Bruckner - Symphony 6 [Muti-Berliner Philharmoniker]This compact disc cost me £25 on an auction on Ebay!, yes those were the days when i had some decent money, and if i wanted something badly enough, i would throw a big bid at it, i was determined to win things, now i think my biggest bid would be £10, i'm more patient in waiting for a cheaper copy to appear rather than throwing money at things, i like the booklet front cover, lovely purple colour, with a flowing red 'Anton' for good effect, even the EMI angel logo looks great.
Bruckner's Symphony 6, in my mind seems to be Bruckner's 'forgotten' mature Symphony, certainly the one i know the least, so it's good to make amends with this today, surprisingly i found out it's actually Bruckner's own favourite Symphony!, hmmm.
Riccardo Muti is Italian, born in 1941 [now 69 years old], this disc was recorded in 1988.
On this listen, the third movement Scherzo caught my ear, for Bruckner it's a really short movement, about 8 minutes long, otherwise typical of Bruckner's scherzos, i believe Muti plays it extra fast, it feel it would have worked better being slower, it starts off with the cellos tapping the strings to create a beat [0:00+], it shows this on the video below, a nice effect, and the strings and woodwind have this nice little sweeping tune [0:03+], it's lyrical at first, but alternates with angry episodes on the brass, this 'cello beat' comes back again and again [1:03+ & 1:47+], there's a nice forte section [2:18+] that gets extra forte [2:24+], a nice powerful effect with the brass, then comes a refreshing middle trio section, something slightly different from Bruckner, it starts with hesitating pizzicato strings [2:39-2:51], with the horns adding a soft fanfare at the end, this is repeated a couple of times to great effect [3:07-3:19 & 4:20-4:33], then the last third of the movement is an exact repeat of the first third [5:09+], ending on those angry extra forte brass fanfares, a nice creative scherzo from Bruckner.
Here's Kubelik conducting the third movement on YouTube.
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