Bruckner - The Three Masses - Te Deum - Symphony 00 - String Quintet

Mass No 3 in F Minor
Te Deum
Jane Eaglen soprano
Birgit Remmert contralto
Deon van der Walt tenor
Alfred Muff bass
Mozart-Chor, Linz
The London Philharmonic
Franz Welser-Most
EMI 1996


Few passages in music afford such an open view of the heavens as the first bars of Bruckner's Te Deum. So much is riding on those oscillating fourths and fifths, those sky-high choral unisons - a universal belief: one voice, one faith. It's plainchant finding power in proclamation, it's the musical embodiment of the words "And it came to pass". The power of suggestion is greater than mere dimension, far greater than the sum of the notes on the page. But it was ever thus with Bruckner. Simple man, simple means. Huge conviction. When the solo violin takes flight in seraphic embellishments during the opening "Kyrie" of the Mass in F, it is not Beethoven's Missa Solemnis you think of - nothing so visionary, so lofty, so far-reaching. Bruckner's celestial voice is heaven on earth. And be it ever so humble, it's the directness, the sincerity of his message, his manner, that goes straight to the heart.
Welser-Most's choice of choir, the Mozart-Chor from Linz, his (and Bruckner's) neck of the woods, pays off handsomely: a forthright, well-focused, and highly articulate body striding into those resolute fugues, hurling down those mighty blocked unisons like the proverbial tablets of stone. He does an excellent job of terracing those tuttis, nailing the points of release, defining the sound in such a way as to keep the textures open. EMI's engineering plays its part, too. Very impressive. The final stretta romps home gloriously, sopranos sitting jubilantly on that top C, not wishing they were there from a semi-tone below. Eduard Seckerson



John Eliot Gardiner makes heavy weather of Bruckner’s D minor Mass, an already weighty work that in this performance won’t win many new adherents, even among those who love the composer’s symphonies. Yes, the Vienna Philharmonic plays beautifully, the Monteverdi Choir comports itself well, and the soloists are generally fine, but it all adds up to something less than whole in this oddly dispassionate reading. Compared to Matthew Best/Corydon and Eugen Jochum/Bavarian Radio, Gardiner sounds decidedly somber, even in the more uplifting and declamatory sections like the “Gloria” and “Credo”. Things are even more benumbed in the slower sections, with the “Kyrie” so uninflected that it becomes stultifying. This closed-in feeling is reinforced by DG’s dimly-lit and harsh-sounding recording.
However, the sound improves noticeably for the 5 Motets, recorded in England’s St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s church rather than Vienna’s Musikverein. The Monteverdi Choir sings with a vibrancy and finesse that was not so discernible in the Mass, and Gardiner thankfully lets the music flow organically. But you’ll do better overall with one of the above recommended versions of these works–and Naxos also has an excellent disc of Bruckner motets in its catalog. Victor Carr Jr.

(Despite the rather negative response to its publication, I consider this Gardiner album as a different vision from the best known of Jochum and Best. You can listen to them here and here.)



