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CD Review

Anton Bruckner

• Symphony #7
• Symphony #9 *

Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart/Kurt Sanderling
* Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart/Carlo Maria Giulini
Hänssler Classic SCMCD94.604

Symphony #7 (Sanderling) also available on CD93.027:
Amazon - UK - Germany - Canada - France - Japan

Symphony #9 (Giulini) also available on CD93.186:
Amazon - UK - Germany - Canada - France - Japan - ArkivMusic - JPC

This 2-CD set is a welcome reissue of two previously published live recordings. The Sanderling 7^th Symphony was recorded in Stuttgart on 16 December, 1999, while Giulini's 9^th dates from 20 September 1996 and appears to be the latest Giulini 9^th currently available. The packaging is minimal, with no significant program notes. The performances, however, are terrific and highly recommended to those who do not already possess them. The sound is first rate, with very little audience intrusion or peripheral noise.

Kurt Sanderling offers a very self-effacing performance of the 7^th, eschewing percussion at the climax of the Adagio. If there is a single word that captures his approach it is "balanced" – the performance is well balanced across movements and between different sections of the orchestra. Sanderling adopts a slow, stately tempo in the Adagio (which comes in at just over 25 minutes, the second slowest of his nine available recordings). He achieves a real sense of grandeur. The Scherzo and Finale offer a contrasting forward momentum, while remaining sufficiently weighty to counter-balance the Adagio, thereby resolving the great problem of how to sustain the intensity of the slow movement through to the final bars.

"Self-effacing" is not the word that springs to mind to describe Carlo Maria Giulini's performance of the 9^th. Grandeur and monumentality are at the forefront from the opening bars, as he builds up to the first climax in the opening movement. The subsequent change in mood turns out to be transitory, as Giulini reverts to a broad pacing that skillfully falls just short of the portentous. And so the movement continues, until the massive and effective final climax.

Giulini's scherzo is suitably driving and demonic, providing a well judged bridge between the two massive slow movements. The Adagio sets a valedictory note right at the beginning. In Giulini's hands this is definitely a finale, with a final, heroic affirmation in the dissonant climax and then a gently farewell in the coda.

The audience is suitably silenced for a good few seconds before the applause breaks out. And so they should be. This is a wonderfully compelling performance, as is Sanderling's. I'm not sure that I understand the marketing logic behind reissuing them together, but I'm glad that Hänssler Classic decided to.

Copyright © 2012, José Luis Bermúdez