Search - Anton Bruckner, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Orchestre Métropolitain :: Bruckner: Symphony No. 8

Bruckner Symphony #8-performance promise unfulfilled

Jerrold Fink | 11/20/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"BRUCKNER SYMPHONY #8.-PERFORMANCE PROMISES NOT YET FULFILLED

Yannick Nezet-Seguin is a successful conductor with a great future. His career has taken off and he is sought after all over North America and Europe. His recordings have generally received high praise. This is the first one that I have listened to with care and contemplation.

The Bruckner 8th symphony is a work which has and will challenge all conductors who attempt to interpret it. Bruckner's most massive composition, the 8th is acknowledged as one of the truly great symphonic masterpieces. Over the last 100 years, few conductors have been linked to successful interpretations of this complex score.

Those conductors who come to mind are: Furtwangler, van Beinum, Karajan, Bohm, Jochum, Schuricht, Wand, and Giulini. They all conducted this symphony during their careers, but led great performances in their later years.

Nezet-Seguin studied with Giulini. The question: Can a 34 year old star conductor give a first-class performance of this work?? Of course he/she can, but from my perspective, not here.

The first movement is just an outline of the depth needed to engross the listener. The major themes are not well contrasted. Dramatic urgency is lacking. Piano-forte sections are not developed well. The mystery, drama, and brutality are mostly lacking.

The second movement scherzo is interpreted better, but this is also the movement with the most measured tempo and fundamental structural outlines. Still, the dynamic changes are not emphasized enough and the re-cap variations show little imagination.

The tempo Nezet-Seguin maintains in the monumental Adagio is fine and the way I generally like it. However, this movement demands the most imagination from the conductor. I hear little of that here. Also, there is a lack of momentum-crucial in all Bruckner symphonies.

The last movement suffers from the same momentum problems as the Adagio. The coda that ends this magnificent work was upon me with little or no dramatic buildup.

Will Nezet-Seguin conduct more absorbing and fulfilling performances of this work in the future? Let's hope so. Without the tension, mystery, drama, and momentum ,the Bruckner symphonies can just be boring. "Overwhelming" is the experience one wants to have listening to his music.

The second disc is filled out with the Adagio movement from the 7th symphony. This is from Nezet-Seguin's highly praised complete recording. Unfortunately, I hear many of the same problems with this performance as I mention above.

The Orchestre Metropolitain of Montreal plays very well and impressed me in this most demanding music.

The sound and engineering are generally excellent with some tightness in the soundstage. The orchestral balances are managed well.

The notes contain one essay and a bio of the conductor and the orchestra in both French and English.

"

A Bruckner Conductor in the Making

Grady Harp | Los Angeles, CA United States | 08/16/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Yannick Nézet-Séguin has excited audiences across the country since his increasingly frequent concerts over the past few years ago. Hearing and watching him (very much a part of the entire appeal of this young conductor, so married is his body language to the music he is conducting) here with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Disney Hall, it was very obvious to the audiences that here is a young sophisticated dynamo of a baton wielder. Anton Bruckner may not be the first composer that will be closely linked with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, but with his previous recording of the 7th and now with this impressive recording of the 8th, that idea may soon change. He has a fine sense of architecture, of letting Bruckner go his way through the many paths of diversion along his stroll toward the climax, but too many conductors today try to superimpose their own 'right interpretation' on these mighty symphonies and Nézet-Séguin allows the composer to lead the way. And that is very satisfying.



The orchestral playing is excellent here - the Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal is far too often underrated. To fill out the 2 CD set the Andante from the Bruckner 7th recorded with the same forces in 2006 is included - a nice bonus but not an inclusion that adds to the splendor of the 8th. But let's wait until we have more from Bruckner's output as conducted by this young giant. He is, after all, the new conductor for the Philadelphia Orchestra and that should make for some gorgeous performances. Grady Harp, August 10"

Nezet-Seguin, OMGM: Bruckner Sym 8: Youthful, Big Boned Read

Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 05/22/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"'ve already gotten the NS/OMGM discs of Bruckner's seventh and ninth symphonies. Note that, now, the OMGM seems to wish to be known as the OM ... so OM, or maybe, OMM? ...



