Tuesday 18 August 2020, BBC Radio 3 @ 3.35 p.m.
Recorded at Royal Albert Hall on 09 September 1995
A concert too early for a Classical Source review, so here are some fresh words from yours truly on what was Günter Wand’s final BBCSO Prom. Wand (1912-2002) was a notable interpreter of Bruckner’s Symphonies, and this No.8 (in its 1890 revision, as edited by Robert Haas) was as expectant, eloquent, serene, resolute (ebbing and flowing naturally integrated) and visionary as anything I heard him conduct by this composer, painstakingly prepared and responded to with fidelity, not least from the brass players – striding in the Scherzo, intensely devotional in the Adagio (using of course Haas’s longer publication, whereas Leopold Nowak accepted a damaging/jarring cut), and with the Symphony’s ultimate coda being a Stairway to Heaven.
I was there and I agree entirely. This was a performance of greatness, Wand had a deep understanding of Bruckner. His last such performance in London was of No.9 and that was also a magnificent interpretation. I can’t forgive Nowak for making a later edition of No.8 and hacking out all the bits of music that Robert Haas had painstakingly restored following their removal by Bruckner’s contemporary advisors and editors. Worse still Nowak actually re-used the original Haas printing plates and altered them to fit his own ideas then published them as his own edition. Well there are still conductors who, like Wand, are faithful to the music’s true intentions and deserve to be praised for it at their every performance.
May I inquire which version the 1887 version represents in the scheme of things?
The above comments imply Nowak changed the Haas detrimentally. The review mentions Wand used the 1890 version edited by Haas, later changed by Nowak.
However the Naxos/Tintner recording states the 1887 version is by Nowak. Are we saying Nowak later changed the Haas revision of 1890 because Haas had changed his earlier work from 1887?
Is clarification availability please?
Generally I prefer the first versions of all the Bruckner symphonies as personified in the Naxos/Tintner cycle, a magnificent achievement.
The problem is not quite as complicated as Edward Clark fears. Bruckner wrote the Symphony in 1887 and Tintner has made an excellent recording of it. Bruckner then made major revisions and the 1890 edition made significant changes to the first two movements but left the most of movements 3 and 4 alone. In publication Bruckner’s ‘advisor’Josef Schalk made – or persuaded Bruckner to make – cuts and alterations to his revision mainly in the last two movement. The Nowak edition largely reproduces this revision of a revision.. Robert Haas however had already restored the music that had been cut – he therefore more closely represents Bruckner’s intention in making his changes. The 1887 version is indeed edited by Nowak and is excellent – but this is not the Nowak score of which Colin Anderson was (rightly) complaining.
Thank you very much for illuminating this series of changes/revisions made to the 8th Symphony.
I can now continue to enjoy the 1887 version under Tintner.
If I may add the one example where I change my opinion of my enjoyment of the the original versions comes with the Fourth Symphony where the revision is clearly an improvement containing as it does Bruckner’s most famous movement and justifiably so. Not necessarily, of course, his “best” movement. For that we can each decide for ourselves!