I am beginning to feel a sense of “gradual attrition” as I work my way through the Warner box set of the recordings made by Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart “rules the roost” in this collection with eleven CDs allocated to operas preceded by nine instrumental albums. Joseph Haydn, who outlived Mozart, followed in the collection with six CDs, accounting almost entirely for late symphonies. Franz Schubert then was given an account of all of his completed symphonies on four CDs.
That made for a generous share of “serious” music. As a result, the next three CDs definitely lightened things up for the attentive listener. They accounted for Johann Strauss II with a complete account of his best-known operetta, Die Fledermaus occupying two of the CDs. These were preceded by shorter Strauss selections, beginning with the overture to The Gypsy Baron, and followed by what amounted to a selection of “bonbons,” concluding with Strauss’ best-known Opus 314, “The Blue Danube.”
Cover design for Anton Bruckner: The Collection (from the Amazon.com Web page for this box set)
I have now listened to the following two CDs, each presenting a symphony by Anton Bruckner. Bruckner was about a year older than Strauss. They were both Austrian but could not have been more different! Strauss appealed to listeners with his keen sense of brevity, while one of the adjectives I have previously encountered in writings about Bruckner has been “expansive.” That expansiveness can be experienced in the two major collections I already have acquired, the 23 CDs in the Profil release, Anton Bruckner: The Collection, and the Naxos release entitled simply The Symphonies, consisting of “only” eighteen CDs.
The two symphonies in the Warner collection are relatively early and consecutive. The more familiar of them is WAB 104, the fourth symphony in E-flat major, given the title “Romantic.” The other is its immediate predecessor, WAB 103. This one also has an associated title, “Wagner Symphony;” but I am almost certain that I have not previously encountered that name! However, the title refers to the fact that Bruckner presented the score to Richard Wagner and then asked permission to dedicate it to him. That said, the Wikipedia page for the Bruckner symphonies serves up an “afterthought” about WAB 103 that deserves repeating: “One factor that helped Wagner choose which symphony to accept the dedication of was that the Third contains quotations from Wagner's music dramas, such as Die Walküre and Lohengrin. Most of these quotations were taken out in the revised versions.” The recording in this collection is the 1877 revision, which is often known as the “Leopold Nowak Edition,” named after the musicologist who edited Bruckner’s scores for the International Bruckner Society.
While these two symphonies may have been composed early in Bruckner’s career, Harnoncourt’s interpretation makes them both certain to appeal to the attentive listener.
