Germany Ebracher Musiksommer [2] – ‘Zu Bruckners Geburtstag’: Philharmonie Festiva / Gerd Schaller (conductor). Ebrach Abbey, Ebrach, Germany. 1.9.2024. (KW)
Bruckner – Symphony No.9 (with finale completion by Gerd Schaller, revised 2024)
Bruckner began work on his Ninth Symphony in 1887. He was just turning 63 and, although perhaps not in the best of health, he was not on his deathbed, nor even expecting to be. His health began to deteriorate in the 1890s, but he was able to continue his lectures at the University till November 1894. So, the interpretations that regard this as the last work of a man facing his own death, and who add to that the grim idea that Bruckner may have been questioning his till then rock-like faith, are not expressing the only way of looking at the work. If we conceive of the work as an agonised ‘farewell to life’, often slow tempi are called for, melancholy nostalgia in the lyrical passages, Gesangsperioden, cataclysmic dissonance and exhausted submission to the inevitable often characterise the trajectory of the work. And rising out of that in the Finale to enable the required D major triumph, can be a struggle that is hard to make convincing.
Gerd Schaller’s view of the work has changed since his previous recorded performances, a change that can be charted with some objectivity in the duration of the performance. This performance (which you can watch here) was considerably faster, especially in the Adagio but also in the first movement and the Finale. But these observations do not tell the real story; what has really changed is Schaller’s view of the work: he has filled it with life, with energy and delight, passion and optimism. Yes, there is some sort of struggle taking place with implacable dark forces stalking the symphony, but the sheer, gripping energy of the performance put the emphasis on life, not the shadow of death. Take the first movement second subject group, the Gesangsperiode, often played with a lilting melancholy slowness, filled with nostalgia and regret; not so in this performance: it was full of lyrical passion, but as though joy was bursting through it, especially on its recurrence in Part II of the movement. Similarly the opening of the Adagio, often an agonised gesture of deep sadness, in this performance the strings leapt upon the theme – indeed, it was such a shock I nearly jumped out of my seat – so if there was sadness and agony there it was expressed with such energy that you couldn’t for a moment mistake it for a response to a failing grip on life.
This approach endowed the frequent mighty dissonances of the work with the ability to speak of something more than existential turbulence in the mind of the composer. After all, Bruckner was not Mahler, not given to write music that was to express his personal mental concerns, and I was struck mostly not by a psychological narrative, but by what incredibly beautiful music it was, abstract music. The orchestral playing was tremendous, very committed, and the musicians seemed to be totally In accord with Schaller’s approach, so at times it was just sheer joy to listen to the sound in that splendid acoustic available towards the front of nave of this immense abbey.
By keeping the tempos on the quick side, Schaller was able to enhance the coherence of the music’s progress. The opening horn theme, with its triple-dotted minims and semi quavers, took on the character of a low-pitched fanfare, moving completely naturally into its glorious efflorescence, the pulse never relaxing as the music moved excitedly to the big unison tutti. After the animated account of the second theme, the introduction to the third theme group slowed, as marked in the score, but the moderato presentation of the theme itself, ‘unisono’ as Bruckner marks it, resumed the energetic progress of the movement, the rhythmic repetitions in the bass driving it on. There was never a moment when the music did not seem to be progressing purposefully, and that in itself gave a message of a goal and thereby of optimism.
In the Scherzo I was struck by how the strings inflected their pizzicatos, the theme having descended and risen up again, the violins gave a final emphasis on the last high note, like an expression of joy. That theme was emphasised throughout the movement, so that the brutal hammering main theme did not overwhelm the structure of the movement. It was very effective. After quite a long pause – Bruckner marks it, nearly four bars – the 3/8 bars of the Trio came in, rather slow and beautifully accenting the first note of the bar, giving the Trio a magical and less frantic sepulchral tone than that with which it is often presented. It was as totally beguiling as it was unexpected.
Sir Roger Norrington conducted performances of the Ninth where the Adagio was almost as quickly despatched as it was in this performance, but the difference – to my ears – was that Norrington somehow would undermine the gravity of the music with these swift tempi. Not so Maestro Schaller – the sheer attack and passion of the playing made sure that was never a possibility. The flowing tempo of the second theme transfigured it from a heart-breaking meditation on mortality to a song of warmth and tenderness. There is a passage just before the build-up to the climax where oboes and clarinets have bars of repeated notes whilst the strings conduct a threnody of the movement’s opening gesture and its inversion. At a slow pace, once the strings fall silent, the exposed woodwind repetition in some performances becomes an expressive enormity, as though Bruckner’s counting mania had taken over, ten repeated chords continue their crescendo into the silence. It is very dramatic. But at Schaller’s quicker pace they retain a feeling of proportion, rounding off the episode without a hint of obsessive instability and leading seamlessly into the return of the second theme, now decorated contrapuntally and leading inexorably to the famous dissonant climax. The E major closing pages were not subject to any expressive slowing down, no message from the dying composer sinking into eternal peace, just a passage of beautiful music bringing the structure to a close.
And what of the finale? Gerd Schaller’s is a wonderfully effective working together of the fragments that have survived from Bruckner’s manuscript. John Philips, one of the SPCM team whose completion Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic performed, is of the opinion that there was ‘a definitive score’ and forensic musicology can go a long way to reconstructing it. Schaller has a different view, he doesn’t believe it is a matter of reconstruction because the finished work never existed, and so he builds the finale not only with the fragments, the known gaps, and many sketches, but he uses Bruckner’s material on the basis his deep experience of conducting and studying Bruckner scores. In this latest revision he has reduced the length of the coda from the version he published in 2018, and I think this is a great benefit. There is a tendency amongst completers of the finale to feel that because this is Bruckner’s last work, the coda must be all-inclusive, monumental, vast – but in a symphony of such weight as the Ninth something more succinct, such as graced the Sixth and the Seventh, may indeed be more appropriate.
Consistent with the performance of the first movement and Adagio, the finale was kept moving. The main theme sounded strong and dramatic, something worthy of the magnificent thematic material of the first movement, and the second theme – well, it is often played as a poor, obsessive, repetitive and hopeless theme, but in this performance it was almost sprightly, with an element of humour to it. So, the narrative of the movement is lifted out of the tragic world of the ‘composer facing death’ scenario and there’s life in the old man yet, which bursts forth in the great chorale with its bustling triplet accompaniment. How the larger gaps in the second part are filled is always going to be controversial, but I find Schaller’s work as convincing to listen to as any. There is plenty enough contrapuntal activity to carry through the gap in the heart of the fugue and Schaller had the cellos and basses really storm into the movement’s main theme as fugal subject. At the end of the recapitulation and in the coda are reminiscences of the Third Symphony, the Bruckner duplet-triplet rhythm, and the Eighth Symphony. At the beginning of the final wave of the coda, the symphony’s opening horn theme is heard atmospherically above bustling pianissimo triplets and the last build-up brings us to the breakthrough into D major, with colourful ecstatic detail in woodwind and trumpets and a blazing triumphant close.
This was a great performance, full of life and vitality. It is a way of performing the Ninth that breathes new life into the symphony. I found it totally convincing.
Ken Ward