Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 (SACD review)

Manfred Honeck, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Reference Recordings Fresh! FR-713SACD.

The first thing you need to know is that any time you see the name Reference Recordings on a disc, you know you're going to get something pretty good. The second thing you need to know is that the present disc is a part of their "Fresh!" series, meaning the usual Reference Recordings team did not make it; RR is only helping to distribute and promote it. The third thing you need to know is that the production team that did make it recorded it live. Depending on your attitude toward live recordings, you may want to stop right there. This one, though, is, as I say, pretty good.

So, the album's subject matter is the Fourth Symphony, the "Romantic" Symphony, of Austrian composer and organist Anton Bruckner (1824-1896). It is possibly the most-popular piece of music Bruckner wrote, which means there is a surplus of competing recordings of it in the marketplace. The question is what makes this one by Maestro Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra any better than those from Klemperer and the Philharmonia (EMI), Bohm and Vienna Philharmonic (Decca), Jochum and the Berlin Philharmonic (DG) or Dresden State Orchestra (EMI), Wand and the Berlin Philharmonic (RCA), Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic (DG), Tintner and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (Naxos), to name a few of my favorites, or any number of others. That's what we'll explore.

Bruckner wrote his Symphony No. 4 in E flat major "Romantic" in 1874, revising it several times before his death. (Honeck uses the Nowak edition of the 1878-80 revision). The symphony's popularity is due largely to its abundance of Romantic, programmatic, dramatic, and spiritual qualities, which Maestro Honeck plays to the fullest 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.

The first movement offers Bruckner's vision of Nature, and his several scenic landscapes should remind us of how much the composer admired both Beethoven and Wagner. In the opening movement Bruckner wants us to see a morning breaking, the mists around a medieval castle-city finally giving way to dawn, whereupon that army of knights I mentioned above burst forth from the gates in a blaze of glory. Honeck does a pretty good job creating these mists, taking the first section slowly and deliberately. Then, he lets loose the big, grand theme quite energetically. Bruckner's continuous alternation of fast and slow passages can sometimes appear repetitious, but Honeck manages to transition evenly from one segment to the next, with a good control in both the lyrical elements and the more-momentous outbursts. It works out well.

The second-movement Andante is a serenade, night music representing a young lad's amorous but ultimately hopeless longings and expressions. To me, it always sounds vaguely elegiac, halfway between a nocturne and a march, the composer indicating he wanted a slow but comfortably moderate pace (quasi Allegretto). Here, Honeck coaxes some lovely sounds from the violas, providing the music a lonely kind of melancholy. The conductor takes it in perhaps a more leisurely fashion than I'm used to, yet it allows full expression of the lyrical elements (if losing a bit of forward impetus in the process). The result is that the music never quite attains the level of spiritual expression it could.

Manfred Honeck
Next, we have a lively Scherzo, which Bruckner teasingly called "a rabbit hunt," and which should build a proper momentum as it progresses. Honeck and his forces produce some lively hunting rhythms in this movement, along with a reasonably rustic feeling in the hunters' dance trio.

Then, there's the Finale, in which, as with the Scherzo, Bruckner again opens with a heroic theme, works into a more-idyllic second subject, and reworks them both into a closing statement. This movement begins rather ominously, with dark clouds overhead, which lead before long to a thunderstorm; however, the storm eventually breaks and gives way to variations on the symphony's heroic opening theme. Given the scope of the finale, Honeck has his hands full yet does a reasonably good job keeping the music flowing forward and the listener entertained (and not wondering when, in fact, the thing is finally going to end). Unfortunately for me, I still found the movement too long for my liking with its never-ending succession of false climaxes, and not even Honeck could quite warm me up to it.

Honeck is capable conductor, and while the present Bruckner performance may not go directly to the top of my list of favorite interpretations, it certainly places high. His approach to the Fourth Symphony is as pictorial, as emotional, and as tuneful as any you'll find, even if it's sometimes a little more leisurely than some competing versions and just misses their epic grandeur.

Producer and editor Dirk Sobotka, balancing and mastering engineer Mark Donahue, and recording engineer John Newton of Soundmirror, Boston made the album live at Heinz Hall for the Performing Arts, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in December 2013. They made the album for hybrid SACD playback, too, meaning you can play it in multichannel SACD or two-channel SACD (to which I listened) through an SACD player or in two-channel stereo through a regular CD player.

In two-channel SACD you'll find a very wide dynamic range, with the softest notes barely audible and the loudest notes almost overpowering. For the audiophile, this is a joy; for the casual listener, it may present a problem adjusting the volume setting for a compromise position that's realistic, listenable, and enjoyable. Nevertheless, once one settles in, one finds good, comfortable sound, a little forward and bright at the highest levels but generally warm and smooth, with firm body, a mildly resonant ambience, and fairly sharp definition. Now, if it weren't for that darned audience that always seems present. Thankfully, though, the engineers have edited out any concluding applause, albeit at the expense of the final note not quite fading out for as long it could.

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

Readers with polite, courteous, helpful letters may send them to classicalcandor@gmail.com

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"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa

"Their Master's Voice" by Michael Sowa