I do not know if we find quite the same qualities in this record from February 2012 concerts, but it is still close. The first movement is less violent than elsewhere, less urgent and hallucinated with Furtwängler (Berlin, October 7, 1944), but not sweetened; both solemn and lyrical (the second theme, so modeled) to a particularly impressive coda.
Despite Trio elegant and successful, the Scherzo is no doubt, despite the reputation of Rattle in music of the twentieth century, the movement that suits me the least. For the aggressiveness and demonism, it will go elsewhere (for example, Eduard van Beinum Evgeni Mravinsky).
The first three movements, the Adagio is probably the most consistently successful. As in Lucerne, Rattle is sovereign, and the Berlin Philharmonic beauty, especially the strings. We heard more black, Rattle highlighting for its part both lyrical elements and comforters, and great boldness Bruckner in harmony and treatment of stamps.
For the first three movements, it certainly does not lack very reliable guides. For my part, I learned the work-with Carlo Maria Giulini and the Chicago Symphony, which remains a model.
Additional interest on this disc recorded in a very work, it is proposed in four movements, although this is not exactly a first (for full information see abruckner.com). While qu'Harnoncourt chose to give the detached fragments of the final (since measures fail, presumably lost sheets, besides the problem of the end), interrupting the musicological considerations, Rattle has chosen a new version (Samale-Phillips -Cohrs-Mazzuca, 2012) that restores the continuities and allows you to hear the whole as a whole.
The final, which continues the momentum from that of the eighth, is of great interest and contains some of the best ideas of the composer (the four-note motif that explodes in our faces, almost immediately, with the usual contempt Bruckner for transitions, and sweetening; choral to brass a little later). I think that other leaders could do justice even better, in places, its instrumental dimension of Twilight of the Gods. But there are also some really glorious moments (at 5'10 is huge), and from 17 'for any late, something happens, which also holds the chief and the orchestra.
A reconstruction even from passages fully instrumented and elaborate sketches (see instructions), does not claim to make us hear what the composer would have delivered us. The coda of the fourth movement, which summarizes not only the whole work, but also a life of music, we will never know exactly what the composer would have done. But we can here make us much more than a vague idea of what was to be the largest Finale signed by Anton Bruckner, and I believe that there is nothing to add.
PS. I thank the participants who discussed dune sétait engaged on an earlier version of this comment. Bruckner's Ninth, should play as Bruckner left unfinished, or that would quon what is completed, the nearest of his intentions? In my view, there are no definitive conclusion on this point. I think the best is sometimes dexécuter LOEUVRE in three movements, sometimes (rarely) in a completed version. Bruckner is present in both: he is both the one who left unfinished, and whoever wanted to finish it.
