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I was going through a pile of CDs in my listening room and I came across this Bruckner Sym. #4. Did you ever find a CD and swear you've never seen it before? It's performed by the Royal Flanders Philharmonic conducted by Gunter Neubold in 1988 at Antwerp and it's DDD.
First of all, I very rarely buy discs that are DDD unless they're $1.00 or less. I put this CD on and it's not bad, but it's not great, either. The other version I have is a scratchy, old record and a burned CD I made of that record, neither of which I can put my hands on right now.
I searched my entire LP and CD collection and I simply cannot believe that this is the only copy of Bruckner's 4th that I can find.
I was hoping that you guys could suggest your favorite recordings of this piece. Maybe tomorrow, I'll go buy a CD or LP based on your suggestions and compare them. I've always loved this piece and it really gets the endorphins going. But this version, not so much.
Thanks in advance.
TJE
Follow Ups:
or much of anything else for that matter but - I listened last night to my Bruno Walter/Columbia Symphony 4th (it's boxed with 7 & 9) and found it to be delightful.
"Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to" Mark Twain
In addition to the "usual suspects", Tennstedt, a hugely underrated conductor who did his best work with Bruckner.
Like one of Klemperer's recordings. Another one I really like, which may be a more general recommendation, is Karajan on EMI. EMI tended to get warmer sound for their Karajan recordings than DG.
… likely you’re remembering his early ’50s recording of the 4 th with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. I have it on an old Vox mono. Great stuff.
-=- Charlie F.
Nearly 10 minutes faster than his Philharmonia or Bavarian RSO recordings. Did he make cuts? He must have really been in a manic phase.
But it was those stereo recordings I was referring to, which are among the faster recordings if we don't skew the statistics with those earlier Klemperer recordings.
check out Ormandy/Philadelphia/Sony. My fav "quick" 4th.
I've written down every one of the recommendations in this thread. I'm going out of town tomorrow and I'm going to hit a bunch of used records and CD shops. I'll probably end up doing what I did with Mahler's 1st. I bought ten different versions and spent many hours comparing them. Of course, it was many hours of fun!
Thanks again.
TJE
Late to the party here, but let me add my .02:
I agree that the Bohm/VPO is a must-hear. It's long been a standard recommendation for this work and has held up really well. Primary attraction here I would say is the VPO, who play like gods, and who are captured well by Decca engineers.
I would also want to put in a word for Jochum/Dresden. Jochum is probably my favorite Brucknerian overall simply because he insists on bringing a sense of earthly drama to these works (rather than the calm, 'heavenly length' spirituality some folks prefer). I have to admit that sometimes Bruckner can seem dull to me, but never in Jochum's hands. The Dresden is slightly preferable to the earlier cycle with Berlin, if only because it's available at budget price from Brilliant Classics.
Abbado/Vienna is suprisingly good. I would never have thought to check it out except that it was one of the top picks in a recent Gramophone survey of recordings of the 4th, which claimed the VPO played even better under Abbado than Bohm. I dunno about that... but this recording can't be overlooked.
Klemps is another that must be heard. I'm not as enthusiastic about Wand, whom I generally like but whose Bruckner seems stodgy to me. Haven't much liked Karajan in this work either, and Celibidache... lord almighty, I just can't take Bruckner that sloooooow.
I have the Bohm VPO RBCD and like it so much that I just ordered the SACD. After I ordered it, I noticed that it is also available as an SHM-SACD at about $50 from CDJapan. Has anyone heard these various formats of this recording and can compare them?
...but prefer Tintner 4th on Naxos with Scottish Symph.
nt
You have some great recommendations below. Agree particularly with the Gunter Wand, he is a great Brucknerian. Another fantastic one is Giulini, don't know off the top of my head if he recorded the 4th, though. His 7th with Vienna is superb. A relatively recent recording that is great is Abbado's with Vienna, I think it was done in the early to mid nineties.
