A long overdue accolade to a scantily recorded Brucknerian -- Klaus Tennstedt

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.

Christian Thielemann -- The very reason why the passion for Bruckner's music is still thriving

A short preliminary note.

It is strange. So much anticipation. And now so much relief and satisfaction.

Thielemann has only 2 commercial releases of Bruckner symphonies on CD and 1 on DVD so far, covering barely the 4th, 5th, 7th and 8th.

The most recent CD on the 8th becomes an immediate member in my small group of "indispensables".

More later.

Christian Thielemann's Bruckner 4th and 7th on DVD

I watched this DVD back in April. I even extracted the sound track for playing in an ordinary CD player. I was amazed. Thielemann remains almost the only one to have a distinct sound palette for Bruckner these days. I was too busy to write anything about it until now.

The orchestra sings with a sexy, deep voice. There is ample resonance of the basses, I don't mean just the double basses but the bass part of the vocal quartet, if Bruckner's  orchestration is thought of as such.  In a sense his sound picture places an emphasis on the bass-baritone part of the vocal palette whereas other orchestras, especially American ones, tend to go for the alto, or even soprano, part.

He favoured a slow tempo, but nothing like Celibidache. Whereas the latter usually evokes a vision of the otherworld, Thielemann convinces me with a sense of seriousness and dutifulness, and deep passions and emotions are not overtly displayed but nicely and thinly covered by the symphonic scaffolding.

This should not be missed.