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	Bruckner: The Complete Symphonies Anton Bruckner, Eugen Jochum, ... EMI Classics, 2000 average customer review:based on 24 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

After listening and then reading about Maestro Jochum's growing up with this music and holding it to himself as he would the Bible shows his mastery of these works. My old criteria was to listen to a performance of the 9th as compared to Bruno Walter's 60's performance done for Columbia/Sony. Jochum blows him away and the Staatskapelle of Dresden is marvelous. Maybe not as sumptious as the BPO or PHO, but the brass!!! Oh, the brass! What wonderful a sound. Is it the cathedral or the section itself? Such power and such a beautiful, dark even mysterious sound. I loved it.

If there was a tiny weak spot it had to be the sixth. Maybe I just need to listen to it more. The construction of it seemed to be a little weak. As I say, it might be just me and I am willing to listen to it until it becomes more familiar to me. I had thought the fifth to be the 'quirky' one before, but Maestro Jochum brings about a different approach to the themes and juxtaposes them either slow or faster, softer or louder or much more expressive than the other recordings I have. The result is the most awesome and powerful performance of the lot.
To me, the fifth was his first great symphony and Jochum brings it forth as no other. The seventh, eighth and ninth are also so marvelous to almost be beyond describing.

I HAVE JUST ADDED THIS IN!! WHAT PLANET WAS I ON WHEN I LISTENED TO THE 6TH SYMPHONY THE FIRST TIME!!? How magnificent!! This could be the hidden gem in the whole lot! Bruckner was a monumental mover of blocks of music. That is the only way I can state this. The magnificent way he uses descending scales against ascending scales, and they seem to move upward together. I guess what threw me, the first time, was the melodic construction. The fifth was a curiosity until I heard the awesome, magnificent recording on this set. But, hearing the 6th for the third time now I think this is Bruckner's homage to Wagner. I thought I heard praises to the 'Ring' here and the 'Liebestod' in the adagio. Very beautiful music in this symphony. The finale is the most ecstatic expression, in my mind, of any of the symphonies, yet since I have received this set, these symphonies are the only music I listen to. His music is so holy, to me. A man's expression of ultimate love of the Creator (or whatever one calls him/her/energy/spirit-all of the above) and his effort to make universal music grasped by all lovers of deep, spiritual expression in music. His music is, truly, like no other composers' and it is worth the listening and re-listening to ingrain the inner movement it creates.

One of the reviewers says that if you have heard one Bruckner Symphony you have heard them all. That may be true and what we may be hearing is the composer's inexorable movement toward perfection and a cyclic expression of it. I seem to have heard threads of earlier symphonies in the later compositions, and it seemed to me to be a complete whole expression of them all. I hope that makes sense. We know that he was constantly revising his work and it works because his music, as idiosyncratic as it is, develops into a surprisingly coherent whole.

Bruckner's music is like no other's. I think that Sibelius may be the only one to approach the monolithic style of him. I read, one time, Bruckner's music being compared to other composers and the comment was that other's were composed to bring joy and whatever. Bruckner's was to move mountains and this set proves it.

I recommend this set the highest of any other that I have on this venue before. An absolute must for any library. Play it when you want to feel close to God or whoever you believe or worship because it will move your heart and soul.

Maestro Jochum, thank you for moving this humble man to his very heart and soul

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now on Brilliant Classics!!

Not so much a review, but a recommendation: these excellent recordings are now available for the price of only one fullprice cd on Brilliant Classics.
Buy this box, I would say.

Well allright, a small review.
Compared to Gunther Wand and Haitink, Jochum is much more dramatic and highlights the contrasts in the music.
It is somewhat less natural than Haitink's and Wand's approach, but to my ears it works well with Bruckner's somewhat "naked" structure: large and heavy symphonic moving blocks in an empty space.
Mahler's music for instance is already richly shaped by the composer, the music is filled with ideas and variation and therefore I usually dislike a personal interpretive reading, the music itself is already strongly structured.

