BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 4 in E-flat Major “Romantic” – Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/Wilhelm Furtwaengler
Pristine Audio PASC 254, 65:29 [avail. in various formats from pristineclassical.com] ****:
The Vienna Philharmonic had toured to Stuttgart with its constant guest-conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler (1886-1954) for this 22 October 1951 performance of the 1874 (rev. 1880-1888) Bruckner Fourth Symphony. Though captured in a particular sunny and blissful reading of the score, the Stuttgart audience insisted on rehearsing for their part as Violetta in La Traviata, coughing perpetually through the performance. Audio engineer Andrew Rose has corrected both the intrusive coughing and the uneven frequency response of the original recording, and the result supremely represents the kind of lyrical mysticism Furtwangler could generate in music very much his own.
Let me be clear: while I invoke the word “mystical” to describe Furtwaengler’s music-making, I do not mean that this performance drags in some self-indulgent bath of tremolos. The tempos can rush forward with startling volatility and vehemence, then pull back in pastoral repose, expansive and aerially poised. Bruckner himself–in a letter of 1880–supported a “medieval” notion of the symphony’s program as a kind of knights’ pageant, a combination of deep-forest hunt and mountain vision, a spectral search for the Grail. The Vienna strings’ upward scales simply shimmer with ecstatic anticipation of the clarion trumpets and convulsive rhythmic thrusts of the tuttis. The extended coda for the first movement literally cascades down a mountainside and upward once more for a most spectacular peroration, not a twilight of the gods, but an aurora for their glory.
The C Minor Andante makes an excursion into Wagner’s forest, wherein a chorale theme invokes a pantheism richly textured and extensive over a group of melodic periods, one of which culminates in a pilgrim’s march that swaggers above chromatically active strings and below fanfares to the right of Valhalla. The calm purity of the VPO cello line on its own warrants acquisition of this performance. Late in the movement the motion comes to a virtual standstill above plucked strings, the chorale weaving in ever more expressive modalities that approach Wagner’s Lohengrin in plaintive mystery. Furtwaengler then gathers up his various motives and colors and casts them into one glorious peroration, an autumnal pageant, an “eventide serenade” of crimson power. The royalty of expression advances with the hunting Scherzo, music in B-flat Major that Bruckner likewise a “people’s festival” in the spirit of Breughel. The spirit of Schubert proves no less nigh, especially in the luxuriant laendler caresses that saturate the drone-like trio section. The da capo becomes quite frenetic, and the VPO French horns and trumpets receive permission to vaunt their invocations not only to the woods, but to Thor himself.
A string ostinato and falling interval from the horns usher in an ominous finale in E-flat Major whose Gothic momentum can intimidate the unwary auditor. The solemn march that ensues transcends any “program” as such and contains conciliatory elements that fuse march, chorale, and polyphonic strategies in one sinewy bucolic mix. The VPO tympanist deserves mention, if only for the febrile tremors of both sensuous power and awesome terror he can inspire. The flexibility of tempo and the depth of orchestral color testify to a thoroughly prepared ensemble responsive to every dynamic impulse from their esteemed leader, here engaged in music of never less than colossal intellectual scope and heartfelt imagination.
— Gary Lemco
