This disc arrived just a day after Georg Tintner’s tragic death from an 11-story fall off the balcony of his home. Fortunately for Naxos, he apparently completed his Bruckner symphony cycle before the end. This performance (indeed the whole cycle) is a worthy memento of a fine artist to whom recognition came late, and also stands as a salutary example of the value of recordings in preserving an interpretive legacy that otherwise would have been irretrievably lost. Of course, if Tintner’s Bruckner were in any way ordinary, none of this would matter. But he was an extraordinary Bruckner conductor, nowhere more so than in this excellent performance of the magnificent torso that is the Ninth Symphony. All of Tintner’s trademarks are here: the broad climaxes, totally natural tempo adjustments in the “singing” second subjects, the rough vigor of the Scherzo, all capped by an unusually direct, authoritatively shaped account of the final Adagio. The Scottish National Orchestra isn’t the Vienna Philharmonic. Its strings haven’t the weight of the great German orchestras, but the brass section is, if anything, even better from a purely technical point of view. The bright, distinctive timbres of the horns, trumpets, and trombones cut through the densest climaxes (such as the first movement’s coda), and allow Bruckner’s most complex polyphony to register with impressive clarity. There are many fine performances of this symphony, but this recording is as “complete” a realization, interpretively speaking, as you will find on disc.
