Bruckner: Symphony No. 3 in D Minor, WAB 103 "Wagner Symphony" (Live)

Chronique

For the 39th volume in the Edition Staatskapelle Dresden on Profil, Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts the original 1873 version of Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 3 in D minor, the so-called "Wagner Symphony," due to its various quotations from Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and Die Walküre, among other musical references. This version of the symphony was disastrously premiered by Bruckner in Vienna in 1877, and it was as late as 1946 when the Staatskapelle Dresden gave its first performance under Joseph Keilberth. Like several of his colleagues, Nézet-Séguin has championed this version as one of Bruckner's more authentic and original conceptions, and the relative scarcity of recordings presents a great opportunity for him to make it his own. To that end, he leads the Staatskapelle Dresden in this live performance with concentrated energy and intensity, in an effort to rein in the sprawling form and to prevent the symphony from seeming too episodic and loose. While Nézet-Séguin does an admirable job in the first two quote-laden movements, his task is much simpler in the Scherzo and the Finale, which are rather close to the later versions. Even so, the Urfassung of the Third is a hard sell because of its tendency to stop, start, and meander, and while Nézet-Séguin and the Staatskapelle Dresden turn in as fine a performance as any available, Bruckner's first version remains a challenge to all but his most fervent admirers.
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