Symphony No.4

This disc of Bruckner's 4th is a recording of the original 1874 score before the substantial 1878-80 rewrite. The rewrite replaces the 3rd movement with the very familiar "hunting scherzo." The other movements were substantially rewritten as well. The hunting scherzo is 3 to 4 minutes shorter than the original scherzo. I like the original scherzo, but Bruckner definitely topped it with the new hunting scherzo. My least favorite movement of the original version is the 4th. The 4th was improved in the rewrite and has far greater cohesion.

I have listened to this disc a couple of times now. If nothing else, it helped me to understand why Bruckner tinkered with and revised his symphonies.

Too bad there is not an Inbal Bruckner budget boxed set. He is up in the clouds with the other greats in my book. The orchestra is a little rougher than the Berlin or the Vienna Philharmonics, yet they play beautifully with great passion and energy. The recording engineers did a bang up job as well.

While I prefer the rewrite over the original, it is almost like having another Bruckner symphony and the original 1874 version is very enjoyable to listen to.

I have owned recordings of the 1874 version of the Bruckner 4th without paying much attention to them, but this one from Elihu Inbal is riveting. He leads his Frankfurt orchestra with complete conviciton, resulting in a headlong, spontaneous reading that I couldn't tear myself away from Dating from 1983, this CD lays claim to being the world premiere recordiing. For that era it has excellent sound, showing only a touch of digital glare.

The reason that the original verison of Bruckner's most popular symphony had to wait until the Eighties to be recorded is that critical consensus overwhelmingly favors the rewrite of 1880, which added a completley new Scherzo (the so-called hunting horn scherzo due to its first theme) along with extenwsive changes in the other three movements. They wre highly sucessful changes, to the extent that the 1874 vanished from sight, having acquired a reputation for crudeness and lack of finish in its symphonic structure. Just last month I read a review in The Gramophone that dismissed this version outright and beneath consideration.

So be it, but Inbal shows that there's a real symphony here, not just a rough draft. Bruckner's rhythms are simpler, the joins between themes abrupt, the overall impression rough and rustic compared to the 1880 text. But the real advantage here is Inbla's enthusiasm; he makes us believe in every bar. At its new bargainprice, I hope this CD gains new adherents--I enjoyed it immensely.

Bruckner was an incorrigible fiddler and not in an instrumental sense. He was always tinkering away with his symphonies. Such revisions could be classified as the Good, the Bad and the Fugly.

The Good - the Fourth and the Eighth. I would also add the Second to this category as the large excision in the finale is no great loss.

The Bad - the Third Symphony. While all three versions are listenable in their own right, where is the definitive version? Furtwangler was surely thinking of the Third when he said, "do we not get the impression that Bruckner was never fundamentally satisfied with his scores?"

The Fugly - the mutilation of the First Symphony which he undertook in Vienna. It was nothing short of castration.

As the jet-setting, paparazzi-hounded President of the Newman Bruckner Society, I am a stout champion of this much maligned composer - even so, I have my limits. This first version of the Romantic is easily the worst thing he ever wrote - and that's not excluding the Double Zero or the G Minor Overture. It's like a cake-mixture which has been microwaved and then extracted before time, only to be smeared with sugary icing. It's no wonder Bruckner came to this realisation and essentially rewrote the entire work from the foundation up. So much of what makes the Romantic such a great work is missing here completely (such as the mighty coda to the finale) or present in a rudimentary form only. The third movement is a completely different to the Hunting Scherzo of the revision: it's decidedly inferior. The finale in particular is the personification of meandering slop; one could suggest that even the 1880 version is not without its longueurs - Robert Simpson described it as akin to walking the streets of Pompeii, glorious in ruination, and stubbing one's toes on a bottle of coke. In this earlier version, some buckets of Colonel Sanders' best are in play.

One can profit from the first versions of the Second and the Third - and the Linz edition of the First is like a comet in the night - but there is no return-on-investment here. Bruckner has never been short of critics. This version of the Fourth, in its cacophony, is a ready source of ammo.

Inbal and the Frankfurt play idiomatically and with fire. The digital recording from September 1982 is remarkably good. Even so, this is less a specialist's recommendation and more an archival one. It cannot be the sole representative of this mighty work in your collection.