Bruckner
Symphony No. 9
Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich/Paavo Järvi
Alpha Classics ALPHA1068 61:15 mins
Clip: Bruckner – Symphony No. 9 9 in D minor, II. Scherzo...
This is the third recording of Bruckner’s Ninth to have appeared recently, and the finest by a substantial margin.
Indeed, as Paavo Järvi suggests, his peerless Swiss ensemble ‘has everything needed for Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 – technically, musically, and in terms of sound'.
Impressive as they both are, neither François-Xavier Roth’s account with the Gurzenich-Orchester (Myrios) nor Jakub Hrůša’s Bambergers (on Accentus) can eclipse this spellbinding orchestral playing, nor Järvi’s clear-sighted yet spiritually chastening interpretation.
Amply reverberant yet clinically detailed, the spatial realism of this recording, with its massive dynamic range and pin-sharp instrumental focus captures the majestic solemnity of the superlative Zurich orchestra – one of Europe’s best, whatever they might think in Berlin or Vienna – to jaw-dropping effect, and Paavo Järvi has demonstrably winning ways with Bruckner, as his accounts of Symphonies 7 and 8 on Alpha have already affirmed.
Järvi’s Ninth seems to penetrate new realms of consciousness in a reading as intellectually searing and musically uncompromising as any I’ve heard, Karajan, Wand and Giulini included.
Like the greatest Bruckner Ninths on album, this one leaves the listener with the sense that the work is truly complete as it stands, despite being unfinished, and lacking the finale upon which Bruckner is known to have been working on the very day he died.
It’s worth recalling that the Bruckner scholar Walter Weidringer maintained that the Ninth bespeaks ‘a degree of completion which no longer seems capable of improvement.’
A sobering, self-abasing, yet toweringly magnificent performance. Michael Jameson
Video: Bruckner – Symphony No. 9 (Alpha Classics)