Music Chat: Mengelberg Nuts and Bruckner Fruitcakes

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  • เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ธ.ค. 2024

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  • @randaltucker2080
    @randaltucker2080 3 ปีที่แล้ว +14

    Remember those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books from the early 80s? This should be the International Bruckner Society’s next venture-funding recordings where the music stops every two bars and you get to choose whether you hear a measured or unmeasured tremolo.

  • @OuterGalaxyLounge
    @OuterGalaxyLounge 3 ปีที่แล้ว +14

    I've run across Berky's website from time to time when checking on recordings. I really appreciate your respectful nod to his work.

    • @DavesClassicalGuide
      @DavesClassicalGuide  3 ปีที่แล้ว

      Quality always tells!

    • @cpeters6494
      @cpeters6494 3 ปีที่แล้ว +3

      The recordings section is a goldmine indeed. Dozens of rare, historic, out of print or premiere releases of Bruckner symphonies in Flac format, some merely interesting for hardcore completists (like all the obscure in-house stuff from unknown orchestras and conductors) but some really exciting and important items as well.
      I just listened to the 1941 recording of Bruckner's 5th with Paul van Kempen and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra. That is, if it's really that, I can't find any evidence online that Van Kempen ever recorded the 5th. But whatever it is, it's tight, gripping and monumental, in quite spacious mono sound. Too bad the really bad shellac (?) source adds loads of noise resembling the Wehrmacht marching on a gravel path.

  • @shimoncrown
    @shimoncrown 3 ปีที่แล้ว +16

    You should put a health warning on these videos. I almost died laughing.

  • @steve.schatz
    @steve.schatz 3 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Never thought Bruckner could make me laugh so much. Thanks Dave!

  • @nathanshaffer3264
    @nathanshaffer3264 3 ปีที่แล้ว +8

    Have you seen the new Bruckner 4 from Jakub Hrusa? 3 versions of the 4th on only 4 discs!

  • @bplonutube
    @bplonutube ปีที่แล้ว

    I’m doubled over with laughter!!!!!!

  • @langsamwozzeck
    @langsamwozzeck 3 ปีที่แล้ว +7

    I'm not one of those "the score is a sacred text and the conductor is forever subservient to it" types. But my goodness, I think John Cage scholars are more faithful to his respective scores than the Bruckner fanatics.

  • @MusicMan-dv7jg
    @MusicMan-dv7jg 3 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    BRUCKNER 4 - already has these incarnations:
    1874 version (Nowak 1975)
    1878 version with "Volksfest" finale (Nowak 1981)
    1878 version with "Volksfest" finale (Carragan 2012)
    1878 version with "Volksfest" finale (Haas 1936)
    1881 revision (aka 1878/80) (Haas 1936)
    1886 revision (aka 1878/80) (Nowak 1953)
    1880 First performance version - Unpublished
    1888 Schalk/Loewe version (Gutmann 1889)
    1888 Schalk/Loewe version (Korstvedt 2004)
    1895 Mahler revision of 1888 Version
    That’s just the ones I have been able to figure out,
    Somebody is planning to make some money out of this, or they wouldn’t do it.
    What will this one be called? This is nuts.

  • @charlespowell9117
    @charlespowell9117 3 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Oh! Dave---I have a Bruckner headache now! Let me listen to some Beethoven!

  • @belpit66
    @belpit66 3 ปีที่แล้ว +7

    Idea for a boxed set: Every possible Music Minus One version of every possible version of every Bruckner Symphony. On 999 cds, with a book-length essay by Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs and a complete set of mental health facility commitment papers.

  • @Stephenjamesbutler
    @Stephenjamesbutler 3 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    It is still the 1st April!

  • @johns9624
    @johns9624 3 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    A small number of composers attract more than a normal share of fanatics, similarly with conductors. Composers that spring to mind are Bruckner, Wagner and (in the UK anyway) Brian. From time to time Pettersson, Part, Schnittke and Glass have shown up on the fringes of this body. Conductors might include Mengelberg, Furtwangler, Carlos Kleiber, Celibidache and Karajan. Why some and not others is food for thought. Maybe serious analysis by scholars even. No, wait a minute ................................

  • @mauricegiacche4776
    @mauricegiacche4776 19 วันที่ผ่านมา

    I tuned out at “volkfest” 😂 From the absurd to the certifiably insane.

