Anton BRUCKNER: Sinfonía nº 8 (ed. Haas). Orquesta Filarmónica de Viena; Pierre Boulez. Deutsche Grammophon 459678-2 [76'14"]

Performance: +++++     Sound: +++++

Boulez has been a Bruckner admirer since the early Sixties. But as to what a Boulez Bruckner performance might sound like, most of us have had to wait till now to find out. This live recording was made four years ago in St. Florian � the Augustinian monastery where Bruckner was educated and which became his spiritual home. The music obviously loves the acoustic � spacious but not muddy (it is surprising how much detail emerges). But the biggest surprise for me was the performance. Boulez still has a reputation for chilliness, but this is intensely expressive, and very exciting. Bruckner exciting? That's how some of his contemporaries found him, and Bruckner once described himself as a 'fiery catholic', in contrast to the «cold, protestant» Brahms. It's partly the sharply articulate rhythms �you've only to look at Bruckner's scores to see how important rhythmic clarity was to him (though you'd never guess it from some recordings); but it's also thanks to Boulez's remarkable sense of pace. After starting the first movement on the slowish side, he soon settles into a more mobile pulse. Tempo isn't rigid, but the fluidity �a slight acceleration here, a pulling back there� makes sense; and the performance as a whole is a glowing vindication of the longer Haas version of this score (musicologically questionable, but musically lucid, as Boulez acknowledges). Best of all was the finale: lively, sometimes surging forward impetuously, yet never compromising the music's grandeur. No, it hasn't the nobility or the sense of mysterious underlying calm Gunter Wand revealed in his live NDR Symphony Orchestra recording. But a Bruckner Eight which can be so gripping from start to finish deserves the full star-rating.

Boulez's track record as The Iceman Cometh in Mahler's symphonies, recorded with a group of high-profile, gilt-edge global orchestras, had not prepared me for the majesty of this Bruckner, from the 1996 centennial commemoration in and around Linz. Only after the fact did I remember that he was chosen in 1976 to lead the centennial production of Wagner's Ring in the mother-church at Bayreuth. And what I heard of it, irrespective of Patrice Chareau's then-controversial production (set in Wagner's lifetime, with a neo-Shavian spin on soul-less capitalism), was very impressive. He cut out all the Teutonic bloat �liposuction, if you will� that had accumulated after Kaiser Richard's demise in 1883 (and has been put back in since).

Nothing's been cut in his Bruckner Eighth except Leopold Nowak's pedantic, postwar-2 edition that uses the composer's final version, where surgery amounted to amputation, especially in the finale. Boulez went back to Robert Haas, the International Bruckner Society's first editor, who managed to get tied (whether or not deserved) to the Nazi jackboot. Haas was a Bruckner pragmatist concerned with coherence and �to the extent possible, given all the editions that clutter up the composer's canon� expressive eloquence. Listen to the Nowak if you're interested, then to Haas, and take Nowak back to your lending library (or to an exchange store).

Everything here works, is right � even the acoustic of St. Florian's Abbey near Linz, where Bruckner requested that his remains be buried under the organ. The Vienna Philharmonic goes back to the composer's own time, even if its then-members hated his music to the extent of refusing to play it, or when they did play it, played it badly. Bruckner today is as much a cultural heritage as the Strauss repertoire of J, J and J, televised worldwide every New Year's Day (with egregious mispronunciations by tiresome Walter Cronkite). For Boulez the orchestra produces a rich yet not fatty sound, impeccably disciplined � not only proprietary but I'll venture to say incomparable.

There is no dawdling but nothing is hurried. I have heard more heart-rending versions of the Adagio �for me Bruckner's greatest single movement� but Boulez doesn't slight its ecstatic piety or billows of laic sound. All of which is to say that I can jettison several versions taking up valuable room in a limited space.

Boulez � I'd never have guessed. Luckily, webmeister Benson sent it on with other review fodder, even though I'd said don't bother. Easily one of Y2K's outstanding releases.

Reading through Pierre Boulez's collection of essays, Orientations, the reader will find a single entry for Bruckner. It is in the essay, «Mahler: Our Contemporary» and Boulez writes only that «Bruckner and Mahler appear as the Castor and Pollux of the symphony». How extraordinary, therefore, to find Boulez not only conducting a Bruckner symphony (the only one he has ever conducted) but also giving us a performance of quite astonishing power. Both the first and second movements seethe with an electricity I have not encountered elsewhere, and the third and fourth movements are beautifully expansive without being in the slightest bit self-indulgent. It is a remarkable disc.

The genesis of this recording is fascinating. After a concert with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1992 Boulez was asked by the orchestra's then managing director if he would consider conducting Bruckner's Eighth in the Abbey Church at St Florian in September 1996. Boulez initially thought of turning down the offer, but later accepted the engagement and after rehearsals in the Musikverein moved onto Linz where the concerts were recorded on 21 and 22 September at St Florian. When Boulez was asked about his first experience of Bruckner he believed that he had first heard the Eighth under Otto Klemperer and the Philharmonia Orchestra in London in the 1960s � a performance, Boulez states, left a formative influence upon him. Klemperer's daughter, Lotte, however, is certain that the performance Boulez heard was actually of the Fifth symphony. To this day, Boulez remains uncertain to whom he owes his first experience of Bruckner's greatest work.

