Klaus Tennstedt may not be the first few Brucknerians to come to mind when Brucknerites think of notable conductors of Bruckner's symphonies, but nevertheless he has always occupied a secured place in my Hall of Fame. He may be more well known for his Mahler recordings, because his recordings of Bruckner symphonies numbered only 2 not too long ago. Thanks to several small companies, live recordings of his Bruckner concerts surfaced one by one in the last ten years or so. Even so, we only have 9 official Bruckner recordings of his by now, including the 2 EMI studio ones.
I'd say he is one of those conductors truly exemplary of the Austro-German school. He could hone a very Teutonic sound palette from not only German orchestras, but also his London Philharmonic Orchestra. He conveyed the full range of human emotions, but he never overdid them in his interpretation. As a result, his performances, especially live ones, are invariably moving. I have been more than once moved to the verge of tears listening to his recordings, not by a sense of sorrow per se, but rather by the vivid encounter of deep profound human feelings and emotions laid bare by his music making: the fire of passion can incinerate you, the fruit of merriness can intoxicate you, and the solemnity and religiosity can dwarf you because of kneeling. If the life cycle of the universe can span many millennia through its quiet and fiery moments, Tennstedt can compress, in a sense, millennia of time comprising different moments of the universe neatly and convincingly in the four movements of a Bruckner symphony, and it testifies fully and painfully the immortality of Bruckner's music. I may have stretched the analogy too far, but this is just how I naively feel.
The 3rd.
The 4ths
The 7th
The 8ths
Hats off to Maestro.
what do you refer to as the Teutonic sound palette ? especially in bruckner's music. i think the sound of CSO&BSO are contributed in a plain and apart from left to right ,while that of most european orchestra are contribited from a depth and a height. the strings in european orchestra has more layers(except for the BPO),while those in CSO&BSO sounds like one violin. cheers eaquson
ReplyDelete"Teutonic sound palette" imho:
ReplyDeleteDarkness in the strings especially in mid-range and bass.
Woodwinds standing out with a natural clarity, and you feel that they are there with an expressive purpose, cf. American orchestras with woodwinds blending in as much as possible in the overall orchestral sonority and rather characterless.
Restrained round-tone brass, probably related to their German rotary valved instruments.
"Teutonic sound palette" is thus in short "that dark rich German sound" we often encounter and talk about.
The string sonority is definitely affected by the seating apart from the instruments and playing.
Horace
true. at the time that the winds are talking to each other,those sound of american orchestra makes it rather meaningless. it also cut off the analogy to the Nature in bruckner's music.
ReplyDeleteeaquson