Cristian Mandeal leads a broad-scaled, carefully contoured Bruckner Ninth that, while attentive to the score’s breadth and unique orchestral coloring, misses the music’s drama and deep emotional underpinning. Mandeal builds the terraced tension of the opening well, and the big unison climax is quite effective. But in the lyrical second subject, where the strings end a passage in a yearning upward arc, he imposes an odd diminuendo that fades the music into near-inaudibility. This turns out to be a defining characteristic of the performance, as he repeats this gesture in the first-movement development, and just before the coda, as well as at several points in the concluding Adagio–by which point it has become more than a bit annoying.
Listen to either of Gunter Wand’s last two RCA recordings and you’ll hear the darkness, anger, and steely determination absent with Mandeal. To his credit, Mandeal does get the Hallé Orchestra strings to make a full sound that approaches a Brucknerian timbre, but then the Adagio’s radiant fanfares sound hollow and flat. The spacious recording suggests a large acoustic appropriate for this expansive music, even if the horns sometimes get swallowed up in the distance. In all it’s a worthy attempt at a great Bruckner Ninth performance. But if it’s total success that you want, go for Wand, Giulini, Skrowaczewski, or Jochum.
