Bruckner: Symphony 9

 

What to expect from Anton Bruckner's final work in the symphony genre?

At my first approach, I wasn't sure if Symphony no. 9 in D minor was presented in the mode of Mahler's Symphony no. 10, where others fill in the cracks with plenty of imagination, or if it was to be a Schubert Symphony no. 8, where what is left, is left alone to sit with what was given us from the composer.

Fast forward to now, and I believe the work the be more in the Schubert description than the Mahler, although nowadays, there are plenty of fourth movement completions to make anyone gleeful or maddened. I am happy to end at the third-movement Adagio.

Certainly all of the hallmarks of Bruckner are readily available to the listener in the Ninth Symphony. The format of the first movement should sound familiar to anyone who knows his symphonies. His music moves along waves of forthright, brass-laden menace opposite swollen, string-centered lyricisms, tied together through development and a grand final arrival point.

And yet, I find Bruckner to be at his most experimental here. The crazy harmonic motion from Symphony no. 8 is continued in places here, plus chromaticism galore. Also, while the composer is well known for his sectionalized approach to thematic development, I find many more linking musical passages than I remember having heard before, lessening some of the awkward segues we are used to. Still, there are plenty of the recognizable silences, demarcating shifts in the music going forward.

To my ears, the melodic content is not as strong here, perhaps due to the uptick in chromaticism, yet each of his themes are easily recognizable through their orchestration settings. Of course, the composer's strict approach to diverse rhythms helps this recognition, still ably applied in the opening movement.

In the second movement, Bruckner creates one of the fleetest pairs of Scherzo and Trio combinations. Despite an oppressive mood at the first climax, there is Mendelssohn-ian lightness amongst the wind burblings and pizzicato strings which lead up to that surlier moment. Oddly, the 'B' section of the Scherzo develops the earlier material into something which sounds similar yet becomes quite different in its layout. So too, the Trio is a bit skitterish with warm lyrical moments, all wonderfully colored by winds.

If I used the term experimental earlier, that word is significantly applicable to the third-movement Adagio. The surging strings at the opening are startling; angular and dissonant, only to finally release into a beautiful hymn-like cadence with unique harmonic turns. Curiosity after curiosity follows, neither fully relinquishing into lush Romanticisms nor terror-filled, brass-laden impetuosities or sullen moodiness, but rather discursive waves of music and ideas flowing forth. I particularly enjoy the noble statements with mid-measure demisemiquaver rhythms punctuating the verticality of the music.

For those who expect to be at a loss without a Bruckner-ian fourth movement, the third-movement Adagio ends the work beautifully. The horns hold into endlessness or eternity, a wonderful tribute to the music making of Bruckner. No doubt, the composer would have given us a concluding movement of unspeakable length and epic music making, but such things were not meant to be, so this is a perfect sendoff for this listener.

The Ninth Symphony is not one I have spent an overlong time with, but editions are no problem for finding recordings. Only the older Loewe is rarely performed it seems, except from historical recordings from the likes of Knappertsbusch and such. As I mentioned earlier, some tack on their own fourth movement to Bruckner's completed three, scrounging what scraps they can find. Gerd Schaller is an example of such, a conductor I greatly like in Bruckner.

60 minutes is an ideal timing for Symphony no. 9, and if conductor and orchestra make the outer movements parallel in length, the symmetry seems to work best in general. Unlike Mahler's Tenth Symphony, no one seems to avoid this work, so favorite conductors consistently include this last symphony from Bruckner in their sets.

 

1944: Furtwangler
1950: Knappertsbusch
1960: Walter
1976: Karajan
1986: Solti
1991: Barenboim
1999: Wand
2018: Schaller
2019: Honeck
2025: Wong

 

For now, we will have a very basic list of Bruckner reviews above. Those recordings I mentioned as an example in the text above, or performances I have come to respect which await future reviews, are listed above in greened bold. My actual reviews can be found in the typical Oozy Keep orange. Until we at The Oozy Channel Keep have gotten ourselves up and running, this should suffice and we can reorganize the page a little more coherently in the future.