Grade: B+
Anton Bruckner wrote 11 symphonies – Numbers One to Nine plus a student exercise and the formidable rejected symphony endearingly known as ‘Number 0’, actually finished between the First and Second. So why does this 200th anniversary cycle conducted by Markus Poschner, divided between the Bruckner Orchester Linz and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, run to 18 CDs?
The answer is that it gives us two versions of Numbers One, Two and Eight, and three of Numbers Three and Four. The composer, generally agreed to have been ‘on the spectrum’, was hypersensitive to criticism and compulsively rewrote his symphonies in an attempt to tighten them up and silence his mean critics. This went beyond mere tinkering: the original Third Symphony of 1873 is a colossal work packed with quotations from Wagner, while the 1890 third version is brutally or ingeniously compacted, depending on who you talk to. But to understand how the composer got there you need to hear the 1878 version – if you care, that is, and if you love Bruckner then you really should.
Poschner throws in the kitchen sink, including a discarded finale of Number Four that intersperses the familiar themes with incongruously jolly outbursts. The performances are swift and buoyant, short on apocalypse but delicate enough to reveal tiny felicities of orchestration. This is the most complete cycle that’s ever likely to be recorded. I spent several happy hours comparing the composer’s first, second, third and even fourth thoughts, which I suppose also puts me on the spectrum, but since I think Bruckner was the greatest symphonist since Beethoven I can live with that.
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