Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 (1949 recording)

Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 (1949 recording)

Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 (1949 recording)
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CD Details

Composer: Anton Bruckner
Conductor: Wilhelm Furtwangler
Orchestra: Berlin Philharmonic Chorus
Edition: Music CD
Format: Import
CD Release Date: 1998-04-14
Music Label: Testament UK
Soundtracks:
  1. Symphony No. 8 In C Minor: 1: Allegro Moderato
  2. Symphony No. 8 In C Minor: 2: Scherzo (Allegro Moderato) & Trio (Langsam)
  3. Symphony No. 8 In C Minor: 3: Adagio (Feierlich langsam doch nicht schleppend)
  4. Symphony No. 8 In C Minor: 4: Finale (Feierlich nicht schnell)

Music reviews of Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 (1949 recording)

Music Review: Cathedral Architecture in Sound
Rating: 5 Stars

Among producers of historical re-issues, Testament ranks high, and in the case of Wilhelm Furtwängler's 1949 Bruckner Eighth Symphony, they have done music-lovers an exceptionally fine service. While Furtwängler made relatively few commercial recordings, German radio engineers before and during and after the war recorded many of his concerts for delayed broadcast. From 1942, the chosen medium for these archival documents was magnetic tape. While not precisely high fidelity, the wartime tapes demonstrate acceptable sound; the situation improves somewhat after the war, with better equipment coming on-line. Perhaps the best-known and most spectacular of these recorded concerts is the 1951 Brahms First Symphony from North German Radio in Hamburg, but given the possibilities of contemporary digital remastering, a large number of these tapes have at last yielded their precious inner secrets. This is especially true of Testament's digital re-recording of the 14 March 1949 Berlin Bruckner performance, a so-called Magnetophon Concert without an audience transmitted live but also taped for subsequent re-broadcast. The quiet auditorium made for studio-like conditions. (A 15 March performance is afflicted by ubiquitous audience noise that seems to distract Furtwängler from some of his purpose.) Despite his reputation for taking Bruckner at "heavenly length," Furtwängler turns in a fairly swift reading of this mighty symphony. He keeps the Adagio under twenty-six minutes (living conductors in our day regularly stretch it to thirty or beyond); and he brings in the Finale at twenty-two minutes and fifty eight seconds (again, living interpreters take much longer.) One reason for Furtwängler's dislike of studio-sessions was their stop-and-go character, even after tape came into use. In the Magnetophon Concert, there is no starting-and-stopping. Furtwängler gives the uninterrupted performance that we hear. The engineers do no editing after the fact. This alone accounts for much of our sense of organic unity in Furtwängler's "take." What I call "swiftness" generally in regard to tempi means specifically in the case of the opening Allegro Moderato an urgency that we otherwise rarely hear in this music. Where A Georg Tintner or a Sergiu Celibidache attempts to dissolve the notes into mystical yearning, Furtwängler gives Bruckner's piety a sinewy, striving embodiment. So too in the Scherzo: It is muscular and determined rather than pastoral and jocular. John Ardoin, in "The Furtwängler Record," refers to the Tristanesque atmosphere of the Adagio. I disagree. As Furtwängler discovers, Bruckner seeks no dissolution, neither into divinity nor into eros; rather, he opens up a vast space for contemplation, like the nave of a great cathedral. Furtwängler was a reader of Oswald Spengler; Spengler said that Western music amounted to architecture in sound; that is how Furtwängler understands Bruckner's Eighth. Furtwängler's Finale gallops along quite rapidly, compared again with Celibidache or Tintner, and one gets the impression (as one did in the First Movement) of spiritual urgency rather than mystical transfiguration. (Mystical transfiguration there is, in Bruckner, aplenty - see the Ninth Symphony.) With excellent notes, this CD ought to be snapped up by Brucknerians, by Furtwänglerians, and by all those interested in historical performances from he mid-century.
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Description of Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 (1949 recording)

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Even those relatively immune to Wilhelm Furtwängler's conducting of the classics admit that his Bruckner stands with the finest ever recorded. That describes this Eighth, recorded live in March, 1949 (but without an audience present) for broadcast recording. Like most of Furtwangler's nonstudio recordings, it bristles with fervor. The slow movement, especially, has a humanity barely approached by most rivals. Of his several Bruckner Eighths on record this one is the most successful in its blend of sustained long lines and improvisatory detail. Furtwangler's command of structure and the intensity of his reading make this vital for all Bruckner fans. The sound is satisfying, despite some graininess and occassional congestion. --Dan Davis

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