Search - Anton Bruckner, Arnold Schoenberg, Michael Gielen :: Bruckner: Symphony No. 6; Bach/Schönberg: Prelude and Fugue in E flat major

Gielen has a following, but this Sixth is too proficient for

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 10/27/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Michael Gielen is a modernist-objectivist conductor, a rare breed nowadays, at a time when Furtwangler's spiritual depth is the ideal, not Toscanini's drilled-in precision. Before listening to this Bruckner Sixth, the reviewer at Fanfare magazine worried that Gielen would be "a sort of second-rate Leinsdorf: technically precise, musically cultivated, and a trifle cold." He's not that bad, but his Bruckner style is far from warm. To his credit, Gielen has an instinctive, flexible way of phrasing even as he moves the pace along -- a classic Toscanini trait.



The orchestra is the middling-good SWRSO of Baden-Baden and Freibrug, which Gielen has trained well -- you forget that the strings are lean and the winds and brass mediocre. My problem with this Sixth is that Bruckner put more emotion, dramatic contrast, and spiritual aspiration in the music than Gielen brings out. Klemperer's classic 1965 recording on EMI was magical in that regard, and there have been good Sixths since (rarely), such as those from Eschenbach and Haitink (a live reading on Profil). The crown jewel of the Sixth is its eloquent Adagio, which simply slides by in this performance, and the Scherzo has momentum but little exuberance.



One of this conductor's trademakrs is the way he pairs unlike music on the same disc. Here we get Schoenberg's post-Romatnic inflation of Bach's little "St. Ann" Prelude and Fugue, a delightful over-statement if you are up for Bach in Cinemascope."