There are currently 37 recordings of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony in the catalogue. With a Beethoven symphony this might be no surprise. But Bruckner? In one sense, I suppose, it is encouraging. Yet have we not reached a point in the history of the gramophone when most new recordings of central repertory works are surplus to requirements? Do we really need three more Bruckner Sevenths?
That said, even now, something can come along that is remarkable: an historically important recording preserved in first-rate sound. I am increasingly inclined to think that Karajan's 1989 Vienna recording of the Seventh is the kind of benchmark performance and recording that will be sought out by discriminating collectors for decades to come. And it has to be admitted that inadequate recording compromises many of the 37 extant versions. Famous recordings by conductors like Horenstein, Rosbaud and van Beinum can no longer be counted as front-runners. Indeed, one can rule out on technical grounds a recording as recent as Karajan's 1971 Berlin version for EMI.
But what of the three new contenders? One is a clear disappointment and another is difficult to assess. The third, though, is exceptional: a version that probably is worth adding to any shortlist.
The clear disappointment is Wand's latest account of the symphony, recorded live in Hamburg's Musikhalle in March 1992. The virtues of Wand's Bruckner are well known and it is inconceivable that he should conduct a performance that is not touched with potential greatness. On this occasion, though, things don't entirely cohere. The North German RSO is not quite at the peak of its form and the recording has a slightly recessed quality that puts it a division lower than recordings made by DG for Karajan in Vienna or Sinopoli in Dresden. It is also interesting comparing Wand's new version with his 1980 Cologne recording. There is no perceptible improvement in playing or recording and there are places when Wand has not refined his reading, merely changed it.
Barenboim also has an earlier, 1980 recording to his credit, made in Chicago for DG (9/80—nla). Now he has the richer-toned Berlin Philharmonic at his disposal and a recording that is as spacious as the new RCA/Wand but altogether more powerful. It has to be said that Barenboim's is a much more gripping performance than Wand's. Despite slower tempos and some wayward fluctuations of pulse, Barenboim's determination to convince us of the integrity of his view is never in doubt. The Berlin playing is exceptionally robust, though many details (for instance, the cello and bass line in the finale's Haydnesque first subject) are more cleanly, less cumbersomely realized than they were in Barenboim's Chicago recording where the players were inclined to attack individual notes like boxers going for a punchbag.
That said, I don't think this new Bruckner Seventh is as satisfying as Barenboim's very fine Bruckner Fifth for Teldec (3/93). In the Seventh climaxes are nobly built—superbly structured and felt from within—but down in the valleys of Bruckner's invention where the sun never shines Barenboim is inclined to brood more darkly than most. What's more, his judgement of tempo relationships in the finale has become, if anything, even more eccentric. No conductor on record drops the tempo back for the A flat chorale at fig. C more markedly than he. Furtwangler, Wand (in 1980) and Dohnanyi all make a similar percentage drop, but their starting-point is quicker than Barenboim's. What we have from Dohnanyi, for instance, is a delightfully alert alla breve that brings out well the movement's initially impudent, foxy character.
In his new Dresden recording for DG, Giuseppe Sinopoli takes a more integrated view of the work than Barenboim. Sinopoli's is a powerful, expressive, intellectually rigorous account of the score which the Staatskapelle Dresden realizes with the kind of unassuming splendour that used to be the Berliners' prerogative before self-preoccupation set in during the 1980s. If anything, the Dresden orchestra plays better for Sinopoli than it does for Blomstedt. Certainly, in terms of a clear realization of the score's inner and outer detail, this is the best of the three new recordings, both technically and orchestrally. There is some occasional spot-lighting of solo instruments by the DG engineers; but by and large one is grateful to be given the kind of exact and finely documented inventory of Bruckner's score Sinopoli provides us with.
Sinopoli's reading differs from Karajan's, not so much structurally, as in the nature of the advocacy. The younger man, rightly, is passionate about the piece. He takes us by the sleeve in a way that the elderly Karajan would regard as a breach of musical decorum. Sinopoli's account of the scherzo is extremely powerful, Karajan's quieter less pressured. (This also has something to do with the Musikverein acoustic where brass players never need to force.) The results achieved by both Bohm and Karajan with the VPO in their later years often proved inimitable simply because everything is alive and vivid and naturally in place, nothing needlessly spelled out.
So does Sinopoli displace Blomstedt as a leading recommendation alongside the 1989 Karajan? Perhaps though both blot their copybooks at the very end. With Blomstedt there is a massive slowing in the symphony's coda. Bruckner's marking at the start of the coda is plain enough: a tempo. So why is it so few conductors observe it? Sinopoli also holds back, but less outrageously. He is undone by a different failing. The all-important brass hosannas and thematic counterpointing on the final two pages are all but drowned by an impressionistic blur of high-lying fff violin writing. On the 1989 Karajan recording not only are textures crystal clear, the a tempo is also meticulously observed: the peroration sailing jubilantly in without a trace of bombast or pomposity.'