With Bruckner's music a conducter's guidance works very well.
Jochum is powerful, dramatic and lyrical at the same time and listening to his performances I often get the impression that the music cannot be played differently. But to be honest: I have the same impression with Wand and Haitink, when listening to them.

"In general I rate Wand's and Haitink's readings higher, for a more natural approach of the music: Jochum can be too measured in the slow movements where he at times slows down too much at the cost of the music's flow, but these are minor complaints."

This I wrote at first and has been unchanged for a few weeks, luckily one is able to edit a review at Amazon.com and I can claim with confidence that Jochum's readings top those of Wand and Haitink.
Jochum phrases the music better and lets the orchestra better articulate.
With Wand the music is more or less undefined, I still like it that way, but Jochum's approach I like much better.

The playing is excellent, although the brass can be a bit rough in tuttis and sometimes they sound out of tune.
The sound good too: nice depth and clarity allover, maybe a bit aggressive at times in the higher registers.

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Outstanding set!

To win conducting Bruckner demands from a director several issues . You must have a first order orchestra ; second your rapport with the orchestra ; third Bruckner symphonies are a real challenge they are real difficult works because you have to maintain the sound all along the work ; fourth: the different mood changes and the running time of every symphony demands a serious analysis and commitment with the inspired and rapture melodic lines inmersed ; fifth : to underline and emphasize the sforzandos , the dramatic accents are almost an epic achievement ; sixth : since the undeniable influenc of Wagner in Bruckner you have to keep the balance and obviously to have studied Wagner in every work and consider the fact if Wagner would have lived twenty years more Would it sound in the brucknerian mood? and if all the previous factors were not enough , you have to consider the giant directors in Bruckner : Wilhelm Furtwangler , Hans Knappersbutch , Jasha Horenstein ,Carl Suricht , Horst Stein and obviously Eugene Jochum and the most remarkable Bruckner conductor in the actual times : Daniel Barenboim .
Jochum was a noble man and he had another important point to his favour : the orchestra : placed in the East Germany kept his sound due the isolation in the thirties forties and fifties . I underline this because the character and presence of similar orchestras as the Gewandhaus of Leipzig let obtain a pure sound ; and not a traditional vision .
This set is relevant in your collection because the standard level of every work is very high and often inspired . So it is easier for you to make a musical journey all the way.
I really recommend to you .

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A good, but not great, Bruckner cycle.

Ideally, I wanted to review the DG Jochum cycle, since I actually prefer that one, but it's NLA as of this posting, so I'll just make some comments about both cycles here.

Eugen Jochum may have been the greatest advocate of Bruckner, of the 20th Century. However, I have lived with this cycle, and especially the DG one, for many years now, and I have come to view his Bruckner interpretations as somewhat overrated, even in comparison with his "old school Bruckner" colleagues. Perhaps my opinion is a little skewed by overexposure, but I have other recordings I turn to more frequently that have not started to "wear" on me as much as some of Jochums. For one example, I am not, by any means, a "Karajan freak" (I have also come to view his last VPO Eighth, over which most people seem to be "ga ga," a bit overrated, as well) but I find his full DG cycle from the 70's and early 80's, for one, to be more consistently satisfying, with the exception of the first, fourth, and sixth, in all of which Jochum is clearly better, imo. I must say I do get tired of the cliches' about Karajan's performances being too "cool, polished, and sterile," and Haitink's being too "light," etc. These preconceptions, often based on preconcieved opinions about the conductors themselves, precludes people from really having to seriously consider their recordings, just as the opposite preconception that Jochum is THE Brucknerian of the century tends to make his recorded preformances somehow beyond reproach.

