Est 1923

Bruckner Chamber Works

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Anton Bruckner

Label: Vivarte

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 76

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: SK66251

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
String Quintet Anton Bruckner, Composer
(L')Archibudelli
Anton Bruckner, Composer
Intermezzo and Trio Anton Bruckner, Composer
(L')Archibudelli
Anton Bruckner, Composer
Rondo Anton Bruckner, Composer
(L')Archibudelli
Anton Bruckner, Composer
String Quartet Anton Bruckner, Composer
(L')Archibudelli
Anton Bruckner, Composer

Composer or Director: Sergey Rachmaninov

Label: Hyperion

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 78

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: CDA66703

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
Liturgy of St John Chrysostom Sergey Rachmaninov, Composer
Corydon Singers
Matthew Best, Conductor
Sergey Rachmaninov, Composer
''Bruckner is long, he takes time'', says Anner Bylsma in an interview on page 16; not exactly controversial, but it is important in understanding his, and his ensemble's approach to the Quintet. The first movement in particular is more spacious than any other version I can remember. But there is more to it than tempo. Nowadays there seems to be a widespread idea that slowness equals profundity—that all you have to do in Bruckner is hold back the beat and cultivate a suitably opulent sound. What matters here is the subtlety of phrasing and fineness of the shading, giving vitality and inner intensity to patterns that can easily sound repetitive, especially at this speed. And until this performance I hadn't realized how much of the Quintet is marked p, pp or ppp; L'Archibudelli show how magically suggestive so many of the quiet passages can be and how important it is to respect those dynamic gradings.
Listening to the Raphael's version for the first time I was particularly impressed by their handling of the Adagio. Well of course that movement is the centrepiece of the Quintet. In one or two places—especially the wonderful slow, sad winding down of the coda—they get as close as any other group to the measure and emotional core of this music. But L'Archibudelli achieve something else: they make the work as a whole sound as unified and sublimely purposeful as the best of the symphonies. The adjustments of tempo in the finale feel effortlessly logical: in the Raphael's version they can be more like awkward gear changes—a sure sign that something isn't quite right. The Raphael also opt for the shorter version of the finale coda, with its sudden fff eruption; they attack it with vigour, but it feels crude after the spontaneous build-up achieved by L'Archibudelli in the later, expanded version. And listening to the Raphael again in the first two movements, I find that what at first felt like impetuousness, ardour, now feels to me like relentlessness, even ruthlessness: the fortissimo passage in the 'B' section of the Scherzo is surely over-projected (how much more believable that ff sounds on L'Archibudelli's gut strings) and in the pp passage that follows there is another textual problem. The Novak edition reading (followed by L'Archibudelli) has the first violin pizzicato and the second bowed staccato—in the Raphael version both are pizzicato, and the crossing violin lines are hard to distinguish.
As for coupling: the ten-minute Prelude from Strauss's Capriccio for string sextet is a more substantial utterance than Bruckner's 22-minute student Quartet—though the latter, with its hints of Mendelssohn and rather more obvious debt to Haydn, is beautifully played, and there is more than one pre-echo of greater things to come. I found L'Archibudelli's performance of the Intermezzo (a later substitute for the Quintet's Scherzo, written to appease the doubtful violinist Hellmesberger) a shade disappointing—expansively paced, like the Quintet, but somewhat short on charm. Still the Quintet itself is central, and for its structural revelations—and sheer musicality—I'd put L'Archibudelli's version even higher than the fine Alberni version on CRD (though that would remain a recommendation for anyone allergic to gut strings). Both new versions are well recorded: the spaciousness of the Sony sound suits the Quintet especially well, the more obviously 'chamber' textures of the Quartet perhaps less so.
A word of warning: despite what the jewel-case says, L'Archibudelli offer the Intermezzo alone, not with the Trio, so—as equally regrettably, in the Raphael version—you can't play the Quintet using this track as substitute for the Scherzo. It's not a major problem, though the experimentally minded may rightly feel a little aggrieved.'

Bruckner Chamber Works

String Quintet

Intermezzo and Trio

Rondo

String Quartet

Rachmaninov Liturgy of St John Chrysostom

Liturgy of St John Chrysostom

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