This Bruckner Eighth first appeared on Intercord about a decade ago, and it’s a very good performance, one that no one who knows and loves this work will find much to complain about. Unlike Michael Gielen’s other Bruckner recordings, this one comes across as quite traditional: steady tempos, dark sonorities weighted toward the bass line, and the brass carefully balanced on a cushion of strings. The timpani would have benefited from a bit less mushiness, and the SWR Symphony Orchestra of Baden-Baden and Freiburg wasn’t quite as virtuosic as it is today, but the combination of structural solidity in the outer movements, a stately but powerful scherzo, and a gorgeously slow, profoundly moving Adagio adds up to an impressive package.
Of course, Gielen and SWR are doing their very best to make their work as un-sellable as possible by finding the most inappropriate couplings, and this one is a whopper. Morton Feldman’s Coptic Light has enjoyed at least three outings on CD, all of them very good, and this one is no exception, possibly the finest available (and it’s particularly translucently recorded). However, 23 minutes of Feldman’s mysterious sound world of atonal chord clusters and shimmering textural non-happenings, while wonderful as far as it goes, partners Bruckner about as well as (in George Szell’s famous line) chocolate sauce on asparagus. If you happen to like both composers, then by all means, indulge. However, I suspect that most listeners will wonder what in heaven’s name these people were thinking. Only in Germany…
