Karl Bohm (above) and Kurt Masur
Karl Bohm and Kurt Masur demonstrate their unforced mastery in a pair of three-disc Bruckner sets from DG and Eurodisc.
by Abram Chipman
Now in his EIGHTIES, Karl Bohm has long been the elder statesman of a German conducting tradition established by Muck and Weingartner, the antithesis of the Romantic approach of Billow, Mahler, Nikisch, and (ultimately) Furtwangler. The simultaneous release by Deutsche Grammophon and Euro disc of a pair of Bruckner packages, overlapping in their contents, could almost symbolize a passing of that mantle to the fifty-year-old music director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Kurt Masur, who with Carlos Kleiber and Klaus Tennstedt has been one of the most noteworthy conductors to emerge from Germany in recent years. (All three, interestingly, were long-experienced conductors by the time they "burst" onto the international scene.) Neither Bohm (conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies) nor Masur (conducting the Gewandhaus Orchestra in the Fourth and Seventh) is a flashy virtuoso, al though the orchestral execution here is always solid, comfortable, and stylistically "right." This isn't explosive, grandiloquent Bruckner, surging in every bar with metaphysical significance. Not that either conductor is impatient or unduly metronomic with the music: Bohm's performances are broadly spanned, but with a gentle, clear-eyed directness; Masur's are flexible, but in a jaunty and dancelike rather than rhetorical way. Both seem to believe that music needs above all to unfold naturally--Bruckner's mammoth structures are in profoundly secure hands.
Masur's Romantic begins less than charismatically. Stark contrast, thrust, and glitter are scarcely to be found in the first movement, with its consistently legato articulation, steadiness, and backwardly balanced trumpets and trombones. In the following Andante quasi allegretto, Masur opts for an ideally quick tempo, much like the second versions of Klemperer (Angel S 36245) and Karajan (DG 2530 674) but with possibly even more seamless joints. In the big viola tune, the hairpin dynamics in the pizzicato accompaniment have rarely, in my recall, been so subtly terraced, an effect that adds to the poignancy of the episode.
The scherzo, taken somewhere between the ominous jog of Klemperer and the white heat of Haitink (Philips 835 385) is much the most successful among my favorite versions in obeying Bruckner's successive markings of Iangsamer, ruhiger, and stringendo. Masur's finale is equally revelatory, Bruckner's many gear shifts being followed with unfailing accuracy, even to the differentiation of noch Iangsamer from im frohiger Zeitmass for the two widely spaced occurrences of the viola theme. One small textual point: Eurodisc attributes this performance to the 1936 Haas edition, but Masur, like Klemperer, follows the 1944 reprint of Haas in giving the flute-and-clarinet tune of the trio to oboe and clarinet.
DG is more seriously incorrect in labeling its Eighth as an "original version." Bohm appears to use the Nowak text, which is based entirely on Bruckner's 1890 revision, a drastic change indeed from the 1887 original.
One might voice a few criticisms of what is heard too. Bohm's rhythmic coordination of the tricky pas sage at bars 250-60 in the first movement is flawed.
The brass release at bar 389 is not quick enough (compare the terrifying void of silence that follows when it's done accurately, as in the recent Karajan version, DG 2707 085). Things here get a bit heavy from cues Mm to Oo in the finale, and the recording level (or the playing?) is far too loud for much of the scherzo's trio and at bars 60-80 in the Adagio (beautifully flowing though these pages otherwise are in Bohm's hands).
Yet these are ultimately minor points in the con text of the deep affinity that conductor and orchestra together display for the work. They do not exaggerate its fatalistic mood (note the utter simplicity of phrasing for the mysterious opening bars) and con vey, perhaps more naturally than anyone else on records, the sheerly magical eloquence of the horn, oboe, and trombones over string tremolos at bars 140-65 of the first movement. The scherzo is taken at a moderate pace, its demonic nature understated in favor of its healthy, outdoor ruggedness. It is just those qualities that Bohm stresses in the trio, with its openness of tone and plain-spoken phrasing.
As I have already said, the Adagio is given a very strong, forward reading, but without slighting in any way the music's tenderness or tragic nobility. The sonority is rich and warm, even to a smidgen of portamento between bars 25 and 30. The finale brings excellent structural integration, the rhythmic control at the etwas breiter passage (cue W) more than compensating for any lack thereof noted earlier.
