The period instrument Anima Eterna has recorded a substantial amount of repertoire from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but this is their first Bruckner recording. In his liner note, Heras-Casado suggests instruments of Bruckner’s time offer “new varieties of color, new opportunities for phrasing, articulation, and texture…to see [the music] in a new perspective and a new light. Having taken issue with a similar argument in my review of the Mahler Academy Orchestra’s recent recording of Mahler’s ninth, I approached this new album with trepidation.
As expected, there is a notable difference in the weight and color of orchestral sound. The sheer splendor heard in performances from the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics is absent. Colors are softer-grained, though this may just as much be a matter of Heras-Casado’s interpretation. If Böhm and the Vienna Philharmonic paints in dark oils, Anima Eterna uses watercolors. Phrasing is natural, the playing often has a lovely lyric quality, and tempos are mainstream. But the brass dominated climaxes of older Berlin and Vienna recordings are replaced by balanced heterogenous ones. I loved the horn’s color in the first movement’s opening call, as well as the flute throughout. Changes in color, “phrasing, articulation and texture” are novel and interesting to hear, but the performance never grips me as those older performances do.
This new reading fails to fully convey the music’s tension and conflict. The climax at the end of the Adagio lacks emotional power because there is too little struggle to achieve it. The Scherzo’s hunting horns should be raucous, but here they are consistently reigned in. And the first climax of the final movement should sound (and feel) apocalyptic (as they do in Honeck’s Pittsburgh Reference recording, reviewed here). Despite beautiful playing, the performance operates on a moderate emotional plain that misses the full emotional range of this work. The January 2024 recording, made in the Concertgebouw Brugge, is fine, though it does not rival the decades-old Böhm album, let alone the more recent Honeck.
The Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin has recorded several Bruckner symphonies, most still readily available on Berlin Classics and Decca. The orchestra’s sound feels especially vivid after the Anima Eterna album, its weightier, refulgent timbres more convincing.
Jurowski has a sure sense of the symphony’s architecture, so that each movement has an organic, natural flow. He also varies the sharpness and weight of accents. His Berlin orchestra provides characterful playing throughout. How wonderful to hear the rhapsodic songfulness of the first movement’s second theme answered by a particularly jaunty third theme.
The build-up to the second movement’s climax is beautifully managed; The first violins are particularly impressive, while cymbal and triangle parts are retained. Jurowski’s Scherzo tempo is slower than I anticipated, but it works, largely because of some unexpected legato phrasing and a generously shaped Trio.
Conductor Georg Tintner wrote that the symphony’s last movement is “like the Finale of a Haydn symphony.” There is an impish good humor to this performance that suggests Jurowski would agree, though the Coda is thrillingly grand.
Recorded in June 2024 at Berlin’s Philharmonie, the excellently engineered live recording revealed no trace of audience noise (both recordings are available on Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio). There is a telling sense of energy and communication that is sometimes lacking in the studio-produced Anima Eterna performance. While I am glad to have heard that recording, I doubt I would return to it very often. But Jurowski’s Bruckner—surprisingly his first-ever recording of the composer’s music—is impressive, and I eagerly hope he and the RSO Berlin continue to record more of the symphonies.
Recommended Comparisons
Bruckner – symphony No. 4 (“Romantic):
Zweden | Böhm | Honeck | Jochum
Bruckner – symphony No. 7:
Rattle & Birmingham | Karajan & Vienna | Jochum & Dresden | Wand & Berlin
Check offers of this album on Amazon.
| Album Details | |
|---|---|
| Album name | Bruckner – Symphony No. 4 (“Romantic”) |
| Label | Harmonia Mundi |
| Catalogue No. | HMM902721 |
| Amazon Music link | Stream here |
| Apple Music link | Stream here |
Check offers of this album on Amazon.
| Album Details | |
|---|---|
| Album name | Bruckner – Symphony No. 7 – Vladimir Jurowski |
| Label | Platoon |
| Catalogue No. | PLAT24680 |
| Amazon Music link | Stream here |
| Apple Music link | Stream here |
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