Anton Dolgov

Bruckner is one of those composers you either love or loathe. The trouble is, most people make up their minds only after hearing his symphonies. But Bruckner also composed some of the most original and profound church music after Bach, and although there are clear connections between the symphonies and the liturgical works, the musical voice is quite distinct. The connections with Rococo and Renaissance choral styles are much clearer – it’s surprising how well the shades of Haydn, Wagner and Palestrina get on with each other – and yet the music never sounds derivative or nostalgically archaic.

It could be said that Anton Eberl was Beethoven’s most important and significant rival in Vienna in the field of instrumental music.

Born in Vienna in 1765, Eberl established early contact with Mozart and they remained friends throughout his life. After a few relatively unsuccessful attempts to gain a foothold as an opera composer in Vienna, Eberl went to the Tsar’s court in St. Petersburg, where he mainly taught piano. In 1799 he settled permanently in Vienna, turned to the composition of instrumental music for orchestra and for the chamber hall, and suddenly gained public acceptance as a composer of great merit.

Anton Stepanovich Arensky and Sergei Eduardovich Bortkiewicz are hardly household names. Arensky’s delicious Piano Trio in D minor continues to keep its place on the fringes of the chamber repertoire, and the Waltz movement from his Suite for two pianos receives an occasional outing; otherwise nothing. Who has even heard of Bortkiewicz other than aficionados of the piano’s dustier repertoire?

Herbert von Karajan made Anton Bruckner’s mammoth 8th Symphony a center of his large repertory, recording it for release four times, in 1944, 1957, 1975 and finally in 1988, shortly before the maestro’s death. Karajan’ s emotional connection with the 8th is obvious and, in comparing the last two of these releases, I’ve been very impressed with how an aging conductor could re-invent his interpretations. As one can tell from these two Karajan performances and those from other musicians, the 8th can support many different approaches, with an almost kaleidoscopic array of musical and emotional elements revealing different colors as its components are played in different ways.

Anton Bruckner - Sinfonie Nr. 3 d-moll
Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks / Rafael Kubelik
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 278 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Audite # 92.543 | Country/Year: Germany 2005, 1962
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic, Symphonic

"…Still, the 1962 is not first rank for todays standards but is very good for the period. Recommended." ~sa-cd.net

For a long time, Anton Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony (together with his Second) was regarded as something of a “poor relation” in his immense symphonic oeuvre, even though the composer himself had moodily referred to it as his “boldest”. Over the decades, in view of its performance figures and recordings, this has changed significantly: The work has now secured itself a permanent place in the repertoire. The Sixth Symphony belongs to the creative process of the two preceding symphonies, the “Romantic” Fourth (1874/1880) and the Fifth (1875), and is now seen as an important preliminary stage in Bruckner’s last great upsurge that followed the composition of the “Te Deum” (the initial sketches of which date from 1881), and culminated in the sublime grandeur of his final symphonies, the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth.

Anton Bruckner - Sinfonie 0 "Annulierte" & 00 "Stundensinfonie"
Sinfonieorchester Aachen / Marcus Bosch
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 312 MB | Full Artwork: 72 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Coviello Classics # COV 31315 | Country/Year: Germany 2013
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic, Early 20th Century

"…A box set of the entire cycle was issued at around the same time as this release. Although Bosch’s fast tempos might make some of the individual movements less attractive, I suspect that, in its entirety, the cycle will be well worthwhile, especially for the sheer drama he draws from this music, the quality of the orchestra, and of the recorded soundscape, both from the acoustic itself and the SACD engineering. Of the individual discs, the early symphonies deserve the highest recommendation, the Second Symphony in particular, but also this, although chiefly for the Zero Symphony, by far the finest of the two compositions on the disc." ~Fanfare

The Naxos label's recordings of music by Anton Rubinstein fit in with its more general effort to revive late Romantic music that fell out of favor thanks to people who believed dogmatically in progress, or in nationalism, for Rubinstein was the most Western-oriented of Russian composers of the period, and some musicians have never forgiven him for it. Hard as it may seem to believe for a composer once so well loved, both the pieces included receive their premiere recordings here. The major one is the Theme and Variations, Op. 88, composed in 1871. Both Liszt and Busoni (who may indeed have been influenced by it) admired this work, and it is hard to understand how pianists could have let it fall into disuse. Although most of the variations are of a fairly conventional sort, the structure of the work is innovative…