The fact that Carl Schuricht bore a passing resemblance to Bruckner did him no harm at all. Though he was not just a 19th-century specialist of the old German school – he promoted Delius’s music and conducted a good deal of Bartok and Stravinsky – he is often remembered as a Brucknerian, not least for the late recordings he made for HMV with the Vienna Philharmonic of the Ninth (12/62), Eighth (12/63), and Third (11/66) Symphonies.
The recording of the Ninth was not well received in these columns when it first appeared in 1962 but, despite Deryck Cooke’s strictures about aspects of Schuricht’s rhythmic articulation, the performance acquired a life and reputation of its own. So much so that a year or two ago a facsimile of the original stereo LP was released in Testament’s series ‘EMI Vinyl Treasures Restored’. And rightly so. Despite a somewhat over-indulgent way with the ideas in the first movement’s vast second-subject group, Schuricht’s reading of the Ninth was tough, grainy, plain-spoken. It was also, in that 1961 studio recording, pretty frightening, with a finale which is on the rack from bar one.
It was an idiosyncratic reading, certainly, but one which found its perfect proponent in the ‘old’ unreformed Vienna Philharmonic with its warm but extremely articulate string-playing, its famously nasal oboe, slightly rickety clarinets, and gorgeous horns. The Bavarian RSO, which we hear on this new Orfeo CD, have far less to offer Schuricht, nor do they play particularly well for him. This despite the fact that Schuricht clearly went to Munich prepared to play the symphony rather ‘straighter’ than was his practice in Vienna. The Adagio is broader-paced, more conventionally mellifluous, and Schuricht eschews the unmarked but wonderfully menacing first-beat-of-the-bar emphases which he and the Vienna players provide in the pulsing string accompaniment in the second movement Trio. The fact is, the Munich performance barely scratches the surface of the music or Schuricht’s reading of it, where the Vienna recording has a kind of rough-and-ready coherence born of elements in the music-making which run fathoms deep.
The Bavarian Radio recording (mono only) starts dimly but is intermittently effective. Given the provenance, Munich’s famous Herkulessaal, one expects better than this, even in mono. By contrast, HMV’s Musikvereinssaal recording is thrillingly cogent. If you are interested in Schuricht’s Bruckner and still have the wherewithal to play LPs, the Testament disc is clearly the one to go for