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| The Ninth is without doubt the most exciting addition to Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s Bruckner discography. In the present recording with the Wiener Philharmoniker (made during a concert in which the conductor spoke extensively about the work), Harnoncourt offers not only the three movements the composer completed, but also the fragments which would have made up the finale. Harnoncourt’s intentions here are not just pedagogic, but an attempt as it were to bring the listener into closer communion with the maxim of a composer of immense stature for whom "nothing exists that does not exist". Harnoncourt lends this, the very last music Bruckner was to write - but for a few extra weeks the composer would have finished the score - an unfathomable and revolutionary spirit that would previously have been unimaginable. The quality of this recording lies not in the coherent and ‘classical’ contiguity of a Bruckner exegete, but in the fractured, ruptured atmosphere of confrontation: Bruckner in the apparel of an anti-romantic figure, as a visionary, and a hoary modernist who in his times had hastened away and with whom it was impossible to keep pace. The live recording of the three complete movements is released as a SACD in 5.1 surround sound. |
