Search - Herbert von Karajan, Richard Wagner :: Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 / Wagner: Siegfried-Idyll

Von Karajan + Bruckner = an Art of the Purest Water...

Sébastien Melmoth | Hôtel d'Alsace, PARIS | 11/18/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

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I. Allegro [16'45]

II. Scherzo-Trio [15'08]

III. Adagio [26'07]

IV. Finale [24'06]



Original liner-notes by Richard Osborne from 1977 LP issue:



"It was T. S. Eliot who observed that poetry begins to communicate long before it is understood; and the same is true of music in general, and the symphonies of Bruckner in particular.



The Eighth Symphony's important principal theme is enunciated in the Allegro at once in the lower strings. The oboe eloquently broadens the idea before the music sweeps down into a glorious fortissimo, arrestingly launched by a unison F-major. Heavy brass reiterate the theme, horns and violas sweep the melody magnificently on, and the lamenting oboe tones are heard again before the arrival of the second subject (violins in G-major), a noble melody characterized by Bruckner's favourite two-notes-plus-triplet shape. By contrast, the third idea is a skirling themlet in the woodwinds. It is heard over a pizzicato accompaniment and leads directly into one of Bruckner's most awe-inspiring pages in which the whole orchestra sweeps down in cataracts of tone, again in triplet rhythms but with the first crotchet in each bar removed, giving a powerful syncopated effect. A triple-forte climax is reached before we move into an extended cadence--twenty bars of utterly quiet nature in silence as first a solo horn and then a quartet of tubas, solemn and imposing, conjure an eerie stillness. In the development, as violins and horns slip a tone in the harmonic scale, as climaxes gather peak upon peak, we are aware of mingled splendour and doubt. When the horns finally hammer out the Symphony's initial rhythm in level notes, the tonic key is re-established, but the music is shrouded in misgivings. We are in a bleak, remote landscape. Fortunately, the sun (in the form of the second subject) breaks through the mists. Yet the torrents return and soon a still bleaker final climax is upon us, horns and trumpets baying into the dark. The coda was described by Bruckner as `a wake.'



The towering Scherzo, gloriously scored with shimmering tremolando strings and the deep-swung carillon of its principal theme, works through great climaxes, has inverted themes, and features arresting changes of key. The Ab-major Trio is remarkable for the beauty of its first melody--strangely idiosyncratically harmonized with delicate splashes of harp colour--for its silences, and for its own noble climaxes.



It is the Adagio which is the altar, baldachino, and dome of the whole work. The movement begins with a quiet, troubled pulse and a long plaintive unfolding that moves from Ab to A and finally dissolves at its peak on harps and evanescent string harmonies. This, and a glowingly beautiful cello theme in E-major, is the movement's ground-plan: a movement which has no equal in the symphonic literature as to the range and scale of its utterance. The adagio's coda, itself a superb essay in writing for strings and a quartet of horns, is ineffably peaceful; yet from here the music surges irresistibly onwards.



The Finale opens with a fearful pulsing utterance yet the harmonic structuring gives us the feeling of being carried onwards and outwards from the Adagio's close. What is more, the second subject, down a major third in Ab, is superbly founded, a lovely string melody, lovingly extended. A marching theme in unvarying crotchets (eb-minor) intrudes, but it is cut off by a most moving cadential descent, which drops us down into the more pellucid waters of E-major. When the hammering rhythm is finally reasserted, we are involved in one of Bruckner's greatest battles of the will--a formidable attempt to re-establish the tonality of C-major/c-minor. This is thrillingly achieved, but the horns are again left baying into the gloom. The resolution is in a reiteration of the second subject, still in Ab, the tragic-ironic `delayed' climax which sweeps quietly in and achieves a stupendous climax in which all the Symphony's strands are united in a passage of great grandeur and contrapuntal splendour.



John Donne once observed:

`There lies more faith in honest doubt

Believe me, than in all their creeds.'



Bruckner's Eighth Symphony, with its amazing long-term planning of harmony and theme, is about searing doubts profoundly, gloriously resolved."

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Symphonies 1-9 (Box)

Bruckner: Symphonie No. 8; Wagner: Lohengrin & Parsifal Preludes

Bruckner: Symphony No. 8; Overtures by Mendelssohn, Nicolai, Wagner & Weber

Anton Bruckner: Symphony No.8 - Wiener Philharmoniker / Herbert von Karajan

Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 / Wagner: Siegfried-Idyll

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