This Bruckner Seventh, Wand’s third go at the piece, sounds absolutely magnificent in all respects–interpretation, playing, and sound. He sets flowing tempos and holds each movement together organically, effortlessly. There are so many wonderful moments: his perfect pacing of the big brass outburst of the inverted main theme in the first movement’s development and the way this merges imperceptibly into the recapitulation; his rapturous vision of the same movement’s coda; the way the great Adagio’s principal theme surges forward, especially on its first reappearance after the lyrical second subject, like some great wave; and the same movement’s climax, a moment of supreme fulfillment even without the controversial percussion parts. There are also those miracles of textural transparency and orchestral balance that Wand has made his personal trademark in Bruckner, most noticeable in the Scherzo, where all of those little woodwind echoes that permeate the movement peek through the most heavily scored passages like individual stars on a cloudy night. This newcomer clearly surpasses Wand’s previous two recordings of this symphony (something that hasn’t been unambiguously true of his Berlin Bruckner performances), and RCA was right to capture it. [1/2/2001]
