Skip to main content

Bruckner: Symphony #1

Today we'll tackle Bruckner for the second time by listening to his First Symphony.

**********************
Sir Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Anton Bruckner (1824-1896 )
Symphony #1 (1865-1866)
London, 1996
**********************
We've talked before about how it can be an intimidating investment in time to take on a fairly long classical music work like this 45-minute symphony.

So if you're looking to experience a more bite-sized portion of Bruckner's First, try starting out with the 12-minute second movement. The movement starts out almost atonally, but then resolves into particularly beautiful waves of overlapping melodies performed by the strings. Pay close attention from (roughly) the 2:36 mark to about the 5:00 minute mark for this section. Finally, see what you think of the triumphant final two minutes of the second movement. Those are two of my favorite parts of the entire symphony.

Let me share just a few thoughts on the Chicago Symphony, which performs today's CD, and why I love them. It's their brass section, and particularly their low brass: the trombones, bass trombone and tuba. These guys have just a huge sound and they are one of the orchestra's greatest strengths.

Keep in mind, the lower the register in which an instrument plays, the more power it takes to create a big sound (apologies for dipping into a bit of jargon there: a "big" sound is symphony-speak for really loud, but not off-key, blaring, or out of control. Likewise for the less official term "huge" used in the paragraph above).

A little sprite of a piccolo player can be heard on top of an entire orchestra because of the accoustics of her instrument--her high notes will soar above everything else. But the tuba and trombone section of the Chicago symphony have to tap into frighteningly awesome lungpower to create the massive, yet controlled, sonic foundation underlying this recording of Bruckner's First.

To me, these guys sound like seven foot tall giants.

NB: The disk in the link below is actually the same disk as the recording I own--one of the rare instances where I've been able to find the same recording on Amazon (usually I will substitute another disk by a reputable orchestra so you'll still be assured of a high-quality recording). This particular recording is of very high quality, and it will also give you a sense of what I'm talking about when I refer to the "big" sound of the Chicago Symphony.




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Does Bach Suck?

It's not often that you see a classical music-related comment that makes you spit out your coffee : "Bach sucks because he was not a true composer. A true composer hears the music before he writes it. Bach composed using a mathematical system of numbers which he tought[sic] his students. After his death one of his students published a book “How to write a menuet[sic] with little or no musical knowledge”. Frankly, the result of his work is not musical, the opening bars always sound musical because he copied someone else’s melody, broke it down into numbers and wrote counterpoint from it. Handel did not even like Bach, because Handel wrote music. Anyone who does like Bach does so because they are told to. For a comparison, listen to music by Frescobaldi, Rameau, or Couperin, then listen to Bach. The difference? Something that is musical throughout the entire piece, and something that is musical for 10 seconds and quickly loses interest." Once I'd finished mopping the co
15 comments
Read more

Why Classical Music Writing is So Difficult to Read

Have you ever read the liner notes of a classical music CD and scratched your head wondering what the heck the writer was trying to say? Or attempted to read a classical music concert review in your newspaper and felt totally illiterate? One of the things that frustrates many people about classical music is its perceived elitism. It's unfortunate, but most of what gets written about classical music only worsens that perception. Most of the classical music writing I see out there--either in symphony concert program books, in concert reviews in major papers like the New York Times, or worst of all in the little essays in the booklets accompanying most classical music CDs--is quite simply terrible. Often, it is pretentiously written, it is full of industry jargon (yes, even the classical music industry has its own jargon), and it reads like an intellectually insecure liberal arts student's PhD thesis. There are a few reasons for this. First, there's the fundamental difficulty
8 comments
Read more

Shostakovich: First Symphony

I can't help it. I just don't like Shostakovich. This is the second time I've tried my hand at a Shosty symphony, after listening to and heartily disliking his Eleventh Symphony . Unfortunately, I felt no emotional connection to his First Symphony either. The music seems random and arbitrary to me--and to be honest, I even caught myself rolling my eyes at a few of Shosty's musical devices. And as I'll show in the listener notes, it's more film score music than symphony. ********************** Leonard Bernstein and the Chicago Symphony Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 7 Deutsche Grammophone, 1989 ********************** Lucky me: I've still got three more of his symphonies left to listen to: his Second, Seventh and Twelfth. A little historical background before we get to the listener notes: Shostakovich wrote his First Symphony in 1925 at the shockingly young age of 18. It was his graduation piece at the Leningrad Conserva
3 comments
Read more