As in the previous two Bruckner releases, this reading of the eighth symphony is remarkably coherent, convincing-involving, and displays expertly managed tempos. Nezet-Seguin is still young enough not to be consumed with exhaustively Old School Brucknerian manners: his fires are youthful. Vigor and tonal color supersede all fussiness, though plenty of old-school glow and depth remain as frame as well as fuel for considerable inner musical illumination. This leaves a lasting impression of Bruckner as a continuing figure in a musical line that runs from Schubert through Brahms, rather than emphasizing Bruckner's century-ending oddness. This eighth symphony is big and big boned; a deep impression of sheer size and resplendent melody, like Schubert's famous, path-blazing last symphony, The Great in C Major.



Unlike some conductors, Nezet Seguin prefers not to let the blazing brass eclipse either strings or woodwinds, until the last possible climactic moments of the paragraphs and perorations ... lending his readings a certain lush singing quality in places where many of us as listeners have come to expect steep, vertiginous cliff edges that drop us off, dizzy, over the musical edges into black Bruckner silences - a dark emptiness alive with intimations of Brucknerian immortality ...



Perhaps Nezet Seguin readings of Bruckner still leave our feet, firmly planted on planet earth ... though indeed with a lifted musical gaze and widening musical horizon ....



The contrasting melody passages are shaped and inflected with a great warmth, Schubertian, along with a fertile sense of drama and ambiguity, as in the greatest of the Schubert songs, as in the great Schubert D. 956 string quintet. One wishes in passing to hear Nezet Seguin and OMGM in both Schubert and Brahms symphonies, just because ....



Despite all the rich romantic tonal colors and the expressively flexible phrasing, tempos are rock solid, polyphony is tangible in contribution and in subtlety, and forward motion builds organically out of the very slow, very deep Brucknerian shifts and transformation. ... The engineers are to be strongly commended for taming the resonant acoustics of the recording venue, a local Montreal church. One wonders if a super audio surround version still lurks in some future offing that might polish the considerable heft and glowing immediacy of this red book PCM stereo version?



The fill music on the second disc is the slow movement of Bruckner's seventh symphony, presumably copied over from the existing complete OMGM reading under Nezet Seguin on Atma. Sitting through this perfectly paced slow movement helps emphasize that Nezet Seguin is already a young master among the few conductors who could set and then unfold slow tempos in a meaningful and compelling manner. To that extent, we who cherished hearing Otto Klemperer, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Carlo Maria Giulini, Kurt Sanderling can happily welcome Nezet Seguin with open arms and bear hugging fan-ship all round.



By the end of the fourth movement I am persuaded. I really do not entertain the reservations and the doubts of the other reviewer(s) concerning this reading. What they seem to hear as vagaries and deficits, as promise unfulfilled, I am tending now to hear as an alternative indebtedness to the musical heritage of Schubert and Brahms.



Such an approach may seem to predict that Anton Bruckner's symphonies offer listeners a warmer, more human musical face - less gravely mystical, less removed from the daily life concerns of western classical art and performance. This approach softens the implacable-obsessive Bruckner gestures, but in ways which sound meaningful to my ears, not disappointing. I'm cued in hearing by recalling a live concert in San Francisco under Herbert Blomstedt, wherein he surprised us completely by leading a Bruckner fifth symphony whose grand final movement triple fugue came across more as a grand, rich, lively set of Schubert dances - an alternative habit, indeed in such flinty music. All I can say in reply is that (A) Nezet Seguin and OMM still convey a rich, clear romanticism which extends pathways opened up by Schubert and Brahms in their symphonies; and (B) a considerable amount of orchestral detail, heft, and large size are still conveyed in this somewhat alternative approach to Bruckner. My ears tell me I prefer Nezet Seguin to many others, any day of the week



I for one can welcome Nezet Seguin to that fav shelf where Giulini, Klemperer, Eichhorn, Celibidache, Dennis Russell Davies in Linz, Herbert Blomstedt in Dresden and Leipzig, and even Takashi Asahina with Osaka, Simone Young in Hamburg, rest on their Bruckner laurels. Five stars."