New vinyl box-set of Giulini's Bruckner 7-9; 朱里尼限量版黑膠套裝

 

DG 將會在今年六月推出朱里尼指揮維也納愛樂的布魯克納第七（錄於1986年）、第八（錄於1984年）及第九（錄於1988年）交響曲錄音的限量版黑膠套裝。

除了限量之外, 這黑膠套裝有以下值得收藏的特點：

1）這是DG 第一次把這三個錄音以黑膠套裝形式發行。

2）因為在1989年初發行第九交響曲錄音的黑膠時, 黑膠的主流地位已給CD取替, 所以這錄音之前是沒有DG的黑膠的。

3）另一賣點是由 Rainer Maillard 和 Sidney C. Meyer 在 Emil Berliner Studios 的新混音, 也讓不少人期待。

DG will issue a new box-set of vinyl that includes Giulini's sonorous and memorable VPO recordings of Bruckner's 7th, 8th and 9th symphonies in June. Apart from it being a limited numbered edition, it has the following attractive points:

1) This is the first time DG issues this 3 recordings in a box-set of vinyl.

2) When the recording of B9 was first issued in 1989, the golden era of LPs had ended with the advent of CDs. As such this recording was not issued by DG in the form of vinyl before, and it is in 2024 that DG will first issue this recording in the format of LP.

3) These 3 recordings were newly mixed by Rainer Maillard and Sidney C. Meyer from the Emil Berliner Studios.

Below are the pictures of the previous issues of DG vinyl and CDs.

下圖為當年第七及第八交響曲DG的黑膠及第九的CD。

 

The Red Book - Anton Bruckner , Eleven Symphonies

This book is definitely a labour of love from Professor William Carragan, and as such it is unmissable.

Find out more from the following link:
The Red Book

Bruckner Ninth Finale Completions

Sometimes in life, you really need a little push to do something you have been thinking to do but did not actually do it for whatever reasons or excuses.

This is exactly the case with my homework of a summary of the status of the Finale completion of Bruckner’s unfinished symphony, the Ninth, and its relevant recordings.

Thanks to my good friend who suggested a meeting to discuss this topic, I have been taking an organised look at this interesting and controversial topic for the past week, at long last.

In retrospect, my first encounter with these recordings was a little more than 30 years ago. What excitement the 2 recordings, by Yoav Talmi on the Carragan Finale completion, and Eliahu Inbal on an early draft of the Samale and Mazzuca Finale completion respectively, have given me when they were first released in the late 1980s, is pure nostalgia. 

More later.

P.S. Two recordings not shown are downloads, one of them is the very attractive completion attempt by Letocart, and another is Soudant conducting the Utrecht Symphony Orchestra on an early Carragan completion.

Gerd Schaller has recorded 3 versions of the completed finale of the Ninth

Not many conductors have recorded the completed Finale of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9, yet Gerd Schaller has recordings of it in three different versions, in August 2010, July 2016 and July 2018 respectively. In the first one he used the completion by William Carragan, and in the remaining two the completion by himself, with the last one a revised version of his earlier attempt at the completion. One will be interested to know what Schaller has revised in such a short interval of some two years. The main difference, among other minor ones, is in the apotheosis of the coda. In the first version, Schaller combined music from the 4^th to 8^th Symphonies and from the Helgoland and Te Deum with music from the first three movements of the Ninth. In the revised version, he changed his mind and “refrained from making direct allusions to other symphonies by Bruckner, mainly because there is no firm evidence to suggest that Bruckner himself planned such citations in the apotheosis of the finale”. Instead he combined the Te Deum motif with the Schlussgrupe chorale and a modified form of the main theme of the opening movement, and towards the end he wrote a triumphant motif in the trumpets and woodwind. Which is more convincing? I’ll leave it to you to judge. 

The coda is everyone’s guess, no matter how educated a guess it is. No one can claim how authentic a particular attempted completion of the coda is. Put it bluntly, it just depends on the listener’s taste and predilection. 

Happy Birthday Maestro Janowski

Today is the birthday of Marek Janowski, a venerable Brucknerian.

His Bruckner symphonies cycle has given me hours and hours of pleasure and gratitude for that matter.

Having attended his Bruckner concert and then got his autograph is one of the highlights in my Brucknerian journey in life.

His 9 Bruckner symphonies on SACD

La discothèque idéale de Diapason Vol. XI

La discothèque idéale de Diapason Volume XI is dedicated to symphonies and massess composed by Anton Bruckner.

Its contents were listed in my last post. As you can see, they are mainly historical recordings and have all been released commercially before.

In this post, I've included pictures of their previous corresponding releases, most being original releases, on LPs and/or CDs. From these pictures, you can see that this box is a real bargain in the sense that many of these recordings are not easy to obtain in the past. The selections are all worthy of their place. I can boldly say that this is the best Bruckner box set released in 2017.

This box has the generic design from this series.

Bruckner 1: Georg Ludwig Jochum (1956)

Bruckner 2: Franz Konwitschny (1951)

Bruckner 3: Kurt Sanderling (1963)

Bruckner 4: Hermann Abendroth (1949)

Bruckner 5: Hermann Abendroth (1949)

Bruckner 6: F Charles Adler (1952)

Bruckner 7: Karl Böhm (1943)

Bruckner 7: Eugen Jochum (1952)

Bruckner 8: Wilhelm Furtwängler (1944) (CDs)

Bruckner 8: Wilhelm Furtwängler (1944) (LPs)

Bruckner 9: Eduard van Beinum (1956)

Bruckner 9: Wilhelm Furtwängler (1944) (CDs)

Bruckner 9: Wilhelm Furtwängler (1944) (LPs)

Bruckner Mass No. 3: Eugen Jochum (1962)