Anton Bruckner

Does he have an Insta?

I searched for top Bruckner compositions/recordings, and some suggestions appeared. You'll find one such google search result in the link here.

Unless you're a teenage girl, OP, you're not Bruckner's type.

You may find it most economical to go with a box set of all his symphonies. Dave Hurwitz, editor-in-chief of classicstoday.com opines on the best and the worst.

I love Bruckner, much more than the whinier Mahler. His 4th symphony is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever composed. You can get totally lost in its dreaminess. I don't think any composer used horns quite as well (except, perhaps, Sibelius).

Bruckner, Saint-Saens, and Delius are the most underrated and under-performed composers.

Symphonies 4 and 7 are the ones to start with.

Who here had him?

R2 I have Googled where to start, but I thought I would ask DL and real people their favorite pieces and recordings.

He was a very insecure and easily-persuaded person which contrasts with the soaring musical cathedrals that are his works.

R9 was he hide under the table insecure like Cole Porter?

R10, he was “Your symphony would be better if you did this and he’d agree to it and agonize over rewriting a movement to please his critic/‘friend’” insecure.

I absolutely love his "Te Deum" in C major. Beautiful piece.

Get/listen to the Barenboim set with the Berlin Philharmonic on Warner Classics.

[quote] I absolutely love his "Te Deum" in C major. Beautiful piece.

R12 My first exposure to Bruckner’s music was as a violinist in my university’s symphony orchestra when we performed his “Te Deum” in the early 1970s. I was dumbstruck by how repetitious his music was. The first violin part was more like a beginner’s etude of repetitive short figures modulating up and down the scale. I crossed out “Te Deum” at the top of the first page of the music and wrote “Tedium” (oh, I was a caution in those days).

The overall effect of the piece was impressive, but I found Bruckner’s repetitive orchestrations annoying to deal with. I’ve also played his 4th and 8th symphonies, and the orchestrations for the strings are also very repetitious.

In later years, I started thinking of Bruckner as a forerunner of “minimalist” composers (such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass) in that they wrote in short, repetitive musical figures that they modulated.

I'm starting to listen to No. 7, conducted by Karl Bohm/Vienna. If I find I like it a lot, I'll listen to Barenboim/Berlin. I also have it by Karajan/Vienna and Furtwangler/Berlin.

I listened to No. 4 yesterday. I preferred Bohm's version over Barenboim's. I'm not musically savvy enough to tell you why. All I know is what I like. I've also liked Bohm's Mozart, so I may be predisposed to liking Bohm.

I'm not disposed to like Barenboim because I once bought an LP box set of his Mozart PCs and though they looked brand new, they were absolutely ridden with surface noise.

As heard on a NPR classical music review program:

[quote] Barenboim - such an ill-formed conductor.

After Wagner, Bruckner was the Nazis' favorite composer.

Maybe that's why I only like Bruckner a little, r17. I never really collected him the way I have Mahler and Schubert. I don't know if I associated him with Naziism, but I never loved Bruckner.

I listened to No. 7 by Bohm, and I'd be happy to have it as my only copy. But I didn't feel like listening to the same symphony by other conductors, and I moved to No. 9, conducted by Gunter Wand.

No. 9 is my favorite Bruckner symphony, I believe (though No. 7 is also a great piece of music). I saw a number of recommendations for Giulini's version as the best No. 9. Even though I have three others, I'm tempted to buy it.

You might find some of these on YouTube or Spotify.

I love his famous expressway!

I have tried, but it's either church music that Byrd or Tallis did better or blustery sexless overblown plods.

Was he a HOMO?

R22, from the Wikipedia entry at OP:

Bruckner was a lifelong bachelor who made numerous unsuccessful marriage proposals to teenage girls. One such was the daughter of a friend, called Louise; in his grief he is believed to have written the cantata "Entsagen" (Renunciation). His affection for teenage girls led to an accusation of impropriety where he taught music, and while he was exonerated, he decided to concentrate on teaching boys afterwards. His calendar for 1874 details the names of girls who appealed to him, and the list of such girls in all his diaries was very long. In 1880 he fell for a 17-year-old peasant girl in the cast of the Oberammergau Passion Play. His interest in teenage girls seems to have been motivated by his fear of sin; he believed that (unlike older women) he could be certain that he was marrying a virgin. His unsuccessful proposals to teenagers continued when he was past his 70th birthday; one prospect, Berlin hotel chambermaid Ida Buhz, came near to marrying him but broke off the engagement when she refused to convert to Catholicism. He suffered from periodic attacks of depression, with his numerous failed attempts to find a female companion only adding to his unhappiness

[quote] His interest in teenage girls seems to have been motivated by his fear of sin; he believed that (unlike older women) he could be certain that he was marrying a virgin.

What a freak.

R24- Aren't we all?

Wow. Good insights.

DL is always classy

R17, but what does that mean? Wagner earned his sinister reputation the honest way: he really was a virulent anti-Semite whose beliefs infiltrated his work. I don’t think there’s anything inherently fascistic about Bruchner.

Absolutely love him. A humble, insecure man who was capable of otherworldly music. R17 is an idiot.

How badly do you want to "get into him?"

Where's your medal, R18?

Fuck you, R5!

R31 has mastered the art of the intelligent yet witty comeback.

I found this recording of Bruckner's Eighth and it is pretty good!

The Sanderling 7th on Hanssler is quite wonderful and yes so is the Giulini 9th on DG. I love the Karajan DG '75 8th. If you get the original cd release used(readily available and cheap) you get a very wonderful Seigfried Idyll as a filler.

The Te Deum is one of the great classical pieces. There are a number of great performances. Look at Karajan and Jochum.

Thank you! Keep them coming

What about Bruckner Blvd.?!

Don't forget Bruckner's motets:

'Os Justi' sung by Tenebrae Choir (A-List British singers.)

Classy

OP here.

I have been listening to a lot of Bruckner, and WOW. He is such a great composer. Why is he not mentioned with the greats?

Bruckner is one of the most underrated of all composers -- probably because he doesn't have one of those stand-out pieces that most of the famous composers have that keeps their name on the radio all the time -- but also because too many people deem him to be a second-rate Mahler, who is probably the most over-rated composer.

R41 Mahler is a great composer, but yes, every symphony now does Mahler.

Bruckner does have the famous Eighth Symphony.

Guess what? Bruckner and Mahler were both great composers. This doesn't have to be a stupid binary. The opinions of those who are hyper-partisans and use one to shit on the other are not to be taken seriously.

Start with the 7th - Bruckner's most lyrical symphony. I think it's a better introduction to his work than the usual pick of the 4th. Many great recordings of this - Karajan, Klemperer, Bohm, etc. etc.

I loved him on In Living Color

Otto Klemperer was mentored by Mahler when he was very young and he played him often. He was asked later in life who was the better composer. He said most definitely Bruckner but he owed Mahler so much.

Bruckner's First Symphony is great, too!

Claudio Abbado conducts the Vienna Philharmonic

There’s a good recorded Te Deum with Kathleen Battle