Another edition of Bruckner's Third Symphony?
Your readers will be equally interested and appalled to think that I’ve had the temerity to have a go at compiling my own version of a symphony which exists in more than enough versions already, but having spent a large part of my working life assisting living composers in bringing their works to fruition (copying, editing, ghost-orchestrating) I thought it might be interesting to apply this experience to Bruckner. As your readers well know the third is the symphony that Bruckner revised the most, and there are basically three versions of it, 1873, 1877-8, and 1889, as well as sundry revisions of the second movement. The original version of the symphony was for a long time unknown; when it surfaced in the1970s conductors began to realise that possibly it was at least as good as either of the later versions. The integrity of the 1889 version has been a matter of contention for a long time; the influence of the Schalk brothers is clearly discernible; they were more practical orchestrators than Bruckner ever was but some of their compositional suggestions seem to be a long way from the Bruckner of the original. With this year being the Bruckner bicentenary I thought it worthwhile to have another look at the work; clearly if you choose play one of the ‘authentic’ versions you are implying that you’ve rejected the other two (unless you are Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, who recorded all three versions of it!) and I’ve made my own conclusions, the results of which I’m conducting in October. Essentially my version is the original version with cuts (which may only be two bars of silence at a time!), and some reference to the later versions if the same material appeared to be worked out better latterly – it’s disappointing that when Bruckner revised the work for the last time in 1889 he appeared to ignore his original version completely. At one point I’ve slightly reordered the musical material (naughty I know, but I think that my solution to this particular problem is as good as anything the composer came up with) – I’ll let the enlightened listener find out where this has happened! Leaving aside the question of whether anyone should mess around with this symphony further (I’ve made that decision!) I hope I’ve ended up with is a decent piece of music. I think the exercise has been worthwhile and I hope Bruckner would not be outraged: my intention has been to examine what he left us and try to make something which works in performance without losing the interest of the audience. As a conductor, keeping an audience full of Bruckner novices fully engaged in the symphonic argument has to be the first priority; with a professional symphony orchestra in a German speaking country I may well opt to conduct the original version, for the purposes of the orchestra and audience at my disposal this coming October I hope I’ve made some reasonable musical choices. | ||||||
