Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 “Romantic” (SACD review)

Marek Janowski, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. PentaTone PTC 5186 450.

With the Fourth Symphony Maestro Marek Janowski and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (Orchestra of French-speaking Switzerland) complete their recordings of the complete Bruckner symphonies. The question at this point, I suppose, is why? If this performance of the Fourth Symphony is any indication, the affair seems rather ordinary. I mean no disrespect, but there is little about Janowski’s interpretation or the orchestra’s playing that appears any better or any different than most anybody else’s, and I can think of at least half a dozen other recordings of the Fourth I like better. Be that as it may, Janowski’s Fourth is competent almost to the letter, so there is little to complain about. If you already own his other recordings in the series of nine symphonies, you will no doubt enjoy this final installment as well.

Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) wrote his Symphony No. 4 “Romantic” in E flat major in 1874, revising it several times before his death. (Janowski chose to record the Nowak edition of the 1878-80 revision). The symphony became probably the Austrian composer’s most-popular piece of music, due largely to its abundance of Romantic, dramatic, programmatic, and spiritual touches. However, there are so many recordings of it available, some of them by very prominent conductors and orchestras like Eugen Jochum and the Berlin Philharmonic (DG), Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic (DG), Gunther Wand and the Berlin Philharmonic (RCA), Otto Klemperer and the Philharmonia Orchestra (EMI), Karl Bohm and the Vienna Philharmonic (Decca), Georg Tintner and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (Naxos), and the like, it would take a very distinguished newcomer to make a dent in the competition. For me, Maestro Janowski doesn’t quite make it to the top of the pile.

Anyway, as you may recall, the composer tells us what each of the movements represents, from knights riding out of a medieval castle through the mists of dawn to the sounds of the forest and birds, to a funeral, then a hunt, complete with horn calls, and then a brilliant culminating summation. Bruckner was a profoundly spiritual man, and his symphonies illustrate the point, with the Fourth Symphony being the most programmatic of all.

In the first movement, we have Bruckner's vision of Nature, and his several scenic landscapes remind us of how much the composer admired both Beethoven and Wagner. Janowski captures the opening grandeur of the music pretty well, although he doesn't transition into the more tranquil material like the "Magic of the Forest" and "Birdsong" as well as I've heard from other conductors. With Janowski it's more all of a piece. Perhaps that was his intent, intentionally to minimize the contrasting elements of the first movement and make the music more seamless. I'm not sure that was Bruckner's intent, but I can't say I disliked it. Janowski does end the movement on a powerful note, however, which helps make up for any possible laxness earlier.

The second-movement Andante should sound at least vaguely elegiac, halfway between a nocturne and a march, at a slow but comfortably moderate pace (quasi Allegretto). Janowski takes it in leisurely fashion, allowing full expression to the lyrical elements yet rather losing a bit of forward impetus in the process. The music never quite attains the level of spiritual expression it should.

Following that we find a lively Scherzo, which Bruckner teasingly called “a rabbit hunt,” which should build a proper momentum as it progresses. Here, the conductor does go full bore, appropriately, the horns blasting away splendidly. And this time, Janowski does point up the movement's contrasts in sharp relief. The orchestra, too, sounds fine, if a little thin in the overall richness department. I doubt anyone would mistake this ensemble for the Berlin or Vienna Philharmonics, but it does its job with a minimum of fuss.

Lastly, in the Finale, as with the Scherzo, Bruckner again takes the heroic opening theme and the more-idyllic second subject and reworks them into his closing statement, although he keeps it more cheerful. As though finally warming to the subject, Janowski gives the finale a grand send-off. It nicely unifies the previously executed themes without any too-obvious references or backward glances. It's Janowski's Finale that highlights the performance, and he brings the symphony to a close in a swirl of powerful, loud and quiet, motifs. Unfortunately for me, I still found the movement too long for my liking with its never-ending succession of false climaxes, and not even Janowski could ameliorate that condition.

As I say, Janowski's performance is perfectly serviceable, if not always inspiring.

Producer Job Maarse and engineers Erdo Groot and Roger de Schot recorded the symphony in Victoria Hall, Geneva, Switzerland, October 2012. The disc comes in a hybrid Super Audio Compact Disc stereo/multichannel format, playable in stereo on any ordinary CD player and in stereo and multichannel from a SACD player. The sound has a good sense of ambient bloom, even in the SACD two-channel layer to which I listened. I would imagine the sound to open up even further in multichannel. There is also a good impact to the dynamics and a fairly wide stereo spread. Midrange transparency, frequency extremes, and orchestral depth, while not quite being in the audiophile range, are more than adequate.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

Meet the Staff

Meet the Staff
John J. Puccio, Founder and Contributor

Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on the Big Jon and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.

Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing for the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.

