Bruckner Discarded Scherzo (1876) and Discarded Finale, ‘Volksfest’ (1878) from Symphony No 4, ed. Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs; Bruckner Symphony No 4, ‘Romantic’ (1878–81), ed. Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs*: Sir Simon Rattle conductor, London Symphony Orchestra
An absorbing evening. The Barbican sounds very boxy and confined after the spaces of the Albert Hall for which this music is ideally suited. I last heard Bruckner 4 live about five years ago at the RAH in an impressive spacious performance by Barenboim and the Berlin Staatskapelle. The bright forward sound of the LSO is very different. The orchestra had brought string players together to share music stands (with masks on) but were still a little under strength – only 6 double basses and 12 first violins. However in the Barbican this really didn’t matter.
The Bruckner 4 performance was very fine indeed. Rattle’s tempi were well judged – fastish at times, as in the 3rd movement and the second subject of the first movement, but never disruptively so. The climaxes had the right sort of awe-inspiring visionary blaze, particularly the return of the first movement’s horn theme near the beginning of the last movement and at its close, and were often accompanied by Barenboim-like slowings-down. Rattle once again with the LSO (I made the same comment over a performance of Schubert 9 during lockdown) never fell into the “beautiful sounds for their own sake’ mode or the focus on small details that marred some of the BPO performances I heard him give – here, everything was in the service of the structure and intent of the work. The LSO horns were absolutely outstanding as were the other brass. The woodwind were very impressive indeed too, particularly in the times they follow and glide like a flock of swifts around the horns in the third movement – the first flute was outstandingly effective. The performance was billed as the first of a new scholarly edition of the Symphony by Benjamin -Gunnar Cohrs – but to be frank I couldn’t make out any difference from the standard Nowak and Haas editions, apart from one minute of music towards the end which might have been cut. Maybe some of those inner woodwind parts had been changed but very little else that I could make out.
The first half of the programme was a fascinating glimpse into what Rattle called “Bruckner’s workshop” – earlier discarded versions of parts of the 4th symphony. The first piece was a totally different Scherzo. This started as a solo 4 note horn theme with a rather edgy full orchestral response. The trio was again an Austrian folk tune. This was interesting to hear but frankly much less effective than the ‘hunting’ scherzo Bruckner eventually replaced it with. The second piece was an earlier version of the finale, called a ‘Volksfest’. The main themes of the usual final versions were there in this earlier version, but with a totally different introduction and other ways of developing the main theme. The introduction, slightly insouciant but sinister at the same time, I found rather haunting, and in fact it is still there, I think, in at least one of the Haas/Nowak editions in the juddering string rhythms of the build up to the coda.
As I’ve said before in this blog, a bit facetiously, I’d say Bruckner is a mixture of Wagner, Schubert and God. If you over or under emphasise one of these elements in conducting this work, its performance will be less than complete. Someone was saying to his friend as I left the Barbican that ‘it doesn’t get any better than that’. Well, I think there are many ways of performing this great work, which I have known and loved for almost 55 years, and I could envisage and have heard the ‘God’ bit done more effectively – a more inward, perhaps ‘prayerful’, slower performance. But this was a valid, exciting and powerful way of presenting the symphony which was hugely enjoyable, and which got at least the ‘Wagner’ and ‘Schubert’ dimensions of the work just right.
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