In an appreciative tribute to the four musicians who put together the ‘performing version’ of the finale featured on this gloriously played new version of Bruckner’s Ninth, Sir Simon Rattle observes that ‘there is much more Bruckner here than there is Mozart in the Requiem’. Although this is the ‘conclusive revised version by Samale-Phillips-Cohrs-Mazzuca (1983-2012)’ it would be unfair not to acknowledge a fine previous recording by Marcus Bosch with the Aachen Symphony Orchestra (Coviello), though at the time that recording was made the edition used hadn’t quite reached the ‘conclusive’ stage. And then there’s the latest (2010) revision of the 1981-83 William Carragan performing version that Yoav Talmi recorded with the Oslo Philharmonic for Chandos (3/87; Gerd Schaller and a worthy Philharmonie Festiva have also obliged: Profil, 11/11), not to mention Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s Vienna Philharmonic performance of fragments (RCA, 11/03) and many varied options that aren’t domestically available. There’s little doubt in my mind that, as presented here, the latest performing version of the finale seems more wholly conclusive than its predecessors, principally because of the way the team responsible deals with the symphony’s closing minutes.

Rattle’s performance is consistently involving. The vast arches and sudden climate changes in the Adagio third movement are particularly well handled, the central build-up towards the prayer-like passage for strings at 15'50" austerely inevitable, the desolate wind writing soon afterwards (and the strings’ response) utterly disorientating, while the final climactic dissonance, and the route to it, is shattering – though as Rattle points out the Adagio’s end sends out signals ‘which must be resolved by a huge finale’. But the really interesting aspect of this performance, an aspect that led to an initial sense of disappointment, is that, unless I’m mistaken, the decision on Rattle’s part to avoid overstating certain passages in the first movement was made in the light of the finale’s balancing function. His overall interpretative policy seems to have been: never too much too soon.

I’ve now listened to one or other of the ‘performing versions’ a number of times, and Rattle’s sense of conviction is going to make it very difficult for me to return to the three-tier option with a good conscience, even though, from a purely interpretative standpoint, its many historic representatives, from Furtwängler and Walter to Wand, Karajan and Celibidache, offer insights that are unique. The finale as presented here is a true summation, what with its noble chorale, tangled fugue, weathered linking passages and shocking restatements of music from earlier movements.

I can’t think of many recent releases that are more musically important than this. If you love Bruckner’s Ninth, you have a duty to hear it; and if you don’t as yet know it and learn it from Rattle’s recording, then you’re in a very privileged position. But therein lies a strange paradox. How will you then view recordings of the work without its finale, even the greatest of them? Purely as interesting historic documents? Perhaps. And another thing: how does the ‘completed’ Bruckner Ninth compare, as an effective performing version, with Cooke’s Mahler Tenth? Fully on a par, I’d say.