ISSN 1759-1201 www.brucknerjournal.co.uk Issued three times a year and sold by subscription FOUNDING EDITOR: Peter Palmer (1997-2004) Editor : Ken Ward [email protected] 23 Mornington Grove, London E3 4NS Subscriptions and Mailing: Raymond Cox [email protected] 4 Lulworth Close, Halesowen, B63 2UJ 01384 566383 VOLUME SIXTEEN, NUMBER ONE, MARCH 2012 Associate Editor: Crawford Howie In this issue: Bruckner Abroad With this issue and henceforward the sequence of contents has been altered, with articles The world-wide concert listing, published at the back of The to the fore, reviews to the back Bruckner Journal for the coming 4 months, shows a heavy preponderance of performances in Germany, with over 90 concerts Letters Page 2 over the period. The bachtrack.com listing for the year 2011 shows that much more Bruckner was performed in Germany than The First Forty Years: the early elsewhere , and there is no reason to think that this concentration Music of Anton Bruckner will alter much in the near future . Particularly active this season by David Singerman Page 3 has been the Staatskapelle Berlin, under the direction of Daniel Listen Without Prejudice Barenboim, venturing out of Germany and touring Europe with by Tom Service Page 7 clusters of Bruckner symphonies, visiting London in April with ‘The Bruckner Project’ and reaching an extraordinary climax in Bruckner and Elgar: A Comparative Sketch Vienna in June 2012, in which over a mere 11 days they will be by Martin Pulbrook Page 8 performing symphonies 1-9 (mostly programmed with a Mozart piano concerto, Barenboim as soloist/conductor and all no doubt Toward a Theory of Coherence: performed from memory). It will be an heroic achievement. Compositional Use of the Turn in Would that we could all afford to be there! Bruckner’s Symphonies by Eric Lai Page 20 But Bruckner studies and p erformances are slowly spreading beyond the confines of Europe, Japan and America. The Book Reviews: Bruckneriana from wonderful concert in the Dominican Republic in which the Austria by Crawford Howie Page 23 Requiem and Te Deum were performed, thanks to the efforts of Massimiliano Wax, has been followed by a performan ce of the CD Reviews Page 27 Seventh Symphony. The cycle in Santo André near Sao Paolo Two Bruckner Marathons! continues. A Russian Bruckner specialist, Anna Homenya, has A report by Neil Schore Page 33 made contact and we hope to review her book The Phenomenon of Anton Bruckner - Variations on a theme: riddles and paradoxes of Concert Reviews Page 35 Genius , in a forthcoming issue. And, as reported on page 47, a Concert Listings Page 48 Bruckner-Box of CDs of the symphonies played by the Bruckner Orchester Linz, signed by the conductor Dennis Russell Davies, has now been presented to President Hu Jintao of China. In June Copyright in all pieces remains with the author. the China Philharmonic performs the 8th symphony in Beijing. Silhouette by Otto Böhler. Bruckner profile,page- dividers by Michael Felmingham. Views expressed by It’s heartening to know that peoples all over the globe being given contributors to The Bruckner Journal are not the opportunity to take heart from this music. kw necessarily those of the editors. 2 Letters to the editor From Dr. Paul Dawson-Bowling: THE LATEST Bruckner Journal, Vol. 15, No.3, seems an unusual edition. What is particularly unusual is the paper (pp. 23 et seq.) by Prof. Korstvedt with its distinctive views on the Bruckner editions, and its support of the first published versions, especially as it is highlighted and endorsed by the editorial. Perhaps it calls for a response. 1. Korstvedt’s paper quotes Wellesz in support of the first published versions, but it is reasonable to ask whether part of the reason why Wellesz liked them was that they were familiar. The unfamiliar, even if better, always takes some getting used to, as attested by a very interesting article in an early number of Music Review from the early 1940s by a certain Robert Simpson, no less. This is devoted to disparaging the original versions in favour of the first published versions by Löwe et al. Sometimes leopards can change their spots - and how! Who knows but that with longer acquaintance of the original versions, Egon Wellesz might have changed his attitude much as Robert Simpson did. 2. Regarding the cuts in the editions he favours, Korstvedt tells us that Haas and Erwin Doernberg were wrong in maintaining that 222 bars had been axed from the finale of the fifth; the number was only 121. “So that’s alright,” we are left to infer, “Silly old Haas and Doernberg. After Korstvedt we can happily, even eagerly, accept the revised version with the loss of 121 bars. We should regard this version with no reprise of the finale’s second subject as representing the version to which Bruckner was feeling his way all along.” 