  • @davidaiken1061
    @davidaiken1061 3 ปีที่แล้ว +13

    Frankly, I have a hard time understanding the point of Bruckner scholarship, since his mature output is so slim. Nine mature symphonies (or maybe seven, if you discount the first two numbered symphonies as "not fully" mature), plus a handful of choral works. It seems that Bruckner scholars have to compensate for the lack of musical territory to investigate by multiplying versions of no particular interest from an aesthetic point of view. I can understand the incentive and the need for investigating prolific but undervalued composers such as Telemann. If I were a musicologist, I might devote my life to examining the less well known works of Schubert--amazingly prolific from an early age. When it comes to Bruckner, however, I would think the more interesting paths to explore would be those of cultural context--late 19th Century Austria, such as the impact of the Cecelian movement on Catholic composers. But the proliferation of versions and completions really doesn't interest listeners and concertgoers, such as myself, who love Bruckner's music but for whom the standard editions (Haas, Nowak, etc.) serve our needs perfectly well.

    • @DavesClassicalGuide
      @DavesClassicalGuide  3 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      You said it, pal.

    • @jensguldalrasmussen6446
      @jensguldalrasmussen6446 3 ปีที่แล้ว

      Exactly because Bruckner's output is so slim (relatively speaking, that is, and only pertaining the number of works), of course desperate Bruckner scholars have to take recurse to desperate measures to butter their bread!

    • @davidaiken1061
      @davidaiken1061 3 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      @@jensguldalrasmussen6446 Indeed. And if you or anyone else reading this has ever engaged in doctoral study, you will know how difficult it is to find a topic that hasn't been thoroughly researched. My field was philosophy, not musicology, but even back then (1980's) it was almost impossible to find an angle on the philosopher I chose for my dissertation--even though the philosopher in question (Kierkegaard) wrote voluminously on every topic under the sun. Why, then, Bruckner for musicologists? Why not the forgotten works of Mendelssohn (a favorite topic of Dave's) or the masses and motets of Cozzolani (one of the first and greatest women composers)?

    • @jensguldalrasmussen6446
      @jensguldalrasmussen6446 3 ปีที่แล้ว

      @@davidaiken1061 Allthough ridiculed by many of his contemporaries, my dysphoric compatriote can't complain about the recognition and attention, he has received the last 150 years...well, on second thoughts, he might exactly just do that, complain, and consider it another thorn in the flesh!

    • @davidaiken1061
      @davidaiken1061 3 ปีที่แล้ว

      @@jensguldalrasmussen6446 If SK hadn't existed we would have had to invent him, if only to be the patron saint of curmudgeons everywhere. Of course, Dave Hurwitz has my nomination for patron saint of musical curmudgeons. And concerning Bruckner, another quasi-curmudgeon, one can say that he was perhaps the only composer in history to try and live out, at least musically, SK's dictum, "purity of heart is to will one thing." AB spent his entire carer as a symphonist trying to compose that "One Thing" which would express the Mysterium Tremendum. He failed at that--no surprise--but at times he came startlingly close.

  • @lenoakes2450
    @lenoakes2450 3 ปีที่แล้ว +5

    Laugh fools! Just wait till I finish my Bruckner 10th.

    • @cpeters6494
      @cpeters6494 3 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      My ambitions are more modest, but I'm working hard to present my completion of symphony number triple zero.

  • @vanhouten64
    @vanhouten64 3 ปีที่แล้ว

    Happy birthday David!

  • @ewmbr1164
    @ewmbr1164 3 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    Paraphrasing the late Queen Elizabeth I: There is only one pair of ears [mine], and the rest is tidbits. Happy brucknering to each and all! 😂😂🤗🤗

  • @antmanbee100
    @antmanbee100 3 ปีที่แล้ว +6

    Brucknerites are the Deadheads of classical music. Gotta love it.

  • @OuterGalaxyLounge
    @OuterGalaxyLounge 3 ปีที่แล้ว +4

    I've literally never cared about which edition of Bruckner I'm listening to. Don't care if its Nowak or Haas or Schwitzingdoodlebangerhoff. I only care if its Abbado, or Bernstein, or Wand or Karajan or Walter or Giulini, etc etc.

