in 1999. Bruckner's third symphony is monumental, with music building up to Earth-shattering climaxes. There are several quotations from Wagner's music in the 1st, 2nd, and 4th movements, and the work was dedicated to Wagner. This is a symphony which is not trying to offer pretty diversion, but music which is striving for transcendence. An attentive, sympathetic listener should be utterly transported by the conclusion of this work. For me, this shares so much with Sufi music and ritual!