3. Regarding Korstvedt’s attack on Deryck Cooke, as not being a scholarly musicologist, but only a “knowledgeable, practical critic” and merely a “fluent, engaging writer”, this amounts not just to a questioning of Cooke’s quality as a Bruckner scholar but a big attack on his musical authority. It would be instructive to know what exactly are Korstvedt’s criteria for being a scholarly musicologist, such that Cooke does not qualify. It would have to be a very odd definition if it disqualified the man who achieved the “scholarly musicologist” feat of creating a performable version of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony. It would be just as odd to disqualify the man who recognised and analysed the extra-ordinary tonal and thematic structure of Der Ring des Nibelungen, and whose sure instincts led to the now obvious but never previously observed truth that the Flight-motive in Das Rheingold is nothing of the kind but a proto-version of the cycle’s great central love motive. 4. The rise of the original versions in Bruckner was a reflection of a huge seismic shift in musical aesthetics, the general movement towards authenticity. This swept away a lot of dross and barnacles but also quite a lot of gold, and I personally happen to believe that Deryck Cooke was over-influenced by it in preferring Haitink’s prosaic take-it-or-leave-it style in Bruckner to Eugen Jochum’s wayward mystery and rapture, especially in Jochum’s old mono versions for DGG. But if it is true (and being a mere mortal and not a scholarly musicologist, I have no way of knowing) that the first published versions have silenced most of the Neapolitan sevenths in the Scherzo of the Ninth, and as it is true that they have shorn the finale of the Fifth of its second subject reprise, making a nonsense of its magnificent structure, then on these grounds alone it seems tendentious to present all the first published versions as the true gospel towards which Bruckner had really been striving. There is a great deal that could be said about Korstvedt’s unorthodox stance but that is probably enough. From Dr Alan George - Fitzwilliam String Quartet: I’VE BEEN engrossed in Prof. Korstvedt’s article re the “Bruckner Problem” - particularly since this matter happens to coincide chronologically with my own Bruckner upbringing. Although I happen to agree with most of what he writes, I do think he is unduly hard on Deryck Cooke - and not a little patronising in his finger-pointing: the likes of Cooke and Robert Simpson were sincere, deep-thinking musicians - no less so for not being “scholarly musicologists”; as if such a breed were inherently superior to composers (like Simpson), or someone so capable of getting inside a composer’s psyche as to be able to bring Mahler’s last utterance to life, for the benefit of (most of) the musical population. Regrettably, neither is still around to fight back - although it is highly possible that over the years they both might well have modified their views, as many of us have since done, in line with current thinking (Simpson wasn’t afraid to admit as much with regard to Nielsen’s Sixth). Certainly the article does accurately trace how attitudes have changed - at least, to the extent that I can myself identify totally with how my own thoughts have changed. But let’s not have TBJ go down the same route as the DSCH mag, which grew disproportionately fat in order to accommodate “scholarly musicologists” hurling insulting abuse at each other - poor Dmitri Dmitrievich would turn in his grave! Incidentally, what should we think in 2012 of Mussorsky’s original versions of Boris or Night on the Bare Mountain ?! I happened to hear the latter recently, and Rimsky undoubtedy made a terrific piece out of the various versions. But in no way does that invalidate the original - so we can have both! Please let’s all keep a balanced view on what Bruckner himself might and might not have been pleased with. 3 THE FIRST FORTY YEARS The Early Music of Anton Bruckner David Singerman ONE OF the many myths that surround Anton Bruckner is that he wrote nothing of value under the age of forty. Indeed, this myth is so pervasive that even today when Bruckner has taken his rightful place amongst the canonical composers, we are unlikely to hear any of his early works. Even Brucknerians hardly consider the early works, indeed some never get beyond the numbered symphonies. In this article I will discuss some of the early work, roughly in chronological order. I will stick to works that have been recorded, so that readers can have the chance of hearing them for themselves.