David Dalle
Thursday December 5th, 2024 with David Dalle
30 for 30 with Bruckner Symphony No. 8

There is probably a lot of variety in "greatest symphony" for Beethoven or Mahler scholars, Beethoven's 3rd or 9th, Mahler's 2nd or 8th etc. I am sure there are champions for each of those nine symphonies. But for Bruckner scholars, there is probably a very firm consensus: Bruckner's 8th. Usually, Bruckner would begin his next symphony as soon as he was finished the previous. This was true with the 8th, begun in 1884 shortly after the 7th was premiered. He completed the work in 1887 and he sent the score to the famous conductor Hermann Levi, who had conducted the second performance of the 7th in Munich which had proved to be the biggest triumph of Bruckner's career. However, Levi returned the score claiming he didn't understand it. This was an enormous set back to Bruckner. He spent the next several years both rewriting the 8th and furiously revisioning his earlier symphonies. This actually had some positive results as his reworking of the 8th, finished in 1890, had some inspired improvements. The 8th symphony's closest inspiration is Beethoven's 9th, but is unlike any other symphony composed in the 19th century. (It is fascinating that the enormous influence and power of Beethoven's symphony had such radically different impact. Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique was composed just 6 years after the 9th's premiere, and directly influenced by it, but was nothing like Beethoven, nor indeed Bruckner's symphonies!) The first movement rises tentatively out of the mists, with no hint of the c minor tonality of the symphony. It moves searchingly through three major thematic sections, rising to great climaxes then subsiding. Bruckner's critics simply could not understand his symphonic logic, this was drastically different from the conventional symphonic logic of Brahms or Schuman. Bruckner was unique in his idiosyncratic symphonic writing, and no one before Bruckner was writing symphonies on such a cosmic, grand scale! The first movement eventually settles on c minor, surging to an enormous climax in C major, but with a searing dissonance. This is cut off, and the first movement, in the 1890 version, ends pianissimo in a bleak c minor--the only 1st movement of a Bruckner symphony ending quietly. Bruckner places the scherzo second--not the only connection to Beethoven's 9th--and it provides a necessary respite from the emotionally draining 1st movement and the enormous adagio which follows. The glorious, rolling outer parts surround the beautiful trio, where Bruckner introduces harps for the first time in one of his symphonies in a passage of aching beauty. The adagio is the grandest symphonic slow movement composed by anyone at that time, eclipsing all of Bruckner's previous slow movements and any other previous composer with perhaps the exception of the adagio from Beethoven's 9th. A very slowly unfolding rapturous and ecstatic movement. Like Bruckner's faster outer movements, it builds speed and tension into enormous climaxes, but it does so at a glacial pace. However, the momentum is colossal, it is the movement of tectonic plates moving almost imperceptibly, but building to Earth-shattering tension. This movement in D-flat builds up to a turbulent, massive climax leading up to the expectation of a giant perfect cadence in E-flat (which is the relative major of c minor, so pointing it homewards to the symphony's key), but instead Bruckner leads it to a huge, shocking interrupted cadence in C flat major. The music falls away and slowly drifts to the end in beautiful mystical consolation. The enormous finale begins firmly in c minor with thunderous, rhythmic pounding. A tremendous energy which soon dissipates, and afterwards, most of the movement is about rebuilding that energy leading to the magnificent coda. Bruckner very subtly alludes to themes from the previous three movements as he moves into the coda where we finally move into C major. The final blazing C major apotheosis begins quietly, with the strings and the horns playing a mournful tune building quickly and irrevocably to the end. As I have written before about the 8th, there is nothing more conventional in European common practice than to end a minor key piece in its major key, but nowhere has it been so colossal, so glorious, so transcendent as in this symphony. The coda is a supreme moment in orchestral music. Bruckner's 8th is a huge labyrinth, ranging from exquisite delicate moments to huge chasms of sound. It is hard to absorb it all in a single listening. It rewards a lifetime of listening. Unlike the other symphonies in the cycle, where we heard primarily great German and Austrian Bruknerians like Furtwängler, Gunter Wand, Georg Tintner, Karajan, Karl Bohm, we will hear a live recording with the French Modernist composer and conductor Pierre Boulez. As a conductor, Boulez almost exclusively conducted 20th century music. His single recording of Bruckner was an anomaly. Boulez was invited to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic at the St. Florian Cathedral in Linz during the 1996 Bruckner centennial year international Bruckner festival. Bruckner was a choir boy and later an organist at St. Florian and is also buried in the cathedral's crypt directly below his favourite organ. Boulez uses the 1939 Haas edition which is actually a mix of the original 1887 and 1890 versions and I find to be the best version musically. This recording was the first one I heard of Bruckner's 8th and remains my favourite recording of the work. The live orchestral sound is incredible, Boulez's pacing and understanding of the symphony's architecture and narrative is wonderful. So I am including it in my 30 for 30 recordings.