Like Günter Wand, Bernard Haitink and Herbert von Karajan before him, Boulez plays Bruckner's Eighth in the Haas Edition. Boulez's own conviction in the 'rightness' of Haas is based largely on the 'unnecessary' cuts that Nowak made to the score (notably in the Adagio and Finale), but he also feels, perhaps incorrectly, that the Nowak edition sometimes destroys the symmetry and logic of the structure. Contrary to Boulez's views on this, I would argue that Haas' restitution of the 10 bars in the Adagio (at mm 209-18) [16'55 to 17'33 in this performance] actually reduces, rather than enhances, much of the unresolved tension that has developed in the preceding bars. If you listen to a great performance of the Nowak (and Guilini is superlative here) the tension is never allowed to dissipate for a moment. Boulez is surely right, however, in ignoring the 1887 version's imperfect ending to the first movement (fff) in favour of the Original Version's ppp. The moment is so subliminal as to give real cogency to the work's overall structure: it not only recalls the peaceful coda of the Adagio, but also of the triumphant closing pages of the Finale.

The Adagio is a superb place to start in analysing Boulez's recording for he brings to it a superbly integrated dynamic range. Perhaps because Boulez is such a great conductor of Stravinsky and the Expressionist composers the harmony of this movement's orchestration is often more tense and anticipatory than we are used to. This is most evident in the great tonal ascent to the climax itself [19'40 to 20'07], where Boulez shades the distinctions between Bruckner's dynamic markings so explicitly as to make them newly minted. In contrast, the close of the Adagio is printed in the most delicately subtle of fabric - it almost dies away like a final heartbeat. It mirrors the opening of the movement more closely than normal and gives it the perfect 'symmetry' Boulez sees in the Haas version. None of this would have been possible without the staggering refinement of the Viennese strings which seem to spin warmth and tension in equal measure.

In contrast to most conductors, Karajan and Wand included, Boulez takes both of the opening movements at a cracking pace. Even though he takes the first movement almost two minutes faster than Karajan the complexity of texture and rhythmic prominence remain totally intact. The sparseness in the writing is still there (although only Celibidache gives the single notes an unparalleled transparency). The C minor ending is almost poised on the bridge of impossibility so perfectly attuned are the Vienna strings in balancing the ppp writing. Boulez takes the second movement Scherzo at a similar pace - although he allows tremendous space for the Trio to emerge so the triadic stillness takes its effect. The single trumpet call is a glorious moment.

This is such a symphony of two halves that only the very greatest conductors can reach the Finale and make it work. Boulez's is a major achievement �even following on from his profound Adagio. The opening accelerandi to the Finale is gloriously sustained with horns breathing fire through the most phenomenally articulated string figuration. The long crescendi develop beautifully as the tension is gradually wound up, and the shading of the dynamics and thematic clarity are perfectly judged. One of the problems with Furtwängler's otherwise extraordinary performance is the wild oscillation in the sonic intensity of the orchestral playing. Listen to Boulez at 7'05, where lower strings are as burnished as mahogany and how he controls the entry of the flute at 7'18 and how by 7'25 the playing is just enveloped in the most perfectly graded pianissimo. It is a moment Furtwängler and others (notably Jochum) scramble. By the time we approach the coda, Boulez is already in his stride. Rather uniquely for a modern day interpreter of Bruckner Boulez does add a visceral quality to the coda's preface - but it is also handled with exquisite beauty by the orchestra. As it starts from 17'28, the string figuration is noticeably faster paced than we often hear and by the timpani's entry at 18'28 the performance has moved from solemnity to a gripping majesty. The coda itself, starting at 19'43, moves from beautifully balanced strings to the most astonishingly graded forte on brass, with the orchestra at full tilt, bringing the symphony to its triumphant conclusion.

Single disc Bruckner Eighths are less frequent nowadays than we might expect. Part of the reason for this is that Bruckner's tempi markings are not explicitly stated in the versions most conductors use (Haas or Nowak). As such, it is almost impossible to say, outside the main tempo indicators for movements �such as Allegro moderato for the first, or Adagio for the third� what remains the ideal pace for a great performance of Bruckner's Eighth. Eugene Jochum's EMI Dresden Eighth (on a single disc) is an example of a performance that falls very flat. Not only is it disfigured by abrupt and sudden changes of pace, it is also dynamically corrupt with brass playing that makes one shudder. Celibidache, on the other hand, takes Bruckner's tempi at such a slow pace that many find it hangs fire when in fact it is so revelatory as to be well ahead of its time. Boulez crosses both of these boundaries �his Adagio contains some of the most astonishing examples of ritardando I have heard from this conductor� and he does so magnificently.

There is no doubt that Boulez' Bruckner Eighth falls into that very select category named «great recordings» - worthy to stand beside recordings by Karajan (Vienna Philharmonic), by Celibidache (Munich Philharmonic) and by Guilini (Vienna Philharmonic). There is also no doubt that this recording would not have been the great one it is without the playing of the Vienna Philharmonic who are simply magnificent throughout and who are given a quite superlative recording by the DG engineers. Boulez is quoted in the booklet notes as saying, «...from the very outset, I accepted that I would undoubtedly get more from the orchestra than they would get from me». It is a rare perception, but true nevertheless, and sets the seal on what is a landmark recording in both the Boulez and the Bruckner discography.