Bruckner: Symphonie No. 9 (Marris Janson) (CD, Br-Klassik)

Moving and authentic: Bruckner’s ninth as a fragment: It seems that the ninth is a limit. Anyone who wants to go beyond that has to go. Those who wrote a ninth were too close to the afterlife, so Arnold Schönberg oracle about Mahler, who had died without ever having heard his Ninth Symphony. Bruckner is also said to have been afraid of the fatal number: I may not even start the Ninth, I trust it. Nevertheless, very soon after the Eighth Symphony was finished, he began with the first drafts. Overall, the work dragged on over a long period of time and had to be interrupted again and again due to the deteriorating health of the composer. Finally, Bruckner died while working on the fourth movement; the masterpiece dedicated to God remained unfinished. The three-movement torso is of course extremely impressive even without a finale. Bruckner’s Ninth is now an essential part of the late Romantic symphonic repertoire. In January 2014, Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra presented the original version of the three completed movements to the Munich audience in the Philharmonie im Gasteig for discussion. The slow movement does not look bad in its current position and helps the symphony to a worthy conclusion. What more could one want than this swan song, which oscillates between suffering and promise and floats away as a vision of peace and quiet? The recording of that concert event in Munich is now being published by BR Klassik: the exemplary interpretation of one of the essential compositions of the symphonic repertoire in its original version.