Bruckner began work on the Te Deum in 1881 and completed it in 1884; that makes it roughly concurrent with his Sixth and Seventh symphonies. For chorus, soloists, orchestra and organ ad libitum it’s a surprisingly compact piece – it lasts around 25 minutes – that’s anything but tedious. In Rilling’s hands the hyper-intense Te Deum laudamus may lack the purifying heat of Jochum's and Haitink’s versions, but that’s by no means a criticism. It’s a spacious reading – scrupulous even - with a believable balance between orchestra and soloists; the latter are pretty good, both individually and as a team. and the Stuttgart choir sing with clarity and a real sense of devotion.
Indeed, as the performance progressed I became acutely aware of its deeply spiritual character. That’s particularly true of the Te ergo quaesumus, in which the soloists are hushed but not over-reverential. Theirs is a delicate but necessary inwardness, and Rilling calibrates his accompaniment accordingly. Haitink, Jochum and Best – the latter with a very robust organ part – are all built on more generous lines, and that makes for extremely visceral performances.
By contrast Rilling’s Te Deum seems more austere, especially in its quieter moments. His soloists continue to impress, but it’s tenor Christian Elsner who sings with the purest of tone and the loveliest of lines. I mentioned the word ‘scrupulous’ earlier, but it’s not meant in a derogatory sense; actually, such care gives rise to a sensitively shaped, beautifully integrated performance. In short, this is the Te Deum one seldom hears, the inner Bruckner given voice in a most eloquent and affecting way.
Rilling may lack some vividness at the outset, but the start of the Aeterna fac has all the boldness one could wish. Again I was struck by the conductor’s even-handed approach to this score; nothing is forced or fiddled, it flowers so naturally. The recording, similarly judicious, is firm in the bass and clean in the treble. No, Hänssler can’t match Philips’ heaven-storming sonics for Haitink, nor can Hyperion for Best, but then Rilling’s Te Deum is a less overt, more personal affair. So much so that the start of the Salvum fac is like eavesdropping on private thoughts and prayers.
Something else that makes this recording stand out is the hear-through quality of the orchestral playing. One registers far more detail and nuance than usual, and then marvels at the simple, artless beauty of Bruckner’s writing. Rilling doesn’t rush his fences in the finale, where the emboldened soloists add to the growing sense of anticipation. One can really hear Rilling’s baroque skills at work in the buoyant, clearly delineated choral contributions; the women in particular are splendid, their combined voices seeming to batter at the very gates of heaven. As for those final invocations they’re hurled into the empyrean with a fierce hope and certainty that’s utterly overwhelming.
This is an astonishing performance in every respect, all the more so because it's built on core musical values. That doesn’t mean there’s no drama – far from it – just that the work is laid out in a way that reveals all its virtues. 
Psalm 150 – which lasts around nine minutes - opens with high-lying Hallelujahs and pulsing timps. Rilling seems even more incisive here than he is in the Te Deum; the recording is leaner and brighter too. In fact I found the treble somewhat edgy, especially in the choral outbursts. Soprano Pamela Coburn is just fine though, and Rilling brings admirable clarity to the performance. As for the crowning climax – complete with stratospheric sopranos – it’s simply hair-raising. Jochum’s reading is also strong, if somewhat foursquare at times, with less of the lift that Rilling brings to the piece.
At around 42 minutes the Mass No. 2 is by far the longest item here. It’s also the one that has the most devotional character, the chorus filling those votive spaces with their glorious tones. Commissioned for the dedication of a new cathedral it’s scored for mixed choir and wind band, the latter of which underlines and punctuates the radiant choral parts. It’s a slow-wending work, and Rilling accesses its spiritual centre more effectively than most. As for the brass they have a splendid ring in the Gloria and the Credo, both of which are prefaced with the usual priestly intonations.
This Mass setting isn't as tightly focused as either the Te Deum or Psalm 150 but it does have vigour and variety, especially in the keenly felt rhythms and bright sonorities of the Credo. Once again there’s a lucency to the performance – helped in part by a clear separation of voices – that probably owes much to Rilling’s experience with Bach. The start of the Sanctus falls like soft rain – this really is an exceptional choir, at the peak of their powers – while the Benedictus and Agnus Dei are no less nourishing. The orchestral skeins, beautifully balanced and well caught, bring a rubied glow to the proceedings.
A stand-out Te Deum; the partnering works are very well prepared and performed, too.Dan Morgan
                                                 