Karl Nehring, Editor and Contributor

For more than 20 years I was the editor of The $ensible Sound magazine and a regular contributor to both its equipment and recordings review pages. I would not presume to present myself as some sort of expert on music, but I have a deep love for and appreciation of many types of music, "classical" especially, and have listened to thousands of recordings over the years, many of which still line the walls of my listening room (and occasionally spill onto the furniture and floor, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife). I have always taken the approach as a reviewer that what I am trying to do is simply to point out to readers that I have come across a recording that I have found of interest, a recording that I think they might appreciate my having pointed out to them. I suppose that sounds a bit simple-minded, but I know I appreciate reading reviews by others that do the same for me — point out recordings that they think I might enjoy.

For readers who might be wondering about what kind of system I am using to do my listening, I should probably point out that I do a LOT of music listening and employ a variety of means to do so in a variety of environments, as I would imagine many music lovers also do. Starting at the more grandiose end of the scale, the system in which I do my most serious listening comprises Marantz CD 6007 and Onkyo CD 7030 CD players, NAD C 658 streaming preamp/DAC, Legacy Audio PowerBloc2 amplifier, and a pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers. I occasionally do some listening through pair of Sennheiser 560S headphones. I miss the excellent ELS Studio sound system in our 2016 Acura RDX (now my wife's daily driver) on which I had ripped more than a hundred favorite CDs to the hard drive, so now when driving my 2022 Accord EX-L Hybrid I stream music from my phone through its adequate but not outstanding factory system. For more casual listening at home when I am not in my listening room, I often stream music through the phone into a Vizio soundbar system that has tolerably nice sound for such a diminutive physical presence. And finally, at the least grandiose end of the scale, I have an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom II Bluetooth speaker for those occasions where I am somewhere by myself without a sound system but in desperate need of a musical fix. I just can’t imagine life without music and I am humbly grateful for the technology that enables us to enjoy it in so many wonderful ways.

William (Bill) Heck, Webmaster and Contributor

Among my early childhood memories are those of listening to my mother playing records (some even 78 rpm ones!) of both classical music and jazz tunes. I suppose that her love of music was transmitted genetically, and my interest was sustained by years of playing in rock bands – until I realized that this was no way to make a living. The interest in classical music was rekindled in grad school when the university FM station serving as background music for studying happened to play the Brahms First Symphony. As the work came to an end, it struck me forcibly that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and from that point on, I never looked back. This revelation was to the detriment of my studies, as I subsequently spent way too much time simply listening, but music has remained a significant part of my life. These days, although I still can tell a trumpet from a bassoon and a quarter note from a treble clef, I have to admit that I remain a nonexpert. But I do love music in general and classical music in particular, and I enjoy sharing both information and opinions about it.

The audiophile bug bit about the same time that I returned to classical music. I’ve gone through plenty of equipment, brands from Audio Research to Yamaha, and the best of it has opened new audio insights. Along the way, I reviewed components, and occasionally recordings, for The $ensible Sound magazine. Most recently I’ve moved to my “ultimate system” consisting of a BlueSound Node streamer, an ancient Toshiba multi-format disk player serving as a CD transport, Legacy Wavelet II DAC/preamp/crossover, dual Legacy PowerBloc2 amps, and Legacy Signature SE speakers (biamped), all connected with decently made, no-frills cables. With the arrival of CD and higher resolution streaming, that is now the source for most of my listening.

Ryan Ross, Contributor

I started listening to and studying classical music in earnest nearly three decades ago. This interest grew naturally out of my training as a pianist. I am now a musicologist by profession, specializing in British and other symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. My scholarly work has been published in major music journals, as well as in other outlets. Current research focuses include twentieth-century symphonic historiography, and the music of Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Malcolm Arnold.

I am honored to contribute writings to Classical Candor. In an age where the classical recording industry is being subjected to such profound pressures and changes, it is more important than ever for those of us steeped in this cultural tradition to continue to foster its love and exposure. I hope that my readers can find value, no matter how modest, in what I offer here.


Bryan Geyer, Technical Analyst

I initially embraced classical music in 1954 when I mistuned my car radio and heard the Heifetz recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. That inspired me to board the new "hi-fi" DIY bandwagon. In 1957 I joined one of the pioneer semiconductor makers and spent the next 32 years marketing transistors and microcircuits to military contractors. Home audio DIY projects remained a personal passion until 1989 when we created our own new photography equipment company. I later (2012) revived my interest in two channel audio when we "downsized" our life and determined that mini-monitors + paired subwoofers were a great way to mate fine music with the space constraints of condo living.

Visitors that view my technical papers on this site may wonder why they appear here, rather than on a site that features audio equipment reviews. My reason is that I tried the latter, and prefer to publish for people who actually want to listen to music; not to equipment. My focus is in describing what's technically beneficial to assure that the sound of the system will accurately replicate the source input signal (i. e. exhibit high accuracy) without inordinate cost and complexity. Conversely, most of the audiophiles of today strive to achieve sound that's euphonic, i.e. be personally satisfying. In essence, audiophiles seek sound that's consistent with their desire; the music is simply a test signal.

Mission Statement

It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.

When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.

So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job. --John J. Puccio

Contact Information

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"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa