Sunday 29 June 2008

Ended a good Sunday with Bruckner's eighth symphony (2 June 1957 with Otto Klemperer in Cologne with the Radio Symphony Orchestra). Excellent sound and transfer (Medici Masters). The Germans of the old school - Klemperer, Wand, Knappertsbusch, Walter, Furtwängler, Böhm, Jochum, Kabasta -- plus the non-German Horenstein -- understood Bruckner's ebb and flow, his internal structural logic and his internal pacing. The German orchestras of that era had the music in their bones. Not much advance in Bruckner (or Wagner) performances over the past 50 years; it seems to be music of a byegone era. We are lucky to have some excellent souvenir performances (including the present one, newly discovered and issued from radio archives).

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