In addition to Bruckner’s nine mature symphonies, there are two others which the composer discarded: one in D minor, designated by Bruckner as his ‘Symphony Number Zero’, which is moderately well known, and an earlier one in F minor, which is scarcely ever played and is referred to sometimes as ‘Symphony Number Double Zero’. The F minor symphony was written merely as an exercise but it is an enjoyable, unpretentious work with more to offer the listener than one might expect from a composition with such an unpromising origin: Bruckner was aged nearly forty and already a fully-qualified, accomplished composer when he produced this work in 1863, so nobody should assume from its alternative title of ‘Study Symphony’ that this is a score which has been dredged up from his early student days.
In the F minor Symphony, Bruckner was testing his own ability to write a conventional, large-scale work, and to achieve this he suppressed his stylistic individuality deliberately, with the result that the character of the music suggests the composer’s predecessors such as Weber and (at the start of the finale) Schumann, more than it suggests Bruckner himself. Its first recording did not appear until 1972, when EMI issued one, long deleted, by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Elyakum Shapirra. To my knowledge, the only other version released since then is that by Eliahu Inbal on Teldec with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Even if more recordings of it were available for comparison, one would probably still find that this modest work allows less scope for subtle variations in interpretation than do the later symphonies, but Ashkenazy’s tempi are so different from Inbal’s that this basic parameter alone is sufficient to account for a significant divergence between the two performances. The most extreme instance of this is in the scherzo, where Ashkenazy is much slower than Inbal in the main section but much faster than him in the trio, the tempo relationships chosen by each conductor being thus the reverse of each other. Ashkenazy’s is considerably the faster of the two recordings in the first movement, imparting an airy mood to the music; one might argue that Inbal’s heavier approach conforms more closely to what we identify nowadays as Bruckner’s characteristic voice, but when one recalls that the composer wrote this symphony with not only no interest in displaying his own individuality but even with the specific intention of eliminating it to some extent, it is clear that to expect any performance consciously to foreshadow Bruckner’s later style is inappropriate, although this does not prevent us from being able to glimpse traces of Bruckner’s later works here in embryo: moreover, Ashkenazy’s choice of tempo is supported by the marking of Allegro molto vivace in the score. Likewise, in the second movement, his quick tempo for the G minor section at 4’04" eschews Inbal’s deliberate ponderousness.
The recording was made in the same Berlin church as that which was used for many of Eugen Jochum’s distinguished Bruckner recordings and the sound quality is good. 







Bruckner's Quintet is really a symphony in chamber music garb. There are times when you almost expect the brass to come crashing in, but it's not to be. The music abounds in the large blocks of harmonies, chromatic modulations, and the gigantic, majestic crescendos that make his symphonies so distinctive. Harmonically, I think it wavers between the sound worlds of Schubert and Wagner. If most chamber works are like charcoal etchings, Bruckner's Quintet has masses of sound that are more like a large canvas in oil. It's a unique work, and it came from fairly late in Bruckner's career (it was written between the 5th & 6th symphonies). 
This CD was formerly on Decca LP. The Koeckert Quartet players were principals in the Bavarian Radio Symphony under Eugen Jochum, and no doubt their playing in so many Bruckner symphonies under Jochum contributed to their eloquent interpretation of the Quintet. Jeffrey Lipscomb

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Bruckner belonged to the romantic era only in so far as he happened to live in it, sometimes picking up stray influences that appealed to him. He showed a childlike pleasure in encountering anything new and never stopped to ponder its significance in general terms. Occasionally he found its incidental discoveries useful-sounds that interested his musician's curiosity-but not often, for he lived in an inimical world whose products were too often the result of attitudes he could not understand. It is probable that his grasp of the meanings, trends, and processes of society was even less sure than his knowledge of the plot of The Ring, almost non-existent. The artistic fashions and movements
of his day meant nearly nothing to him as broadly discussable ideas,and what he vaguely perceived he found unsympathetic. To him romanticism meant the naive "programmes" with which he would
sometimes try to interest his up-to-date colleagues in his music; he had little idea of the significance of the passionate arguments he must have heard around him. Bruckner once went to hear a performance of Berlioz's Damnation of Faust and was introduced to the composer; the imagination is staggered by the thought-if there were any conversation between the two, what can it possibly have been about? The weather, perhaps, if Bruckner had noticed it. Yet within this oddly humble and puzzled little man was hidden a majesty he discovered for himself with infinite patience and a sublime conscientiousness typical of a great artist. His surroundings and he himself have vanished, and many a sparkling and scornful intellect can bewilder and plague him no more. Though there are Hanslicks still with us, they can no longer trouble him. The frothing tide that often threatened his work and his sanity has long drained into crevices in the soft earth, but the hard and jagged rock of his life's achievement is still there. It has survived all seeming odds. The cracks in the stone are honourable scars on its mighty face.

Robert Simpson, The Essence of Bruckner