When Chekhov revised and rewrote his play The Wood Demon, he called it Uncle Vanya; when Bruckner revised and rewrote his Symphony No. 8, he called it Symphony No. 8.
I make this somewhat approximate analogy because this latest addition to Georg Tintner’s Naxos Bruckner cycle is not what most people will take it to be. Naxos’s labelling – Bruckner Symphony No. 8 (1887 version, ed. Nowak) – is perfectly accurate, but is it really fair to expect superstore browsers unversed in the finer points of Bruckner editions to know that this is the first – interesting but, to all intents and purposes, superseded and invalidated – version of the Eighth?
It does not entirely surprise me that Tintner has chosen to record this earlier version, since he has done so before: in 1982, with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada (Jubal – nla), at much the same time as Inbal recorded it for Teldec with the Frankfurt RSO. The Inbal was the better played – still is, in fact: the playing of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland is careful rather than involved and there is at times a conspicuous lack of weight in the string department.
It is a pity, therefore, that we cannot have Tintner’s new recording of the quaintly named Symphony No. 0, Nullte, on its own. The work was composed before, during, and after the First Symphony. It has a gracious, exquisitely crafted first movement, a cheekily ill-tempered Scherzo and moments (the third movement Trio and the finale’s prefatory bars) which might have come from the pen of one of Russia’s aspiring young contemporary symphonists.
As his fine recording of the Second Symphony recently demonstrated (5/98), Tintner has a real feel for early Bruckner, and this performance, too, is stylish and beautifully scaled.'