Based on Jochum's reputation, I eagerly awaited the DG cycle, back at a time in the late 80's when I was first getting into Bruckner when there were relatively few Bruckner recordings in print. Even on first listening, there were certain things about his interpretations that didn't sound right to me. Admittedly, at that time, I knew virtually nothing of the "old school," with its more flexible tempi, dynamics, and more dramatic approach, to Bruckner. Since then, I have become very well acquainted with recordings of the "old school" Bruckner conductors such as Schuricht (his 1943 Ninth is one of my ten favorites), Furtwangler (his 1944 Ninth might BE my favorite), Hausegger, Kabasta, Abendroth, Matacic; Walter and Horenstein's mono recordings, etc. etc...and I still don't find many of Jochum's interpretations to compare all that favorably.

One thing you can say with some degree of confidence about Jochum is that most of his interpretations are amazingly consistent over a half century of recordings. Compare his recordings of the Fourth and Seventh from the late 1930's to those from his later DG and EMI cycles, and they are remarkably similar, both in terms of timings, tempos, and phrasing. Two examples of "Jochumisms" that have come to grate on me a bit over time are: 1) As much as I love most of his Fourth, esp. the finale, which I think he "nails" better than any other conductor, I feel that he turns the andante quasi allegretto into an adagio (in general, I can never understand why many conductors insist upon turning this flowing movement into a dirge); 2) The slow tempo he chooses for the lovely "enchanted forest" motif (as I call it) that flows out of the beautiful intro of the Seventh, which ultimately steers the whole first movement toward a slow and stodgy tempo. Jochum's Seventh almost sounds like it starts out with two adagios. His first movement isn't excessively slow in terms of it's total timing (and I've noticed that many listeners pay too much attention to timings anyway), but in terms of it's lack of flexibility and flow: there are readings of this movement a minute of two longer (like Chailly, for example, although I think his Seventh is a bit overrated) that still have a better sense of ebb and flow to them. Some examples of sevenths I prefer to Jochum's are Sinopoli's; Karajan 70's DG; Inbal's; Wand's 70's Cologne recording; Furtwangler's 1951 BPO (Rome); Abendroth's 1956 recording; and Haitink's 70's recording.

Jochum's Fifth was one of the biggest disappointments of my Bruckner collection, esp. after all of the things I had heard about it's legendary status. Although I think his inner movements are just fine (except the slow movement of his 1938 Fifth, which I found a little too slow), I think he is too slow--and even more importantly not flexible enough--in the all important outer movements. But the "Jochumism" that grates on me the most, in ALL of his recordings, is his excessive stretching out of the coda of the finale, made even less convincing by the lack of a strong underpinning of timpani. Karajan (whose DG Fifth was my first, and is still my favorite, followed by Horenstein, Welser-Most, and Gielen) augmented this thrilling coda--Bruckner's best, even better than the Eighth's, if it's done properly--with an extra set of timpani, and very effectively. If any of you are rolling your eyes (esp. you "Karajan-bashers") at Karajan's use of extra timpani, remember that Jocum augmented the brass section for the famous chorale of the Fifth's finale...this is part of what the vanishing art of interpretation is all about. On the subject of timpani, one of the characteristics of the Bruckner "old school" was the ideal that the Bruckner orchestra started from the ground (bass) up, and needed a strong underpinning of timpani (too often missing in recent recordings), esp. in climactic moments: Furtwangler's recordings provided the best example of this; most of Jochum's recordings are surprisingly lacking in powerful timpani, and this is particularly exposed in his somewhat melodramatic lengthening of the Fifth's final coda.

In general, I find Jochum's Eighth and Ninth to be a bit terse, except for his readings of the third movement of the Ninth, which was consistently one of his best movements, esp. his Dresden recording. If his readings of 1-7--except, again, his 1,4, and 6, which I find generally excellent--tended to lack flexibility on the slow side, the outer movements of his Eighth and the first movement of his Ninths tended to lack flexibility on the fast side. One very notable exception, however, is his 1949 Hamburg Eighth, which is my very favorite Jochum recording, and perhaps one of my ten favorite Eighths overall. He gets everything right here, with a good amount of flexibility...which makes it even more puzzling to me that the outer movements of his later recordings of the Eighth were so terse by comparison.