  • @TheCastlepoet
    @TheCastlepoet 3 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    David ~ That's a hoot, as so many of your video reviews and chats are.
    I recall reading Victor Carr's April Fool's review of the “Gunter Wand Commemorative Edition,” a box set that supposedly contained all of Wand's recordings of the Bruckner 9th, with a booklet in which Richard Osborne opined that Wand had intended to record the symphony nine times, each different from the previous one. Boy, was I excited!--until I calmed down and came to my senses.
    So yes, you could call me those beyond-crazy Brucknerians-or at least a sometime fellow traveler of some of them. In my travels in Brucker-Land, I've become personally acquainted with John Berky, and can attest that he's exactly as you describe him. But here's the thing: Not only do I know Mr Berky, but I've also been mistaken for him on several occasions. We bear some vague similarity to one another in height, physique, and hair style; we both wear glasses, and we both love Bruckner's music. But nobody who knows John Berky would think I'm him. As far as I know, no-one's ever mistaken him for me.
    Some examples: In Vienna, the manager of the hotel where we were staying during the Bruckner Tour of Austria once addressed me as “Herr Berky.” A few days later, in St Florian, a stranger came up to me and said “Hello John”--which happens to be my name too, which makes things even more confusing for me--”How are you? Don't you remember, we met at the Brucknertage a few years ago...” No, I don't remember you, because I'm not John Berky and I've never attended the Brucknertage. At the Bruckner conference in Oxford, a British Brucknerian struck up a conversation with me with the words “John, you have a wonderful website. Can I buy that Bruckner recording by so-&-so from you?” No, because I don't have a website. But you can call me John.
    Believe me, it easy isn't being John Berky, unless you're John Berky. But it's fun, if initially confusing, to be mistaken for him.
    ~ Cheers, John Drexel

  • @charlescoleman5509
    @charlescoleman5509 3 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    Although I love your April Fool’s reviews on Classics Today, occasionally I’m also fooled. Like when I caught the one Victor Carr did on Gunter Wand’s attempt to do nine recordings of Bruckner 9. He went into great detail about the first minute of the piece and how each recording of that section was performed. It was so well done, that I had no idea it was a joke. I guess I’m crazy too. 😄

  • @jesustovar2549
    @jesustovar2549 3 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    11:48 You know the 3 B's term to refer to Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, as there should be the 3 ERS: Wagner, Bruckner and Mahler.

  • @DavidJohnson-of3vh
    @DavidJohnson-of3vh 3 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    May I interest you in the semi-aleatoric bruckner 4th? The orchestra sections get to play all versions simultaneously. I happen to have the only recording available (conducted posthumously by Anton, himself).

  • @AlexMadorsky
    @AlexMadorsky 3 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    I think I'll spend Christmas Day devouring a fruitcake while listening to Remy Ballot's partial Bruckner cycle on loop. Relatives will happily quarantine themselves from me if Delta is still surging. Edited to add: not sure if there's a critical edition or urtext, but I know Rozhedestvensky and Nanut have recorded Bruckner 4 with cuts made by Mahler.

  • @kennethkleszynski1744
    @kennethkleszynski1744 3 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Heathkit--haven't heard that term in a long time. . . How about having every member of the orchestra determine which measure variants they'll play. Bruckner meets Ives. My brain hurts.

  • @NigelRamses
    @NigelRamses 3 ปีที่แล้ว

    I want to start a new service for constructing everyone's perfect symphonies. I'm going to call it Build-a-Bruckner.

  • @bbailey7818
    @bbailey7818 3 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    The Mengelberg prank was hilarious. Your remarks about the Bruckner edition of the 4th reminded me of Gardiner's programmable 3 disc Arkiv Messiah with ALL of Handel's many variant versions insertable at will.
    Likewise the Barenreiter Urtext score of Berlioz' Benvenuto Cellini with all of those separate systems, bars, pages for different versions (Paris 1, Paris 2, Weimar) which makes it nearly impossible to follow any given recorded performance unless you're extremely quick, agile and, irony of ironies, stop really listening to the music while you find the next set of measures or pages you need to flip to. Or use the pause function. This new Bruckner must be exponentially worse.
    How about using I Ching randomness to determine which form your Bruckner performance will take?

