The best ever, simply put.
BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 7 in E (Nowak edition); MASON BATES: Resurrexit – Pittsburgh Sym. Orch./ Manfred Honeck – Reference Recordings multichannel SACD FR757SACD, 77:45 *****:
Manfred Honeck has been slowly working towards it and has at last achieved it. Even though there are a multitude of great sevenths out there, I believe that this recording has topped them all. Let’s get the sound out of the way first; The sound/mirror people have continued their sterling legacy of presenting audio that actually matters (at least to many of us) in a fashion fully worthy of its topic. Width, depth, clarity, quality of luster, dynamic range, you name it, are well nigh perfect in every regard. The SACD is spectacular—rarely have I been so bowled over by any recording in terms of its emotional impact doled out in purely sonic terms, and even the CD-only layer is spectacular. Recordings are, after all, and have always been, an artificial construct, and although I am not entirely convinced by Glenn Gould’s prophecy of Mahler’s eighth symphony one day being heard to better effect on a state-of-the-art sound system than in person, this recording goes a long way in bolstering his argument.
But when the emotional element is magnified so brilliantly in Honeck’s discreet and innovative interpretation, the combination of the aural and recreative pack quite a punch. Though using, thankfully, the Novak edition, he does not hesitate to double a bass line an octave lower when he sees fit, or to give an emphasis to a particular dynamic, or speed up a tremolo for intensified effect in places you have never heard this before.
He also, as has been the case in many of his recordings, likes to superimpose a special invented programmatic element to help shape his conception. For instance, relying on Bruckner’s heavily Catholic devotional background, he imagines the center of the opening movement as a composed vision of the consecration of the Mass, the second movement containing elements of the grief over Wagner’s death (which happened during the composition of the second movement in 1883), or extending a pause in the last movement to be suggestive of a cathedral acoustic, adding to the liturgical nature of the reading. If this sounds like conductorial intrusiveness, it is—Honeck is decisively old school in this regard, and happily so in this age of brilliantly played and technically immaculate carbon copy recordings.
Anton Bruckner
The fourth and seventh symphonies are Bruckner’s most popular. His seventh was probably the best received, even though it took a while, and it too went through the usual revision roulette, but not as badly as some of the other symphonies, and the ones without the cymbal crash in the second movement should be avoided like the plague. Many regard Karajan’s final recording with Vienna in 1989 as the standard, but there are others (I prefer his Berlin DG recording) and the choices are many. But if you want an interpretation that is not only well thought out and actually documented in the booklet notes but makes complete sense and is played to perfection by what has to be the greatest symphony in the United States—yes, Pittsburgh, that is you—then look no further, as there is nowhere else to look.
As a bonus, Mason Bate’s intriguing and easily digestible Resurrexit adds a modern flavor to an already spirituality-intense program. This little ten-minute gem, composed as a sixtieth birthday gift for Manfred Honeck, is, boldly, a musical portrait of that greatest event in Christian history, the resurrection of Christ. Hardly a topic for ten minutes one might think, as other composers have either gone on for hours or ignored that particular portraiture completely, but on rethinking it I came to the conclusion that Bate’s brief essay gleans about as much as one dare with so profound and esoteric a topic. He uses a number of attractive, mysterious sections that hint to what is going on as one might fleetingly meditate on such a subject, letting the easter chant Victimae Paschali Laudes set the stage of the first hints of rising life. To my great surprise, and hearing this before checking out the notes, a semantron appeared, a long simple wooden plank hit by a hammer, used by Eastern Orthodox monks to call one another to prayer, followed by increasingly whirlwind measures of great excitement and fluid lyricism. A fine piece, and one I hope finds a place in the repertory.
There you have it. What reason could there possibly be to avoid this disc?
—Steven Ritter
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