Search - Jarvi Paavo :: Bruckner:Symphony No. 7 [SACD/CD HYBRID]

Paavo Jarvi, HRSO-FrankfurtRSO: Bruckner Sym 7: A strong Bru

Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 07/03/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Let's start weighing this performance by considering comparisons and bench marks.



My top favs include: Karl Bohm with Vienna, Simon Rattle with Birmingham, Blomstedt with Leipzig, Klemperer with Philharmonia, Carlo Maria Giulini with Vienna, Gunter Wand with Berlin. A whole host of additional discs in the available catalog add context and depth to these top listings. Welser-Most, Eichhorn, D. Russell Davies, von Karajan, Haitink, Tennstedt, Tintner, Solti, Sinopoli, Harnoncourt, Jochum, Celibidache, Nezet-Seguin, Barenboim, Rogner, Herreweghe, Ozawa, Kreuzberg, Inbal, Skrowaczewski, .... our available list of competitive, even renowned Bruckner conductors is impressive - especially if we pause to remember that the composer was doubtfully regarded, just a few short decades ago.



No doubt the invention of modern recording arts and sciences has helped Bruckner, quite a bit. Pioneering, world-class readings could go where no local band went, and even where many big name prestige bands did not yet go. We benefit.



This brings us to sound. Both standard red book PCM and super audio surround techniques have captured a number of these impressive Bruckner sevenths. Why Sony has never bothered to remaster the classic Bruno Walter disc in super audio stereo - well that is a puzzler. One imagines that Sony wants to own the catalog, but refuse to treat it with respect via updated SACD masterings that can be released to the general listening public. A strange way to go, if that is what Sony is doing.



Among any reasonable red book disc option, the sound is hardly ever a detriment. Karl Bohm, Otto Klemperer (EMI, remastered), Rattle, Giulini, Gunter Wand - these are all released in excellent regular PCM sound. Then, in super audio surround - we have a Japanese SACD remaster of Gunter Wand with Berlin, Kreuzberg with Vienna SO, Ozawa with Saito Kinen, Herreweghe, Blomstedt with Gewandhaus, Nezet-Seguin with OMGM, and Haitink in Chicago.



Lots of discs that sound excellent - wide frequency, brilliant sound stage, musical detail, you name it. You can probably get it on one or more of the available catalog discs.



This new SONY BMG Red Seal release is equal to any of the others. Perhaps exceeds them, just a tad? Big bands with rich sound are apt for super audio surround recording capture. The sense of presence is typically increased by the back channels, even if nobody moves the orchestra seating to invent cinematic surround effects. The hall gets an even greater chance to contribute, provided the engineers know the hall and know their microphone placements. In this case, the venue, Alte Oper Frankfurt, comes across both warm and brilliant. Kudos to the HR engineers, as this disc is a co-production with Hessian Radio? Thus, this reading gains a notable sonic mix of glow and clarity.



Thanks to Jarvi and the HRSO players - the strings have sheen, warm polish, and an unusually disciplined strength of phrasing, altogether. The last time I heard string sections phrasing so purposively I was listening to the newest Bruckner fourth symphony (original version) from Kent Nagano in Bavaria. (Also, SACD) If you got to know Bruckner via the old, traditional recordings - you will probably just eat up this one, too. Jarvi adopts entirely deliberate tempos - and makes much of very carefully pulsed and finessed playing, all along the way. He can maintain a very long arch of superbly graded musical tensions - just like the best of Karl Bohm, Otto Klemperer, and other famous Bruckner conductors of the recent past and far past.



If Jarvi just went all soggy and sporadic, then super audio would expose him mercilessly. As it is, the high resolution sound dramatically show cases the conductor and the players, revealing art plus art beyond art. The great Adagio that often seems the mystical heart of the symphony to this composer is managed with incredible touch, discipline, and shot through with musical purpose, right through.



The third movement scherzo takes fleet wing. No holding back here. The players now sound very light, inflected, moving right along. The omnipresent brilliance in the strings helps etch the musical line, even when the band is going soft, ppp. The rhythms are caught just right. Deft touches of lift and lilt rubato, in and out and through. The more relaxed trios have plenty of charm, no doubt; but still sound like omens of musical strength, color, motion - all elements waiting to gather and drive forward again when the scherzo moment returns.



The opening Finale starts off at quite a skippy pace. Its just fast enough to connect in retrospect to the scherzo just concluded, Bewegt; and just intent enough to predict all the finale business yet to come, doch nicht schnell. This approach sets a kind of implicit balance, innate to this symphony, with two first slower movements now being balanced out by two subsequent parts, moving forward. If that is indeed the musical balance being struck, it may fall on some listening ears as more modernist than traditional. Even the big, striding brass theme rings out, at a faster tempo. We are far from lingering.



Vigor and intensity - all playing towards an end point, still yet just out of reach - describe the rest of this last movement. The lyrical contrasts relax seamlessly into the brass chorale emerging, played off against the faster finale themes and tempos. The sense of drive seems to win out, until we get to the final closing pages. Then Jarvi lets his players loose, using that sense of tension to build a very satisfying close.



If Jarvi and HRSO can keep this kind of playing up, the cycle will be a great one, all told. As this is the first symphony to be published, a long mountain climb in the Bruckner topography yet remains to be trekked. A grand seventh is one thing; other peaks even higher and more difficult await.



Those utterly committed to nothing but traditional-istic Bruckner readings may quibble with this one. Jarvi and HRSO bring enough of a modernist clarity to the music that we are quite a musical distance from, say, Celibidache in Munich in the autumn of his career. If you do not mind drive and clarity in your Bruckner, reminiscent of what dear old George Szell could bring off in the Cleveland years, you may well find that this new reading portends a very grand approach to Bruckner that still yet, omits even a wispy ounce of undue sentimentality.



I'm adding this one to the top lists. I'm surprised. I've found Paavo Jarvi to be uneven in past spins of his new releases; and I've grown to feel tilted a little against him, just because I never quite know just what sort of music-making I will find. The chemistry on display here, between conductor and band, seems remarkably alert and capable. HRSO has already done a complete Bruckner cycle, under Eliahu Inbal. The arching of long musical tensions, and the drive, mostly seemed just missing by a few hairs from that set. So, just looking at the cast, I wondered if Bruckner from Jarvi with HRSO would more or less be Inbal redux. Rest assured, we have no such thing on this first release in the series.



Jarvi beats the super audio competition, too, except for maybe (to me) the Japanese SACD remasters of Gunter Wand in Berlin. Those discs will probably always be super audio surround treasures. Jarvi far outdoes Kreuzberg's seventh with VSO, so far as I'm concerned. I haven't heard the Ozawa with SK, but I doubt that it could better Jarvi in Frankfurt. Five stars - reading, sound, Bruckner set debut."

Far better than I had expected

B. Guerrero | 07/10/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"After reading a couple of not so flattering reviews, I was prepared to be slightly disappointed by Paavo Jarvi's new Bruckner 7th. But this turned out to be even better than I had hoped for. Frankly, I don't know what's going on in Frankfurt, as the sound on this recording is every bit as good as it is on Jarvi's recent Mahler "Resurrection" (#2) on Virgin Classics. The reason I took a chance on this one was because I really liked the timings, which are rather similar to those of Georg Tintner (Naxos) and - if I'm remembering correctly - von Karajan (who recorded the 7th at least three times). The tempi just flow in all four movements, with the exception of the scherzo perhaps being one tiny notch faster than I care for (I love this scherzo, which sort of sounds like "The Ride Of The Valkaries" on acid). The major climaxes to the first two movements sound marvellous, with rich, full harmonies and very little sign of strain in the trumpets. Timpani are big and full, but without sounding too ponderous and overbearing. And while the Frankfurt strings may not possess quite the same degree of luminosity as their more famous cousins in Vienna and Berlin, they still do themselves proud.



A big litmus test for me is the finale, which - for me, I'm talking about here - shouldn't sound too intense or overly serious. In the program notes, Jarvi talks about how this finale differs from most of Bruckner's other ones. He believes that Bruckner more or less smiles in the finale of the 7th, and that Bruckner's true personality breaks on through. I think he has a point. For me, it needs to be almost humorous in spots. Regardless, what is perhaps Bruckner's greatest completed symphony is done very well here (sorry, but I do like the 7th more than the 8th). Highly recommended."