    • @Xanthe_Cat
      @Xanthe_Cat 3 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      That score of Benvenuto Cellini has a perverse logic to it after a while but was probably better dealt with by issuing three different full scores for P1, P2, and W. I dread to think what the orchestral parts must look like if they’re beset with the same nightmarish maze of insertions, omissions, cuts, ossia staves, and jumps backwards and forwards.

  • @richardwilliams473
    @richardwilliams473 3 ปีที่แล้ว

    Yes. I remember having to make sure the Nowak versions of Bruckner Symphonies were not confused with the other versions. It drove me crazy.I even remember Karl Haas on radio KKHI in San Francisco commenting on this dilemma .

  • @martinhaub2602
    @martinhaub2602 3 ปีที่แล้ว

    Heathkit....there's a blast from the past. Younger listeners might need an explanation.

  • @brithgob1620
    @brithgob1620 3 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    It's a shame I don't care for Bruckner's music. Working through his oeuvre trying to sort through all of the competing versions sounds like it could be an interesting hobby.

  • @barryguerrero7652
    @barryguerrero7652 3 ปีที่แล้ว

    Now just imagine the level of mayhem if they couldn't get the player's parts printed in time, and everyone had to read their part off an I-Pad (which is not that uncommon!). That would be fun.

  • @gregstanton7321
    @gregstanton7321 3 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    This is hilarious. I once forged a letter by C.P.E. Bach in which he described an instrument invented by his father, "translated" by Stephen L. Clark as "lap organ". This, in conjunction of a set of 18th-century plans, discovered in Leipzig, for a bellows-type instrument with a keyboard and a panel of buttons marked with figured bass, evidence that Bach had invented the forerunner of the modern accordion - certainly reason enough to consider performances of Bach's music on the accordion authentic. All this was posted to a facebook group called Pretentious Classical Music Elitists. Few got the joke, most were incredulous, and at least one person spent all night doing research on the internet, and subsequently demanded I produce my sources (to which I replied, "You can't find everything on the internet"). I would send the letter to you, but this very practical joke got me expelled from the group by a humorless moderator and I no longer have access to it.

  • @jodiehurwitz8089
    @jodiehurwitz8089 ปีที่แล้ว

    When will Mildred and Finnster make an appearance?

    • @DavesClassicalGuide
      @DavesClassicalGuide  ปีที่แล้ว

      They have. Look here: th-cam.com/video/aiJ1X8lfNS8/w-d-xo.html

  • @rtisom
    @rtisom ปีที่แล้ว

    This is endlessly informative and entertaining

  • @mr-wx3lv
    @mr-wx3lv 3 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Question, is there any other composer as complicated as Anton Bruckner?
    It's both funny and a shame that we don't really know what the composers final intentions were, of this amazing music.
    Great talk David... thanks...

    • @DavesClassicalGuide
      @DavesClassicalGuide  3 ปีที่แล้ว

      We know much more than the Bruckner crazies want us to believe.

  • @BriGuy1974
    @BriGuy1974 3 ปีที่แล้ว

    I think this has broken my brain.

  • @jacquesracine9571
    @jacquesracine9571 3 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    Sooooo disappointed. Really was ready to buy ‘1812 minus the cannons’. Wanted to use my own cannons that have been stored in my backyard for ages. Bummer.

    • @DavesClassicalGuide
      @DavesClassicalGuide  3 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      I'll make you a deal. You bring your cannons, I'll bring my carillon, and we'll meet in a parking lot somewhere and have at it.

    • @jacquesracine9571
      @jacquesracine9571 3 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      @@DavesClassicalGuide which city? I’ll have to apply for a permit.

    • @DavesClassicalGuide
      @DavesClassicalGuide  3 ปีที่แล้ว

      @@jacquesracine9571 Carson City, Nevada

  • @richardsauer7494
    @richardsauer7494 3 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    All these Bruckner editions... Who is paying for this?

  • @jensguldalrasmussen6446
    @jensguldalrasmussen6446 3 ปีที่แล้ว

    What a wonderful rant! 👍
    And now it is proven, indeed, and beyond reasonable doubt, that the deacons and archdeacons of the 'Bruckner Gemeinde' (i.e. the congregation of the true believers) are utterly bonkers!!
    Though, the venerable mr. Cohrs has created an entity, that perfectly teams in thematically with your Mengelberg April's fool: Music Minus One - a symphony without the composer!

