Bruckner Symphony No. 9 Hybrid Multi-Channel & Stereo SACD

Bruckner Society of America 2019 Recording of the Year!

Critics’ Choice 2019

“The slow movement is the thing: broad in the manner of Furtwängler and Jochum, beautifully phrased, and captured in astonishingly vivid sound. As an ex-viola player with the Vienna Philharmonic, Honeck will have had this music in his blood for years; he grasps its rhetoric from the inside, scales its heights with confidence and understands its nobility.” – Rob Cowan, Gramophone, December 20, 2019.”

Reference Recordings proudly presents this iconic work in a new anddefinitive interpretation from Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh SymphonyOrchestra, in superb audiophile sound. This hybrid SACD release was recorded inbeautiful and historic Heinz Hall, home of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

In his deeply personal and scholarly music notes, Maestro Honeck gives greatinsight into the history and the musical structure of Bruckner’s finalcomposition, and describes how he conducts and interprets this masterwork. Toconclude his notes he quotes Bruckner biographer Max Auer: “The Ninth Symphonysurpasses all its predecessors in sublimity and consecration. If ArthurSchopenhauer describes the arts as an image of an idea, but music as an idea initself, then Bruckner’s swan song, his Ninth Symphony, appears to us as the ideaof the beyond, of the deity itself. Already from the very beginning of therichly structured first movement, one feels surrounded by the twilight light ofa Gothic cathedral—a mood that releases us from the heaviness and fatigue ofmatter and leads us to the afterlife.”

This release is the ninth in the highly acclaimed Pittsburgh Live! seriesof multi-channel hybrid SACD releases on the FRESH! series from ReferenceRecordings. This series has received GRAMMY® Nominations in 2015, 2016, 2018 and2019. Its recording of Shostakovich’s Symphony No.5 /Barber Adagio for Stringswon the 2018 GRAMMY® Awards for Best Orchestral Performance and Best EngineeredClassical Album.

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, known for its artistic excellence for morethan 120 years, is credited with a rich history of the world’s finest conductorsand musicians. Past music directors have included many of the greats, includingFritz Reiner, William Steinberg, Andre Previn, Lorin Maazel and Mariss Jansons.This tradition of outstanding international music directors was furthered infall 2008, when Austrian conductor Manfred Honeck became music director of thePittsburgh Symphony.

The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra has been at the forefront of championing newAmerican works, including recent commissions by Mason Bates, Jonathan Leshnoff,James MacMillan and Julia Wolfe. The orchestra premiered Leonard Bernstein’sSymphony No. 1 “Jeremiah” in 1944 and John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machinein 1986. The Pittsburgh Symphony has a long and illustrious history in the areasof recordings and live radio broadcasts dating back to the 1930s. And, with adistinguished history of touring both domestically and overseas since1900—including more than 37 international tours—the Pittsburgh Symphonycontinues to be critically acclaimed as one of the world’s greatest orchestras.

This release and the entire Pittsburgh Live! series are recorded and mastered bythe team at Soundmirror, whose outstanding orchestral, solo, opera and chamberrecordings have received more than 100 Grammy nominations and awards. For over40 years, Soundmirror has recorded for every major classical record label,including Reference Recordings.

“Manfred Honeck’s interpretation of the three-movement version of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony is one of the most distinctive to have appeared for some years. ‘It is in the Ninth that Bruckner invites us into the presence of God’, Honeck writes in the booklet note, and goes on to explain his thoughts about the symphony in an essay extending nearly 18 pages…Altogether, it’s one of the most detailed booklet notes I’ve ever seen…”

“Considered as a whole, this new version is a compelling account of the symphony with considerable depth of feeling and intimations of the beyond. The closing pages of the symphony are especially sublime”. – www.gramophone.co.uk

Unlike the symphonies of Mahler or Shostakovich for example, in which so many passages convey a myriad of possible imagery or emotions, and at which conductors can come from so many different interpretive perspectives, a Bruckner symphony is ‘absolute’ music. You can’t evince a different outcome from a harmonic progression or a sequence of chords. Its sound and proportions have to be just right. I would have to say that this ‘live’ performance achieves exactly that.

To get right to it, it’s a masterpiece.

The spiritual richness of Bruckner’s symphonies is unmistakable, yet Honeck’s interpretation breaks new ground in understanding the specific connection between musical ideas and religious meaning. It is a bold performance marked in part by extremes – the very loud and the very soft, slow pacing and tremendous speed (in the middle section of the second movement), and immense power and meekness. Yet it is the nuance with which Honeck and the musicians tell the story which most touches the heart. Honeck’s Bruckner Ninth is a performance of the utmost devotion and conviction which reaches the most transcendent heights when speaking softly. The orchestra sounds fabulous, every section and every soloist playing perfectly attuned to the spirit of the music.

Conductor Manfred Honeck has become one of today’s most insightful interpreters of the classics… Recorded live at Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh, his Bruckner Ninth is a wondrous achievement. Telling moments abound: the lyrical episodes in the opening movement that seemingly float in the air, the triumphant nobility the conductor summons at the first movement’s conclusion, the tonal colors he coaxes from the strings throughout. For sheer aural delight, it’s hard to beat the plush, velvety richness of the Berlin Philharmonic brass and strings in their superb 1976 recording under Herbert von Karajan. That said, Karajan’s interpretation now sounds a bit grandiose or overly muscular. And the impressive PSO brass is beautifully balanced throughout, as are the versatile, responsive strings and woodwinds.

If you love this piece, you will have to have this. Period.

Honeck and his Pittsburgh players are in majestic form here in Bruckner’s Ninth, with a performance that firmly holds the attention.

The Ninth Symphony has been recorded many, many times, of course, but this new recording stands out clearly as among the finest we have heard. The Pittsburgh Symphony performs with a palpable level of commitment, which is conveyed with extraordinary clarity by the superb recording. Maestro Honeck’s interpretation of the Symphony is particularly compelling and musically rigorous, as he outlines in his very thoughtful booklet essay and brings to life with the performance. As a result, we find this to be a recording that brings the listener on a wonderful voyage of musical discovery that captures the full scope of this masterwork in all of its grandeur, tragedy, and human power. All in all, we find this to be a recording of the highest quality. It is a most valuable addition to the discography.