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User Reviews about Bruckner:Symphony No. 9 (SACD CD HYRBID)

Let's start weighing this performance by considering twinges of anticipatory misgiving..

No doubt the invention of modern recording arts and sciences has helped Bruckner, quite a bit. Pioneering, world-class readings could go where no local band went, and even where many big name prestige bands did not yet go. We benefit. This brings us to sound. Both standard red book PCM and super audio surround techniques have captured a number of these impressive Bruckner ninths.
Among any reasonable red book disc option, the sound is hardly ever a detriment. Otto Klemperer (EMI, remastered), Giulini, Gunter Wand - these are all released in excellent regular PCM sound. Then, in super audio surround - we have a Japanese SACD remaster of Gunter Wand with Berlin, Nezet-Seguin with OMGM, Harnoncourt with Vienna, and Marek Janowski with Ansermet's band, L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. My highest regards for super audio readings have until now included Gunter Wand in Berlin, and Fabio Luisi in Dresden.

This new SONY BMG Red Seal release is a second installment in what looks to be a complete Bruckner symphony cycle in progress, Paavo Jaarvi leading the Frankfurt Radio. I liked the first disc, a paced and thrilling reading of the seventh symphony; but I wondered if the players could maintain such high commitment, faced with the valedictory and monumental ninth.

Yet, to my ears so far, this second Bruckner reading keeps up with the first disc. Perhaps exceeds it, insofar as the mysterious and mystical ninth exceeds the seventh as a sample of the composer's vision?

Big bands with rich sound are apt for super audio surround recording. In this second SACD, a sense of presence is typically increased by the back channels, even if nobody actively moves the orchestra into all the channels simultaneously. Again, our venue gets a chance to contribute. Yes, again these engineers know just what they are doing. Again, the venue, Alte Oper Frankfurt, comes across both warm and brilliant. Kudos to the HR engineers, as this disc is a co-production with Hessian Radio? Thus, this second reading captures a notable sonic mix of glow and clarity, just as the first release did.

Thanks to Jarvi and the HRSO players - the strings have sheen, warm polish, and an unusually disciplined strength of phrasing, altogether. The last time I heard string sections phrasing so purposefully I was listening to the Jaarvi-Frankfurt Radio Bruckner seventh.

If you got to know Bruckner via the old, traditional recordings - you will probably just eat up this one, too. Jarvi adopts entirely solid, mainstream tempos - and makes much of very carefully pulsed and finessed playing, all along the way. He can maintain a very long arch of superbly graded musical tensions - just like the best of Carl Schuricht, Karl Bohm, Otto Klemperer, and other Bruckner conductors of fond memory. If Jarvi just went all soggy and sporadic, swooshing and slogging from juicy phrase to juicy phrase? Then super audio would expose him mercilessly. As it is, the high resolution sound dramatically show cases the conductor and the players, revealing art plus art beyond art. The great third movement Adagio reaches as high in gestures of contemplation and eternity as any reading so far available. The whole symphony is marked with precious gleaming metals, born in fire.

The second movement scherzo is not diminished in eerie, impish, dissonant intervals, all wisp and ectoplasm. Tempo takes wing. Yet these players still sound very light, inflected, motion and impetus preparing us somehow for our eventual opening onto the timelessness vista of the final movement chorale yet to come. An omnipresent brilliance in the strings helps etch the musical line, even when the band is going soft, ppp. The rhythms are caught just right. Deft touches of lift and lilt rubato, in and out and through. Hardly has the oscillation between oddness in woodwinds or strings and steel girder mass in the full band, been more forcefully mastered. The more relaxed trios have plenty of charm, no doubt; those woodwinds whirl and chirrup in passing warm jest. Yet all still sounds like a harbinger of musical vastness - tonal strength, color, rhythm - all primal elements in a musical periodic chart waiting to gather and drive forward again when the scherzo moment returns.

The opening Finale beggars actual description. The tempo is basic, familiar. That big, striding brass theme rings out, dwarfing all human enterprises. The massed orchestra is cosmic in tonal sheen and gathered musical weight - recalling that old master Carl Schuricht in Vienna. Hardly have the opening massed string motifs moved with such fit muscularity. The climbing chromatic harmonies ascend, relentless, sure-footed.

Vigor and intensity - all playing towards a musical end point, still out of reach - describe the rest of this last movement. The lyrical contrasts relax seamlessly into the brass chorale emerging, played off against the faster finale themes and tempos. The conductor's marvelous handling of musical tension is simply immense in sweep and finesse as he controls all the small and large gestures. Just as most listeners will wish, the close is transcendental.

Those utterly committed to nothing but completely traditional Bruckner readings may quibble with this one. Jarvi and HRSO bring enough of a modernist clarity to the music that we are quite a musical distance from, say, Celibidache in Munich in the autumn of his career. If you are old school, you will take very great pleasure in Fabio Luisi in Dresden, or Gunter Wand in Berlin. If you do not mind drive and clarity in your Bruckner, recalling what dear old George Szell could bring off in the glorious Cleveland Orchestra years, you may well find that this new reading portends a very grand approach to Bruckner that simply has no need at all, for even the merest touch of Silent Screen Cinema emoting.

I'm adding this one to the top lists. I'm surprised. I've found Paavo Jarvi to be uneven in past spins of his new releases; and I've grown to feel tilted a little against him, just because I never quite know just what sort of music-making I will find. The chemistry on display here, between conductor and band, seems remarkably alert and capable. HRSO has already done a complete Bruckner cycle, under Eliahu Inbal. An arching of long musical structures, drive, mostly just missing by a few hairs from that earlier Frankfurt set. So, just looking at the cast, I wondered if Bruckner from Jarvi with HRSO would more or less be Inbal redux. Rest assured, we avoid all Ho-hum and Limp Bizkit in this second release in the series.

Jarvi beats the super audio competition, too, except for maybe (to me) the Japanese SACD remasters of Gunter Wand in Berlin, plus the Fabio Luisi reading from Dresden. I'm keeping Janowksi for Schubertian contrast, too. Those discs will probably always be super audio surround treasures. Now Jaarvi in Frankfurt makes my list. If everybody keeps this sort of playing up through all the remaining symphonies, this cycle will tower over a good many others of marked merit.

Five stars - reading, sound, Bruckner cycle installment, disc number two. Five stars, no doubts. -- Paavo Jarvi, HRSO-FrankfurtRSO: Bruckner Sym 9: A strong Bruckner reading - second disc in an ongoing complete symphonies cycle