Volkmar Andreae / Wiener Symphoniker Bruckner cycle

Recently Music and Arts released a Bruckner symphonies cycle conducted by Volkmar Andreae in 1953, in which he was portrayed as an important Brucknerian. If that is the case, he is over-valued. The least I could say is that love of his Bruckner is an acquired taste.
 
My first encounter with his Bruckner was through his B4 issued by Orfeo almost 20 years ago. My impressions were not too enthusiastic. His tempo control is slack. The reading is characterized by an uneven pulse, which wanders all over the place. Ensembleship is just so-so. The recording sound is just barely acceptable, with a thin mid-range. Horns are sullen and strings undernourished.

His flexibility of phrasing together with his fastidious attention to details may please some, but the end result is that he missed the drama of the music.

This past experience of course will not warm me to this new cycle in the first instance. After I’d sampled most of the tracks, my initial impressions were just reinforced. A special mention is needed for his B6, which is hideously fast, so much so that at certain points the orchestra seemed about to collapse.

The only attractive point about this box-set is that it allows me to get a glimpse of performance practice in that bygone era. With that in mind, Andreae reminds me of those “free to go” conductors as Georg Ludwig Jochum or Sigmund von Hausseger. Eugen Jochum is in a similar vein, but apparently more masterful and of course more famous for artistic reasons.

I believe that there is, and must be, a good reason why Andreae’s Bruckner recordings have never been better known. You can find out why by yourself.

What is interesting is the “sound restoration” performed by Aaron Z Snyder. He is frank in admitting what might amount to a “schwindel” from Otto Klemperer’s viewpoint: "It should be noted that the momentary pitch errors in the horns and other instruments have been corrected by digital means. I strongly believe that the purpose of a release such as this is to preserve the conductor's vision of each piece. Obviously performance errors are not part of this vision, and hence do not belong in the released version." 

Cracked horns among the playing of other instruments can still be “repaired”. In a discussion group Snyder wrote, “I know it sounds like magic, but this is really possible to do with Adobe Audition 3.0 by way of very careful cutting and pasting in the frequency domain. Remember that discrete frequencies are being made by all the instruments playing, and that when one of them hits a wrong note, it's as if that instrument is indeed playing solo! I can then isolate that instrument's fundamental frequency and harmonics, shift all the components to the correct pitch, and then add them back into the full orchestra. Yes, it takes a bit of work -- there's nothing automatic here by any means -- but the method does indeed fix these bad spots.”

The arguments for or against “restoring” historical recordings to their “intended” artistic or sonic perfection will be endless. The choice should be ours, but when I am faced with no choice and have to accept the “well-meaning” doctoring of a restoration engineer, I just cannot help feeling being cheated. This uneasy feeling is further fuelled by comparing the B4 recording issued by Orfeo and that by M&A. The latter has more tape hiss or surface noise, but the orchestral sonority becomes almost unrecognizable from Orfeo’s “original” version, and it is further decorated with a warm ambience. This is a wonderful sonic facelift, but it cannot escape from the fact that in so doing the recording has lost its identity and become a good-sounding fake. What a shame.

P.S. (29 Oct) My friend Savio sent this blog's address to the distributor of M&A in Hong Kong, and in turn to M&A USA. I don't know what their reactions were as Savio didn't tell me, only forwarded some of the favourable reviews they provided. I have no commercial interests in revealing my thinkings and feelings about these CDs. This box-set has its undeniable historical importance, only hampered by the well-meaning "sound restoration". This is interesting, as Bruckner's scores had someone enthusiastic enough to "modify or improve" them, e.g. the Schalk brothers, and now even his recordings had someone similarly enthusiastic to do similar "improvements". The analogy is a little uncanny. 

Rob Cowan had a positive view in the October issue of the Gramophone and highlighted selected movements in some symphonies for praise. Peter Blaha in Rezension (in German) pointed out that in the last 50 years the tempo employed in performance has become slower and slower, and thus the contrast between the fast and slow movements in turn has become less distinct than that in Andreae's interpretation (with his generally brisker tempo).

However, when the recordings of the first 3 symphonies were released in LP in the 1960s, the reviewer (none other than the famous British musicologist Deryck Cooke) in Gramophone was less than impressed, as can be seen in the following links:

http://www.gramophone.net/Issue/Page/June%201966/31/774051/BRUCKNER.+Symphony+No.+1+in+C+minor.+Vienna+Symphony+Orchestra+conducted+by+Volkmar+Andreae.+Philips+Q+GL5845+%2812+in.%2C+18s.+6d.+plus+3s.+PT%29. 

http://www.gramophone.net/Issue/Page/May%201966/30/808322/BRUCKNER.+Symphony+No.+2+in+C+minor.+Vienna+Symphony+Orchestra+conducted+by+Volkmar+Andreae.+Philips+Q+GL5846+%2812+in.,+18s.+6d.+plus+3s.+P.T.%29. 

http://www.gramophone.net/Issue/Page/February%201960/31/778929/BRUCKNER.+Symphony+No.+3+in+D+minor.+Vienna+Symphony+Orchestra+conducted+by+Volkmar+Andreae.+Philips+Mono+A00273L+%2812+in.%2C+30s.+plus+9s.+9d.+P.T.%29.+Available+to+special+order+only. 

I have nothing to go against Andreae, and in fact I respect his contribution to the promotion of Bruckner's music through his lifelong dedication. His style is very special and quite different from those we are familiar with. However it is my personal taste that I prefer other Brucknerians to him, I regret to say. I understand that these comments may ruffle some feathers, but I'm just true to myself, particularly with reference to the "sound restoration" principles. Do you accept the argument that as food is intended to be tasty, so it is justified to make GM food?  So we now have GM music!