When Karajan recorded early Bruckner with the Berlin Philharmonic he was inclined to lighten the string tone and secure a spare, even at times savage sound from the brass. Thus, though he opted to record the Third Symphony in the foreshortened and orchestrally distended second revision (1889), it sounded early. Barenboim makes no such concessions. Conducting the first revision of 1877, he brings the full weight of the Berlin Philharmonic to bear on the music.
Some of the playing has an astonishing recreative charge to it. In particular, the slow movement is played with great inwardness and expressive beauty. The orchestra’s dynamic command is awesome, from a full-throated fortissimo to a perfectly ‘heard’ pianissimo; yet it is a command that is put to exclusively musical uses. The sheer weight of sound is also used to telling effect elsewhere: in the fourth movement’s countrified polka where, almost as much as in Bohm’s splendid recording, there is a sense of “Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes,/Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth”.
As I pointed out last month when reviewing Roger Norrington’s over-quick but none the less enthralling recording of the original 1873 text, post-1873 there are problems of integrating tempos in both Scherzo and finale. This is largely because of Bruckner’s own altered perspectives: his changes to patterns of accentuation, and revised tempo indications. Barenboim copes well enough in the finale, but the obviously slower tempo for the third movement trio makes the music sound lumpy and cross.
Elsewhere, the weightiness is a mixed blessing. There are times when the playing is astonishingly fiery in the Furtwangler style. (I am thinking here of the way Furtwangler addressed the finale of the Sixth Symphony.) Yet it can seem coarse and overweight, too blatant for a work that, for all its oddities, still has its roots in the classical tradition.
Norrington’s performance communicates very clearly, in sound and motion, this classical element; as does Inbal’s, though with better judged tempos.
Haitink’s recording, which like Barenboim’s uses the 1877 text, is also beautifully schooled rhythmically and sonically. Under Haitink, the Vienna Philharmonic play the music with an elegance and power that would suit, say, the Ninth Symphony of Schubert. Nor, despite having to work under studio conditions, does Haitink yield to Barenboim in terms of the drama and excitement of the piece.
In the final analysis, Haitink’s performance is the one which will perhaps better stand repeated hearing. It is also superior technically. Teldec’s sound is strong and vivid, but such things as the sudden acoustic decay at fig. M of the finale (5'39'') suggest an uneasy mix of live music-making and trickish editing, where the Haitink recording, clear and unexaggerated – a Volker Straus classic – is a model of its kind.'