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Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg
Ivor Bolton, Dirigent

Seeing Ivor Bolton as a Bruckner conductor had been a rather unusual picture just a few years ago, yet after having completed three Bruckner recordings with the Mozarteum Orchestra, he has strongly shown how he gives Bruckner’s music a timbre of his own plus a very special expression. Now the fourth sequence of the Salzburg Bruckner Cycle is released; we hear Symphony No. 3 in the version presented by Leopold Nowak in 1889.

Behind the Wagnerian façade
Highlights of the reception of Anton Bruckner’s 3rd Symphony

Germany in 1937. Fanfares blast out of the radio, a sublime setting for the “Tag der Deutschen Kunst” (German Arts Day). Everything which sounds “German” in the National Socialist sense is lauded to the skies; everything “non-Aryan”, “Bolshevist” or experimental is denounced as “degenerate”. The fanfares for German Arts Day symbolize the ultimate in “German essence” as the Nazis understand it; this is why they were chosen: they are settings of the main theme from Anton Bruckner’s 3rd Symphony transposed into major keys.

The orchestra of Reichssender München (Munich Reich Radio) recorded the fanfares on June 30, 1937 under Karl List; Albrecht Dümling has documented them on CD for his valuable sound archive Entartete Musik (Degenerate Music). This abuse by the Nazis was to date the absolute nadir in the history of the reception of Bruckner’s 3rd Symphony – a history which is as convoluted as the question concerning the various versions of the work.

Flashback to 1872: Bruckner starts work on the Third. This original version is dominated



by the influence of Richard Wagner, who was much admired by Bruckner. In 1934, Robert Haas made special reference to quotations from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, Valkyries and Mastersingers of Nuremberg in his book on Bruckner. Bruckner himself dedicated his 3rd Symphony to Wagner after visiting him in Bayreuth in 1873, the year the work was completed. Bruckner wanted to dedicate either the 2nd or the 3rd Symphony to Wagner; the “Master of all Masters” (as Bruckner described Wagner) chose the Third.

Wagner’s friend G.A. Kietz gave the following description of what happened in Bayreuth: “Good old Bruckner drank and drank, despite the laments and opposition which repeatedly interrupted his musical discussions in droll fashion.” Next morning, Bruckner approached Kietz at breakfast in the hotel: “Oh, Sir Privy Councillor,” said Bruckner. “How glad I am to see you – I am the most unfortunate person! Yesterday you heard how I offered the Master a choice of several symphonies for dedication, and now I am in the appalling situation of not being able to remember which one the Master chose. Oh that beer, that terrible beer!”

Kietz replied that a trumpet had been talked of – i.e. the mentioned fanfare, the main theme of the Third. This sealed the Wagnerian fate of the 3rd Symphony; however, there is a problem: the Wagnerian references are only present in the original version; Bruckner cut them out almost completely in the second (1876/77) and third (1888/89) versions, the latter of which we hear on this CD. The second version was performed at the premiere of the Third on December 12, 1877; the first was not performed during Bruckner’s lifetime.

Thus it becomes clear that the emphasis on Wagner in Bruckner’s 3rd Symphony was at the very least relativised by Bruckner himself. This may also be one reason why the National Socialists were strongly in favour of the “original” versions of Bruckner’s symphonies, as Bruckner’s “Wagnerian symphonism” was a central leitmotif of Bruckner’s reception under the Swastika, and this had to be preserved at all costs. The Nazi devotion to the “original version” of the Third may also be why this was not recorded until 1982, under Eliahu Inbal.

In any case – the emphasis on Wagner is a distraction from other central lines of reception which were likewise practically ignored during Bruckner’s life. One such central moment can be heard in the Finale: here there is a clash between two semantically opposing thematic groups, i.e. a chorale in the winds and a polka in the strings. “That’s life,” commented Bruckner. “The polka describes the humour and cheerfulness in the world – the chorale the sadness and pain.” This quotation is indicative, because Bruckner himself refers to a more or less subtle tragicomedy which influenced Romanticism from Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann via Hector Berlioz to Gustav Mahler – and which is completely alien to Wagner in this form. Bruckner was to go one step further in the slow movement of his 4th Symphony: here a funeral march gives way to lively activity. Mahler followed these tendencies in the slow movement of his 1st Symphony of 1884/88, and surpassed them immeasurably; here a funeral march, a canon based on “Frère Jacques” in a minor key, is combined with sounds from Jewish and Slavic folklore.

Thus it becomes clear that proximity to Wagner was only one side of Bruckner’s music. As yet, there has been no comprehensive, systematic study of the central influence which Bruckner’s symphonism has exerted on the music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Here too, the 3rd Symphony, the first to give full expression to Bruckner’s original tonal cosmos, plays an important role. Even in the first few bars, a unique tonal colour develops with the characteristic Bruckner rhythm (consecutive duplets and triplets).

Moreover, the many general pauses and breaks are unsettling – these give the movement a feeling of static development. Dmitri Shostakovich was to pick up on this in the first movement of his 6th Symphony of 1939, transforming it to a scenario paralysed with fear, which could be interpreted as a grim commentary on Stalin’s Great Terror of 1936/38: Shostakovich’s Sixth promptly fell into disfavour with the Stalinists. At the same time, the internal emigrant and Nazi critic Karl Amadeus Hartmann also latched onto Bruckner – thus countering the official image of Bruckner as it blasted out of the radio in 1937 in the form of the fanfares from the Third.