Well, it sorta depends what you are looking for. Will this be like the one copy and you'll never listen to other recordings? Or will you be looking for several, to explore the different versions and interpretations? Because I don't think there is any one single version that trumps them all.First on my list is the recording by Jesus Lopez-Cobos with the Cincinnati Symphony. This is the original version of the 4th, and it is quite different from later revisions. For one thing, the Scherzo is entirely different. This is a good performance with very good Telarc audio.
Another one-off unique recording is Celibidache with the Munich forces. The brass literally started taking yoga and Tai Chi in preparation for Celibidache's arrival, because his tempi are so slow. And one would not necessarily want to listen to Bruckner played this slowly every time. But Celibidache draws out so many inner voices and demands such beautiful timing and tone from his orchestra, that you hear things in this recording that you'd never hear anywhere else. Listening to this recording increases one's appreciation of other recordings. (Well, it did for me.)
Now to the mainstream performances. I guess a lot depends on whether you want good audio or not. I personally like the Bohm recording a lot. It is the top choice of many people for a reason. Many people like Jochum as well.
But I personally prefer the 1998 performance by Gunther Wand with the Berlin Philharmonic. I have more than 25 recordings of the 4th on LP and CD, including 4 by Wand with different orchestras. If I could have only one recording, it would be the one by Wand with BPO.
"Life without music is a mistake" (Nietzsche)
Edits: 02/21/11
"But Celibidache draws out so many inner voices and demands such beautiful timing and tone from his orchestra, that you hear things in this recording that you'd never hear anywhere else."
Agreed...... I'm starting to believe that Bruckner, like Beethoven, is best done relatively slow.
Like Blomstedt I mentioned elsewhere, Celibidache is another of just a few conductors whose Bruckner holds my attention.
"I'm starting to believe that Bruckner, like Beethoven, is best done relatively slow".
By sheer coincidence, I happened to listen to Celi's EMI recordings of the Bruckner 6th and Beethoven's 7th and 8th over the weekend (part of my haul from a used CD store). I thought that the Bruckner was fabulous - one of the best Bruckner performances I've ever heard. But the Beethoven sounded simply perverse to me, and I'm not generally opposed to slow Beethoven (I enjoy Giulini, Furtwangler, and Barenboim, for example).
I tend to like the ultra slow Celi recordings the first couple of times I hear them. So much of the inner voices and just the mechanics of the composition are revealed. It's very educational.
However, after the first couple of times, I get very irritated by them. I want to jump up and kick him in the butt and shout "get on with it, man!"
That has been true of every recording I've heard of his Munich period (And I've heard a whole lot of them). Some of his earlier recordings were actually more enjoyable over time.
"Life without music is a mistake" (Nietzsche)
I will deinitelly check him out...that's why I like Tintner - slow, but powerful work.
... it's on most people's short list of the all-time greatest recordings of this work. It's not currently available on CD (ArchivMusic lists an MP3 download--yuck!), but I'm sure there are used copies to be found on Amazon.
"You weren't afraid of being born--why would you be afraid of dying?" Alan Watts
I prefer Klemperer's Munich Fourth to the Philharmonia version. More coherent.
I used to have it on LP. I liked it, and I remember thinking that the audio quality was better than most (one of those Suvi Raj Grubb specials?). I also remember (in connection with Amphissa's post) a couple of reviewers at that time mentioning the fast tempos. I think that one reason the tempos were mentioned was just because Klemperer was known for slow tempos at that time, and this Bruckner Fourth took some listeners (and reviewers) by surprise.
Maybe because the tempi are eccentric. He took most movements faster than marked and the scherzo slower. Interesting approach, but really idiosyncratic.
"Life without music is a mistake" (Nietzsche)
I just did a quick check of the first movement from the versions I had on hand--Walter, Haitinck, Dohnanyi, Solti and Tintner. Couldn't find my Boehm/VPO LP. Klemp's tempo is a little faster, sure, but still within tolerances. Solti, and surprisingly Walter, are almost as fast.