Predictably, the Bohm and Masur Sevenths turn out to be a close contest. There have been many recordings of high musical quality, but my favorites among current listings-Haitink (Philips 802 759/60), Rosbaud (Turnabout TV-S 34083), and Horenstein (Unicorn UNI 111)-date back from a dozen to almost fifty years and in all cases sound their ages. The thoroughly contemporary Eurodisc and DG engineering preserves performances of heartfelt lyric warmth and humanity. In the first movement, Masur stresses sectional contrasts, particularly between his lei surely main tempo and the jocular, almost agitated one for the triplet theme first presented at bar 123.
Bohm maintains a calm and unwavering dignity throughout the movement-with one exception, about which more below.
In the Adagio, it is Masur who misses the optimal differentiation between the slow basic tempo, which he rushes a little, and the more consolatory Moderato. Bohm sets the two alternating pulses off in clear relief, though I miss the incredibly spacious Adagio tempo of his 1944 Vienna concert performance, is sued briefly by Vox in the Fifties and available again in a five-disc Vox Bruckner compendium, VSPS 14.
Despite thick sonics and a missing measure at the beginning of the scherzo (at least in the earlier issue; I haven't heard the current one), it's well worth hearing. That Adagio was a shattering experience, which even Furtwangler (to judge from the recorded evidence) did not duplicate.
Bohm's new scherzo is wonderful, especially for the ambling treatment of the trio, a reposeful pause in the surrounding virility. Masur is a shade blunted rhythmically, the impression undoubtedly in part a function of the limitations of the Leipzig brass vis-à vis those in Vienna and Amsterdam. Both finales have their strong points. Masur sails into the coda with a particularly menacing momentum. Bohm, in keeping with his slightly more bucolic view, conjures lovely wind playing in the softer passages (cf. the almost Dvorak flute writing around bar 140). Both make a Luftpause before the second theme (violins and violas over pizzicato basses at bar 35), but whereas Bohm tightens the pace afterward, Masur holds it back-either one a viable option.
Textual questions in the Seventh are both more simple and more complicated than is usual for Bruckner: simple because there are no extensive re visions from the original manuscript to plague schol ars, complicated because the few instrumental changes superimposed by Schalk and Loewe and the tempo changes added by Nikisch may or may not be detectable in a given performance as a function of or chestral balances and conductor's whims, rather than printed editions. I'm not inclined to quarrel with Eurodisc's credit of Haas (which is based on the original manuscript), supported by the absence of cymbal and triangle at bar 177 in the Adagio. Bohm could be using Nowak, Haas, or a combination of both with his own judgment. I hear the Nowak triangle and cymbal, but no wind or brass doublings, and the strings switch from arco to pizzicato in the third, rather than fourth, bar before the end of the Adagio. The matter of tempo changes is tricky.
Nikisch is responsible for the silly molto animato at bar 233 of the first movement, and Bohm observes it now as he did in 1944; Masur, happily, doesn't. As for all those spurious ritards in the finale, Bohm takes some and not others, and even Masur takes some. And so on.
Through his long and prolific recording career, Bohm has left us too few examples of his Bruckner interpretations. Let us hope these are not the last. In the case of Masur, his discography thus far has been quickly and generously filled with integral sym phonic cycles. It should be more than an outside hope that the set at hand, produced by East Germany's Deutsche Schallplatten (which is also collaborating with EMI on the new Jochum Bruckner cycle with the Dresden State Orchestra), heralds a forthcoming Bruckner series.
Bruckner: Symphonies: No. 4, in E flat (Romantic); No. 7, in E (both ed. Haas). Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Kurt Masur, cond. [Reimar Bluth, prod.] EURODisc 27 913 XGK, $26.94 (three SQ-encoded discs, manual sequence; distributed by German News Co.).
BRUCKNER: Symphonies: No. 7, in E; No. 8, in C minor (ed. Nowak). Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Karl Bohm, cond.
[Werner Mayer, prod.] DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 2709 068, $23.94 (three discs, manual sequence). Tape: !Ai 3371 027, $23.94.
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(High Fidelity, Nov. 1977)
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