There has never been, and probably never will be, a Bruckner cycle which is consistently satisfying. Each work poses its own particular problems, and a conductor who succeeds magnificently in one can totally miss the mark in another—it still surprises me how often No. 6 fails to come off. So much for the idea that Bruckner wrote the same symphony nine times.
Each of these three conductors has his special affinities. Comparing the Karajan with the old Haitink Philips cycle (nla), you will often find that where one stands out, the other is rather less impressive. Haitink is still unsurpassed in Nos. 1 and 2 (both long overdue for reissue), and his No. 3 (both the 1878 and 1889 versions—see page 1662) and No. 4 avoid Karajan's occasional over-ripeness. (Karajan's retention of a long-discredited adulteration like the octave violin doubling in 4/i, bar 47—1'37''—doesn't make any more sense even after long acquaintance.) But in No. 5, and from No. 7 onwards, Karajan is in his element. Jochum may be more intense or more seductive in certain passages, but it's Karajan who gives the stronger impression of symphonic wholeness. For this I can forgive Karajan his heaviness in 8/i: this is a performance which, unlike most of the competition, gets better as it goes along. There is perhaps no more impressive vindication of No. 8's finale than this.
Reservations aside for a moment, hearing the Jochum set (his second; I refer you to RO's review of the DG cycle in February 1990) was a valuable experience for a number of reasons. For one thing, despite his tendency to pull tempos about—and sometimes thereby to weaken the music's flow—Jochum runs Karajan very close in No. 9 (occasional brass crudity at climaxes does spoil the effect though) and makes a still stronger case for No. 2. I don't think I've ever heard a version of this symphony that makes it sound so Schubertian, and for this it is possible to overlook the edition's substitution of clarinet for high horn at the end of the slow movement (easier to play maybe, but...). More importantly, Jochum's highly expressive melodic shaping, though it can stray towards sentimentality, does point up what it is that Karajan sometimes lacks—phrasing that speaks. Compare No. 8/iii in the DG set with his later Vienna Philharmonic version ((CD) 427 611-2GH2, 10/89) and the latter seems so much more human: superb command of formal processes (so often Karajan's outstanding strength) is balanced by a telling sense of personal drama.
Nevertheless, of these three conductors, it is Karajan who is best able to present a Bruckner symphony as a single vision—and I mean vision: there's much more to his Nos. 5, 7, 8 and 9 than intellectual fibre. My final impression of the Masur set is of moments of insight combined with stretches of very low current indeed. The outer movements of No. 1 plod (you'd never guess from this that the finale is marked ''Quick, fiery''), as does the chorale-polka second theme of No. 3/iv. Like Jochum, Masur rises to greater heights in No. 9, but also as with Jochum the brass playing has a tendency to crudeness, and the recording doesn't always cope well with climaxes (the Jochum can sound over-loaded). And while I'm glad to see him choosing the Haas version in No. 8, he's nowhere near as persuasive as Karajan–and I don't see the reason for his adjustment to the penultimate bar (trombones a sustained G instead of C—G). What's wrong with the original?
So of the three, my choice is Karajan—though with growing reservations. Listening to Gunter Wand's most recent RCA Nos. 5 (see page 1662) and 8 ((CD) RD60364, 8/88) I feel more and more convinced that it is he who responds best to the structural and the personal in Bruckner. A Wand cycle on the level of his live re-makes (to date embracing Nos. 5, 6, 8 and 9)—or even only partly so—would certainly go to the head of my list. Failing that, however, the Karajan set still offers some of the most consistently impressive Bruckner recordings of recent times, and certainly four of the most powerful defences of Bruckner as a symphonic thinker.'