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[miko2]

Today's Song: Bruckner's 8th Symphony Finale by Giulini

I'm going to do something different here.

I've been listening to all of my Bruckner lately. In his own lifetime the 4th and 7th symphonies were his most popular, although the opening of the 8th brought him a standing ovation (which was very rare for him, there were some of his symphonies, like the 5th, that he never even got to hear played and many of his others were savaged by the critics.)

Today it is probably the 4th, 7th, 8th and 9th that get performed most often. I'd say my favorite is the 8th. Bruckner's symphonies are very large -- the longest ones tend to run well over an hour, which was an exceptionally long time for the people back in his day. The 5th and 8th are two of his longest and most impressive. The 9th would have probably ended up being even longer and more impressive, but he only completed the first three movements before he passed away. But in all of these symphonies a single movement can run over 20 minutes, and Youtube only allows 15 minute videos... so trying to present even part of a Bruckner symphony on Youtube is problematic.

And yet, here is the finale of the 8th Symphony, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini. Very nicely done! I'm just going to assume that you can download this or a version of the 8th from iTunes if you wanted to, but personally classical music like this is not something I'd download from iTunes, I'd rather own the cd.

One of the things I ran across this week was that there was a Japanese conductor, Takashi Asahina, who was considered a brilliant Bruckner conductor. He traveled to Germany in the 1930's and talked to legendary Bruckner conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler about how to conduct great German classical/romantic composers like Bruckner, Mahler etc. He spent the rest of his life convincing Japanese society of the merits of classical music, and he recorded Bruckner's symphonies possibly more often than anyone else. By all accounts he was a great Bruckner conductor, but everything he did is on Japanese music labels and almost impossible to find here in the West. They only have two cds of single symphonies available on Amazon, and those are for sale used for stiff prices (30 to 40 dollars each). However, I found a nice cd of the 5th, 7th, 8th and 9th cds on Canyon records by Asahina on Ebay, and I put in a bid for $49.99 plus 20.00 s&h. 4 symphonies for $70.00, but actually that's not a bad price considering how much I'd have to pay for the full cycle ($200 or more). And that covers some of my favorite of Bruckner's symphonies, so if I get it I'll be happy.

Here's the finale of the 8th: like all of Bruckner, very spiritual, mystical, and ultimately heroic:

Bruckner's Symphony 8 Finale, 1/3 Giulini
Bruckner's Symphony 8 Finale 2/3 Giulini
Bruckner's Symphony 8 finale 3/3Giulini