Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 - Esa-Pekka Salonen

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com essential recording
Esa-Pekka Salonen is an amazing conductor. He has won a sterling reputation as an interpreter of contemporary music, but here he turns in a totally idiomatic, magnificently poised Bruckner performance. The Los Angeles brass play with a burnished glow recalling the great Central European orchestras, only with more security, while the strings have all the weight that Bruckner demands. The interpretation is magisterially slow--rather like the old Karl Bohm/Vienna Philharmonic version--but never dragging. The quiet string tremolos, solemn brass chorales, and romantic horn calls have all the atmosphere and poetry that one could ask for. On evidence here, Salonen is rapidly becoming one of today's podium giants. --David Hurwitz

USA Today
In his first Bruckner recording ... [Salonen lets] the musical paragraphs in this massive symphony dictate the speed that suits them. Though highly listenable, the results aren't quite the sort of revelation Salonen often delivers....

Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 - Esa-Pekka Salonen

Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 - Esa-Pekka Salonen, Music, Anton Bruckner, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Classical, Classical Music, Orchestral & Symphonic, Romantic Symphony, Symphonic

Average customer rating:

Don't bother with this one--

A performance of a rising (or an already risen) star...

It's the Pavillion, nothing else...!

Large-scale performance of a large-scale work

First the music

Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 - Esa-Pekka Salonen
Anton Bruckner , Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra , and Esa-Pekka Salonen
Manufacturer: Sony
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Romantic | Symphonies | Forms & Genres | Classical | Styles | Music
General | Symphonies | Classical | Styles | Music
General | Classical | Styles | Music
All Works by Bruckner | Bruckner, Anton | ( B ) | Featured Composers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music
Classical Music | The Sony BMG Masterworks Store | Amazon.com Label Stores | Stores | Music
Similar Items:

Mahler: Symphony No. 3 in D minor

ASIN: B000009MGX
Release Date: 1998-07-28

Tracks:

Symphony No. 4 In E-Flat Major 'Romantic': I. Bewegt, nicht zu schnell
Symphony No. 4 In E-Flat Major 'Romantic': II. Andante, quasi Allegretto
Symphony No. 4 In E-Flat Major 'Romantic': III. Scherzo. Bewegt (Trio. Nicht zu schnell. Keinesfalls schleppend)
Symphony No. 4 In E-Flat Major 'Romantic': IV. Finale. Bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell

Amazon.com essential recording

Esa-Pekka Salonen is an amazing conductor. He has won a sterling reputation as an interpreter of contemporary music, but here he turns in a totally idiomatic, magnificently poised Bruckner performance. The Los Angeles brass play with a burnished glow recalling the great Central European orchestras, only with more security, while the strings have all the weight that Bruckner demands. The interpretation is magisterially slow--rather like the old Karl Bohm/Vienna Philharmonic version--but never dragging. The quiet string tremolos, solemn brass chorales, and romantic horn calls have all the atmosphere and poetry that one could ask for. On evidence here, Salonen is rapidly becoming one of today's podium giants. --David Hurwitz

Customer Reviews:

Don't bother with this one--.......2006-07-25

This recording is another example of why the LA Philharmonic has never established any kind of presence on recording. Technically, it simply isn't very good compared to the other offerings from the Berlin Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, etc. etc. In the area of the standard repertoire, the recorded competition from Eastern and European orchestras is fierce and nothing less than a blemish-free digitally transparent recording will do. I would recommend the recording by Claudio Abaddo and the Vienna Philharmonic if you can still get it. Their performance is both effortless and ethereal. Otherwise, the older recording by Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra still sounds great and as always Ormandy makes this serious music seem understandable and accessible to anybody.

A performance of a rising (or an already risen) star..........2005-07-12

Salonen is definitely an icon in the current and coming world of conducting and Classical Music. He has conducted numerous Scandinavian orchestras and made marvellous performances (especially Grieg's Peer Gynt Exceprts), is currently directing the greatest orchestra in the Western US, and is likely to move on to the distinctive Yellow Label (Deustche Grammophon), home of the most prolific conductors (Karajan, Bernstein, Boulez, just to name a few).