Klemp's Scherzo is a little slower than the pack, but again, not by much. Still very exciting rendition, especially given the impact of the Philharmonia brass.
I think the term "eccentric" is not justified in this case, maybe just a little different.
-
"You weren't afraid of being born--why would you be afraid of dying?" Alan Watts
I've been mightily impressed with a couple of Bruckner cycles now underway, but neither of them has reached the Fourth Symphony yet.Herbert Blomstedt and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra have been going through the cycle in reverse order: they started with the Ninth on the Decca label and have continued with the 8th, 7th, 6th, and 5th on the Querstand label. The 4th should be next. These recordings, in what is close to SOTA sound (especially as heard via SACD), derive from concert performances, so there is some audience noise, but in every other respect, such as playing quality and interpretive insight, they're just outstanding! Blomstedt also made a couple of earlier recordings of the Fourth, the more recent of which is with the SF Symphony - I believe it was very well received (I haven't heard it), but the SF Symphony does not cultivate the type of rich "sound" which is so appropriate for Bruckner (and which the LGO just naturally produces). Blomstedt made an even earlier recording for Denon with the Dresden Staatskapelle - this was also very well received (I used to own it), but the sound quality, although good for its time (mid-80's?), does not have the realism of the recent Querstand recordings.
The other current cycle (or at least I think it may become a cycle) that I love is the one with Paavo Järvi and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony on Sony-BMG. I don't know why Järvi's European recordings seem to be so much better than the ones he's been making in Cincinnati, but that's the way it seems to me. So far, Järvi has recorded only the Ninth and the Seventh, but those recordings are spectacular! Järvi imparts nuance as well as power to the music making - and the melodic inflections are sometimes very striking IMHO.
This is not to say that there aren't quite a few recordings already available that are also top-notch. Among the available recordings that I can vouch for are: Böhm/VPO (Decca), Celibidache/Munich (EMI - careful, this is a one-of-a-kind S-L-O-W performance), Jansons/RCOA (RCOA-Live), Skrowaczewski/Saarbrucken Radio Sym (Oehms), Karajan/BPO (EMI - I only had the LP, which was a bit muddy sound-wise), Mehta/LAPO (Decca - not the right sonority, but still excellent), Kubelik/BRSO (Sony) - I'm sure there are a few I'm forgetting. I also want to let you know that I'm not that familiar with the cycles by Jochum (either one), Solti, Tennstedt, and Tintner, and I used to have only the older Wand cycle - not his more recent recordings.
Edits: 02/21/11
Herbert Blomstedt is one of only few conductors whose Bruckner holds my attention..........
You'll probably get a lot of votes for the Bohm/Vienna Decca recording; that seems to be a default recommendation. But I also find Sawallisch/Philadelphia (EMI) very satisfying, despite the problematic recording venue. The sound is not state-of-the-art, but it gets the job done.
Sony is in the midst of reissuing Columbia back-catalog material (again!!), in nice DSD remasterings. I've been impressed with results so far. One of the items on the release schedule is Bruno Walter's Bruckner 4th. That might be worth waiting for, since DSD might bring about noticeable sonic improvements.
I will come.
I have Walter's Brahms 1,2 and 4 on CBS vinyl, as well as my all=time favorite Pastoral. If Sony can get an ounce more out of any of those, I'll buy them all again (yes, I have the Pastoral SACD too). Walter and Bruckner 4, oh yeah.
The vinyl is good, actually.
To the OP, I have the Bohm Decca CD and Gunther Wand on RCA as well. I prefer the Wand but like them both.
On my return to the world of vinyl I acquired the complete set of the Brahms, enjoyed them all, but was blown away by the recording of the 3rd.
to complete the set. I just found the 4th last weekend.
His Brahms 1st is my go-to 1st of the dozen or so I have.
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