Philippe Herreweghe and Roger Norrington the Brucknerians

At last I could squeeze some time to listen to Herreweghe's Bruckner 7th again (Sorry eaquson I take so long to do it). I add Norrington's to the party as both are supposedly HIP oriented. There are important differences however. Herreweghe used period instruments while Norrington's orchestra is a modern force. Only their performance styles are similar, but on face value only I have to say.

My immediate and unfortunately also the only feeling of Norrington's reading is "fast". Just because he employs such a fast tempo for the first theme in the opening movement that when the second theme arrives, he has to speed up and it becomes so brisk that the music becomes unconvincing and not engaging at all. His insistence on shunning vibrato and predilection for "pure tone" makes the end of each phase sound so abrupt and blunt. It is rather like human speech, which can sound blunt and impolite if the end of the sentence is articulated short and abrupt. This is not helped by his use of modern instruments with metallic strings, which just pronounced the effect.

Herreweghe is different. He breathes life into each phrase. Compare the relative tempo he uses for the first and second themes in the first movement and you can sense his good judgement even when his overall tempo is on the brisk side.  His phrasing is beautiful with lovely legato. It has been studied and argued that Bruckner's orchestration owes its origin to Bach, and to this end I believe that Herreweghe's success in Bach performance goes a long way in helping him to show us the beautiful contrapuntal textures with good integration of harmony and melody in Bruckner. The concept of stratification in Bruckner's orchestration as proposed by Julian Horton is nicely illustrated in practice here. The gut strings in this recording is not a put-off, rather they produce powerful and moving sonority in this tightly woven music.

This recording has a very wide dynamic range, and so if the volume is turned up the tuttis can be shattering, particularly in the final movement when the orchestral palette is dominated by the brass, as the strings players are smaller in number here.

Running the risk of bias and oversimplication, I'd say Herreweghe's Bruckner 7th is the most Bach-like performance I've listened to. And that is enough to win him a place in the front row of the overcrowded field of Bruckner 7th recordings.