Search - Anton Bruckner, Carl Schuricht :: Bruckner: Symphony No.8

This performance is actually from '55...and flawed

Into | everywhereandnowhere | 03/03/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"As if collecting historical recordings isn't confusing enough...the liner notes for this Urania issue say that this recording is from 1950, the other reviewer says it's from '61. I have it from a normally very reliable on-line source that it's actually from 10/24/55; and that there was never a Schuricht Bruckner Eighth recording from either '50 or '61. Urania is generally one of the more reputable Italian labels--not one of those fly-by-night pirate labels--so I have no idea where they would've gotten the info that this is from '50, let alone how the other reviewer got the idea that it was from '61...go figure.



That said, overall this is a very good performance, and a surprisingly good, firm, and clear, recording, played by Schmidt-Isserstedt's wonderful NDRSO Hamburg. After listening to Schuricht's 1963 VPO recording, he gives a surprisingly measured reading of the first movement, but it is still a satisfying account. The scherzo and adagio are very well done, and the finale is excellent for about 90% of the way...then, at the onset of the coda, something goes awry. It doesn't have anything to do with the orchestra or the recording, and one who hasn't heard the Eighth many times might scarcely notice it; but Shuricht takes his own cut. Similar to the cuts at the onset of the adagio's climax, and early in the finale, that Nowak observed in his edition of the Eighth, Schuricht decides he is going to fuse together two brass passages by cutting out a string motif. It is one of those wonderfully subtle Bruckner moments where he heightens the tension by delaying the onset of a climactic moment, thus making the ultimate "arrival" all the more satisfying...but some musicologists just don't seem to get this, so these passages end up on the "cutting room floor." If you know the Bruckner Eighth pretty well, it is a very distracting omission, right at the onset of one of Bruckner's greatest codas (and, when done well, one of the greatest symphonic codas, period).



As much as I like Schuricht as an interpreter, he is prone to these kinds of maneuvers occasionally. I used to have a recording of Brahms First Symphony where everything was going just swimmingly--I was just about ready to proclaim it one of my favorite recordings of that work--when I was stopped dead in my tracks by Schuricht's taking a well-known five-note motif in the coda of the finale (another of the greatest codas in symphonic music) that is normally repeated twice, and deciding that it only need to be played once! I do not pretend to be a musicologist--in fact, pardon me for not including bar numbers in this review--but this kind of indiscriminate cutting takes "interpretation" too far, imo. I would have given this recording a firm four stars, had it not been for this unfortunate excision.



Unless you're a Bruckner completist, or one who collects recordings of "oddball" performances, you should probably steer clear of this recording."