As far as the merits of the DG cycle versus the EMI, again, there is very little to choose as far as interpretations: they are remarkably similar. The only difference that really jumped out at me was that the first movement of the Dresden Ninth was not only a little too terse, but strangely "herky jerky" in terms of some awkward tempo relations, which create more distraction than tension. Although I feel that the adagio of the Dresden Ninth is Jochum's most searching account of this movement, I still like the Ninth from the DG set a bit better.

In terms of recorded sound, again I'd have to give the nod to the DG cycle. The older DG recordings sound more natural to me, whereas the late analog EMI recordings are a bit too brightly lit, almost sounding like early digital in places. The seemingly endless permutations of packaging, repackaging, and recoupling of both of these cycles, and the individual recordings from them, has become a bit absurd, but at least it has made it very easy to pick up most of these recordings in used CD bins.

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One Of The Two Best "Complete" Sets

Surely no conductor was a more persistent advocate of Bruckner's 9 symphonies. Jochum did not record the early "Study Symphony" or the so-called "Nullte" (#0) Symphony - he felt that Bruckner wanted them left un-performed. He gave us the first "complete" set (1958-1965) on DG; this later Dresden EMI set surpasses it in some respects, and fails to match it in others. No complete set by one conductor is going to provide the last word on each symphony - some of them will be addressed better than others.

How does Jochum/Dresden's complete set stand up to its rivals? In my view, it's up against a weak field - its strongest competition comes from Jochum himself on DG. Both of Barenboim's (Chicago and Berlin) are very uneven. Solti is as subtle as a plumber's wrench. Haitink is too careful and lightweight. Wand is cool and not that well recorded. Tintner is heavy-handed, and his orchestras are provincial. Skrowaczewski is rather prosaic and has a second rate ensemble. Karajan has many admirers - but I am not among them: his interpretations, to me, sound sterile and uninvolving.

Jochum on EMI has, with Dresden, one of the world's greatest orchestras. His earlier set uses the Berlin Philharmonic in Symphonies 1,4 and 7-9 - the balance is with his own Bavarian Radio Symphony, which Jochum founded in 1949.

On the basis of sound alone, the average listener is likely to prefer the Dresden, making it perhaps the best complete set for a newcomer to Bruckner's music - it is well-played, in modern sonics, and none of the performances is less than competent.

However, the Berlin Philharmonic is outstanding and the Bavarian Radio plays well. I would give DG the prize in Symphonies 1, 2, 4 and 6, while Dresden/EMI is very slightly preferable in 5, 8 and 9. For 3 and 7, it's a toss-up, although I lean towards DG in the Third.

Jochum's DG performance of #1 is one of the two or three finest Firsts ever recorded: I think it's Jochum's finest traversal of ANY Bruckner Symphony. In #2, everything goes smoothly until the last movement, which I find a bit aggressive in both versions. The DG #3 remains one of the finest stereo versions. I prefer Jochum's mono 1955 4th with the Bavarian Radio (on American Decca LP's) to either of those in the complete sets: it simply sounds fresher, more rustic, and a little closer to the source.

With Symphonies 5-9, the competition from other performances is overwhelming. Jochum's is a highly polished Bruckner - others convey more of the rural Austrian composer's earthy side. To my ears, Jochum is outshone in the 8th and the 9th by conductors as varied as Furtwangler, Schuricht, Horenstein, and Asahina.

Jochum's is not the last word in Bruckner - but he is a very fine spokesman. Anyone wanting to explore Bruckner's symphonic world could hardly do better than either of these complete Jochum sets. The EMI has excellent performances in modern recorded sound; the DG has a few superior readings, but in sound that is a bit dated. Either set offers many hours of beautiful music making. [Update 7-27-07]: This set has been re-packaged as a super-budget offering from Brilliant Classics (ten discs, with the 1999 Skrowaczewski "Zero" thrown in as a filler). Copies of the Brilliant set were recently available on the Internet for $29.90 from Berkshire Record Outlet.

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5

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