In the United States it is back-to-basics. After the lotus-years of the 1970s and 1980s, the Kapell-meisters are in town: Dohnanyi in Cleveland, Masur in New York and now Sawallisch in Philadelphia. And not before time, some would say.
The Philadelphians have always had their special sound, of course, nurtured and lovingly preserved down the years by Stokowski, Ormandy and Muti; and to judge by this fine new Bruckner Fourth it is something that Sawallisch will not willingly forego. Indeed, the genius of this particular reading lies in its Protean quality, the very way the sound is so interestingly adapted and applied.
The Fourth is an odd work. Popular, certainly, but popular for certain specific moments: the mistily romantic opening, the fine hunting Scherzo (rather erratically voiced here by some of the supporting wind players) and the finale's magnificent peroration. As for the larger structure—well, it is a work that undergoes something of a sea-change after the Scherzo. The finale does not so much round off the work as propose the kind of grounds on which it might originally have been built. Which is where Sawallisch's reading, and the Philadelphians' realization of it, is so interesting.
Apart from one passage midway through the slow movement, where the mood darkens and the music mysteriously broods, the first two movements can have an almost straightforwardly classical feel. This seems to be Sawallisch's view. The Philadelphia playing here is lucid and clean-limned—the feel of ''clean stonework'', to borrow Robert Simpson's helpful phrase.
How different is the finale! Here we are deep in the Wagnerian forest—though I have rarely heard a performance of the Fourth in which this dramatic change of mood is so graphically registered. ''First make your palette'', Karajan used to say. To judge by this performance, the orchestra has several palettes ready-prepared which Sawallisch has used to brilliant effect in this reading. After the clean stonework of the first three movements, the finale is a Wagnerian revel, Stokowski-style.
Of course, it might all be chance: a different session, a different day, a different mood among the musicians. But somehow I don't think so. The shift is too closely attuned to the musical infrastructure for it to be a purely random phenomenon. It certainly took me by the ears. What sounded at first light like just another Bruckner Fourth has proved to be anything but. The recording is glorious.'