In which we chart our course from Beethoven's visionary symphonic adagio to the great symphonic adagios of Bruckner and Mahler

(And we run smack into the dread Ninth Symphony snafu)

Maestro Furtwängler will get us from Beethoven's sublime symphonic adagio to Bruckner; then Carlo Maria Giulini will carry us on to Mahler.

BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125:
iii. Adagio molto e cantabile


Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Wilhelm Furtwängler, cond. EMI, recorded live in the Festspielhaus, July 29, 1951

Berlin Philharmonic, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. DG, recorded in the Philharmonie, Feb. 1989 & Feb. 1990

by Ken

Last week, you may recall, "Our ongoing Seiji Ozawa remembrance sidetracked me into some aural pondering of the symphonic adagio." I'm afraid we're not going to get much farther today than scouting the route, but that still leaves us in for some remarkable music.

You'll note that in last week's post I've upgraded the audio clip of the 1951 Furtwängler Beethoven Ninth, and this week we've heard it again, paired with Carlo Maria Giulini's performance, and that duo will escort us to -- in fact, all the way through -- Anton Bruckner's symphonic adagio-ing, to his final Adagio, the last movement he composed, the Adagio of his Ninth Symphony, whose intended finale he ran out of either time or inspiration to "complete."

The sound of Furtwängler's 1944 Bruckner 9 is less happy even than that of his 1951 Beethoven 9 [AFTERTHOUGHT: however, the upgraded Beethoven 9 audio clip sure sounds better (how 'bout those timpani?), and for that matter the Bruckner 9 clip sounds a lot better than I expected -- Ed.], but it's good enough, and will have to do, since it's the only Bruckner 9 he left us. And if there's one thing classical-music lovers generally agree on (there aren't many!), it's that the Furtwängler Bruckner 9 is one of the greatest and least dispensable recordings we have. That said, Carlo Maria Giulini's Bruckner 9 seems to me of comparable stature. In the fullness of his long career, Maestro G. had the opportunity to show us how deep and darkly perceiving an artist he was -- I've described this performance as "dripping blood."

Finally for this week, Maestro Furtwängler not being a Mahler guy, Maestro Giulini will lead us the final step to Mahler, represented by a movement I don't think is often thought of as a "symphonic adagio" -- only it is, isn't it?


LISTENING TO FURTWÄNGLER'S AND GIULINI'S
PERFORMANCES OF THE ADAGIO OF BRUCKNER 9 . . .