This CD featuring Bruckner's "Romantic" symphony is indeed a performance of a rising (or an already risen) star. For an orchestra with a reputation not as notable as... let's say the Vienna Phil or the Berlin Phil, the LA Phil under the conductor's baton is excellent. It gives a pretty driving performance. I never knew after hearing this performance the brass can sound so bold and amazing... especially in the first and the third movements. Good enough to give me goosebumps. Kudos the the strings, woodwinds, and timpani (Mr. Mitch Peters I assume) as well.

Until Salonen hopefully does the Bruckner cycle in the future at DG, this is a great disc whether you're a fan of Salonen, the LA Phil, Sony Classical, or Bruckner in general.

It's the Pavillion, nothing else...!.......2002-08-06

Five stars were it for Salonen and the LA Phil alone, but still some "problems" remain.

Bruckner DEMANDS space, a crisp, even bland approach, room to breathe, and I don't feel this recording can deliver that. As a benchmark here, compare to, say, a typical Bruckner-Karajan recording with the Berlin- or especially the Vienna Philharmonic!

Having said that, the playing here is energetic, almost ferrocious sometimes, and the orchestra really catches fire in movements 3&4. But they are fighting against the awkward opaque acoustics of the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion. Most notably the strings suffer in this environment, and what still worked well for Mahler's horn-oriented 3rd, becomes a drag for the string-heavy Bruckner 4. Record it again, Esa-Pekka, at the new Walt Disney Hall.

Overall, by no means a bad cd, but the acoustics of the Pavillion are less than helpful here.

Large-scale performance of a large-scale work.......2002-01-20

The symphonies of Anton Bruckner are not nearly as well known on the classical music stage as those of Bruckner's protege Gustav Mahler. The reasons are that Bruckner's symphonies tend to be extremely large in size and scope and they also happen to be very long. The Fourth, known as the "Romantic", is an example of this musical "edifice complex", running seventy minutes, but it is also the composer's most well-known symphony.

It is given the appropriate large-scale treatment on this recording by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra under its current music director Esa-Pekka Salonen. Starting with the familiar string tremelos (a feature Bruckner often borrowed from the opening of the Beethoven Ninth) and horn calls, the symphony is one of vastness and bigness, a virtual Wall of Sound. The celebrated scherzo is extraordinary, and the orchestra's recording of the whole piece verges on almost explosive violence (Footnote: this is actually the second time this orchestra has recorded Bruckner 4; the first was in 1966 under Zubin Mehta [this recording, to my knowledge, has never been available on CD]).

The still-young Salonen gets the most out of the L.A. Philharmonic, and this recording certainly challenges the justifiably acclaimed 1973 recording by Karl Bohm and the Vienna Philharmonic. This is a must-have recording for those who really are into large-scale symphonic works.

First the music.......2000-06-27

Having enjoyed the elation of Salonen's Bruckner #4 in concert hall and on this recording I find it difficult to see why so many listeners fault the product because of the recording technic. Put this disc on your CD player in your car and drive into the simple but spiritually rich mountain roamings that Bruckner describes and I think you'll bask in the effervesence of Salonen and Hendricks and the LA Phil and forgive the technicalities of a recording engineer!

Music Review:

Music Review

music review

Music Review

Official Receivers [Original recording remastered] [Import]

Dvorak: Trio No4; Smetana: Trio in Gm

Gilels Plays Beethoven Piano Concertos, Nos. 4 & 5 [Import]

Alfie [Original recording remastered] [Soundtrack]

Greatest Dance Album in the World

Essential Goth Masters [Box set]

Grandes Sucessos [Import]

F**K Forever Pt.2 [CD-single] [Enhanced] [Import]

Humpan kuninkaan hovissa

Go Down, Moses

Headhunters [Import]

El Chevere de la Salsa/El Caballero del Son

Coleccion de Oro

Arias by Verdi and Donizetti

Streetlights