Symphonies oubliées
Robert Schumann ((1810-1856)
Symphony in G minor WoO 29 (1832-3)
Anton Bruckner (1824-1896)
Symphony in D minor ‘die Nullte’ (1869)
Le Concert des Nations/Jordi Savall
rec. 2024, Grand Manège, Namur Concert Hall, Namur, Belgium
Alia Vox AVSA9963 SACD [67]

This disc has the title Symphonies oubliées, forgotten symphonies. It is true that neither composer admitted the work here to their canon of numbered symphonies. However, they have hardly been forgotten: live performances may be rare, but there have been several recordings of the Schumann, while the Bruckner is nowadays usually included in cycles of his symphonies.

The Schumann dates from 1832, before any of the numbered symphonies. He completed only two movements, though he left sketches for the final two. (These were completed by Olaf Kröger in 2013 but are not included here.) He performed the first movement several times, and kept tinkering with it. At that stage of his career he was unfamiliar with orchestration, but there are also problems with the structure of the movement. There is a forceful opening and then passages suggesting the kind of writing he used in his piano cycles. He seems caught between his natural lyrical style and the Beethovenian requirements of sonata form. However, the material is not as good as in his piano works and the effect is heavy and laboured.

The second movement begins as an Andantino but then moves into a faster tempo and triple time to make an Intermezzo quasi scherzo. No more than the first movement is this a success, and Schumann never even tried it out with an orchestra. Altogether, the work is a curiosity, and we should remember that Schumann never approved its publication, In fact, he used some of the material in the piano Impromptus über ein Thema von Clara Wieck Op. 5, of 1833.

Bruckner’s unnumbered D minor symphony has a complicated history. He seems to have started it before the official No 1, whose first version dates from 1866. He then returned to at least the later movements, and the version we have, the only one, dates from 1869. It was originally going to be his Symphony No. 2. He played it to Otto Dessoff, Kapellmeister in Vienna, who reportedly asked ‘Where is the first subject?’ This led Bruckner to withdraw the work and not give it a number, though he kept the score. Later he called it Die Nullte, hence its usual title of Symphony No. 0. (Actually, I am surprised that this convenient designation isn’t used for other early symphonies which their composers withheld or rejected, such as Sibelius’s Kullervo, Bax’s Spring Fire and Tippett’s symphony in B flat.)

This is an altogether finer work than the Schumann. In the first and last movements Bruckner uses the three theme exposition which became characteristic of him. The first theme, which Dessof failed to identify, is the arpeggiated motif just after the cloudy opening. The slow movement is lovely, and Robert Simpson thought the second theme Slavonic in character, as if it had come from Prince Igor. He also thought the Scherzo suggested Rossini’s Barber being punched on the nose by a dissatisfied customer! The finale begins seriously, with a violin theme over throbbing triplets. Later there are fugal passages and the end is joyous.

This is a perfectly viable work, well worth hearing and including in the canon of Bruckner symphonies – something I am less sure about for the even earlier symphony in F minor, sometimes dubbed No. 00, which he wrote as an exercise but which is also occasionally recorded.

Jordi Savall I know as a brilliant and imaginative conductor of baroque music. However, that is no reason for him not to conduct later composers and Bruckner in particular: I can think of two other conductors who began as baroque specialists who have also gone on to record Bruckner: Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Philippe Herreweghe. His orchestra, Le Concert des Nations, is here made up half of experienced musicians and half of younger players and is of modest size. They had extensive rehearsals and gave several public performances of these works before recording them. The Schumann is efficiently despatched. I do not hear Savall as a natural Brucknerian, but it is a bit difficult to judge on the basis of this early work. He seems to see Bruckner here as a successor to Schubert rather than with the Wagnerian characteristics of his later work, an approach similar to that which Venzago used some years ago.

This is an SACD but I was listening in ordinary two channel stereo, in which the sound quality was fine. Savall’s company, Alia Vox, can be relied on to provide a full and lavishly illustrated booklet and this is no exception. Some may find this coupling convenient; others may prefer to have the Schumann in the context of other Schumann works, such as in the recordings by Holliger, Beermann or Gardiner, and the Bruckner from one of the well-known Bruckner conductors.

Stephen Barber

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