  • @whistlerfred6579
    @whistlerfred6579 3 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Why not just slice and dice all of the movements, print them in module form, and allow the performers to choose at random what to play? Then we could change the subtitle from "The Romantic" to "Available Forms III"...

  • @hendriphile
    @hendriphile 3 ปีที่แล้ว

    I wish someone would make a modern recording of that wonderful edition with the cymbal crash in the finale… Or has someone already done that?

    • @DavesClassicalGuide
      @DavesClassicalGuide  3 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Sure. Lots of people.

    • @301268bmh
      @301268bmh 3 ปีที่แล้ว

      Jansons does it in his RCO and BRSO versions, which are relatively recent recordings of what is otherwise the 1878-80 version. The crash is essentially borrowed from the 1888 version, a practice that was more popular decades ago when performing the 1878-80 version. Karajan did the same thing in his DG recording.

    • @hendriphile
      @hendriphile 3 ปีที่แล้ว

      Indeed it has been done... in fact it’s been so long since I listened to my Jochum/BRSO version that I’d forgotten it’s right there!!

  • @HeelPower200
    @HeelPower200 3 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    Bruckner demonstrably got better as his career progressed. It is not like Brucknet peaked early. His revised and refined ideas are way better than his first drafts and early work in general. This is actually pretty disrespectful to Bruckner himself. Just play the better versions..Scraps and drafts are just not performance worthy.

  • @MusicMan-dv7jg
    @MusicMan-dv7jg 3 ปีที่แล้ว

    Do you think that this German historian is the same one who catalogued all of the species of palm trees in the world? You know - the scholarly Fronds List.

  • @josecarrero2933
    @josecarrero2933 3 ปีที่แล้ว

    The Cohrs "urtext" is demented. Conductors should stick to 1874 Nowak, 1881 (aka 1878/80) Haas and 1886 (aka 1878/80) Nowak. The 1888 texts are either spurious (Loewe/Gutmann and Mahler) or unduly influenced by Bruckner's colleagues (Korstvedt). The 1878 Volksfest Finale is a failure, albeit a rather interesting one. Regardless, it doesn't belong in the concert hall, and the handful of recording that we have of it suffice.

  • @johnlambert4595
    @johnlambert4595 3 ปีที่แล้ว

    Very nicely done!

  • @josecarmona9168
    @josecarmona9168 3 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Your Mengelbert review has reminded me a fake Musicweb review about Mahler's suposedly lost and newly found monumental violin concerto. It was a fake, but kept me searching the CD some few months.
    As for this Bruckner's 4th edition, I believe what editors really want is (using a famous Spanish expression) keeping on squeezing the cow to get more brucknerian milk. For me, it is really disrespectful for old Anton.

  • @william-michaelcostello7776
    @william-michaelcostello7776 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    What a scream

  • @xkarenina5555
    @xkarenina5555 3 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    20:10

  • @culturalconfederacy782
    @culturalconfederacy782 3 ปีที่แล้ว

    Love Bruckner's Fourth, but even I was getting confused by all of these critical and orch. text editions. What we need now, is a revision of the revision of the revision of the revised alternate version. That will keep you busy from here till eternity.

  • @dvdlpznyc
    @dvdlpznyc 3 ปีที่แล้ว

    my beautiful brucknerverse needs a “horowitz-version” where people either accept it or don’t, but if they don’t then it’s entirely on them and nobody else… it’s the need for official permanent validation while also eliminating all other versions from collective memory… that’s the damn problem…

  • @gideonels
    @gideonels 3 ปีที่แล้ว

    LMAO!

  • @patrickhows1482
    @patrickhows1482 3 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Volksfest should be dropped, it conjures up some ghastly Third Reich 'cultural event'. I see some of the Brucknerati are suggesting that the old, corrupt editions should count as valid versions, as that is how audiences heard them until 1945. The same thing happened to Wordsworth, the Cornell Wordsworth Edition includes every single revision and draft that he made. The Prelude takes up in its various versions four volumes occupying well over three thousand pages.

  • @theforceiswithme8804
    @theforceiswithme8804 3 ปีที่แล้ว

    Now...what? 🤣

    • @ewmbr1164
      @ewmbr1164 3 ปีที่แล้ว

      Die Allerneueste Vierte