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Music CD - Bruckner, Jochum: Symphonies 1-9
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Music CD: Symphonies 1-9
Artist: Bruckner, Jochum
List Price: $71.98
Our Price: $28.79
Your Save: $ 43.19 ( 60% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Deutsche Grammophon
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0028946981023
Format: Box set
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Manufacturer: Deutsche Grammophon
Number Of Discs: 9
Publisher: Deutsche Grammophon
Release Date: 2003-04-08
Studio: Deutsche Grammophon
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Decline of Western Civilization
Comment: I picked up this 9 CD set for about $30 - which besides being a fantastic deal - is bit sad. Given the quality of music - some of the most moving ever written I believe -and the quality of the conductor - what a fine touch he has! - this set should be retailing for much much more. When cultural treasures such as this can be gotten for pennies it gives one pause.
So yes I highly recommend this set; listen to it, give it room to breathe and let it fill you with the immensity of Bruckner.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Eventful but not inspired...
Comment: ...I love Jochum and I know many rate this set highly but I find it generally okay and typically straighforward.
Of course there are many very interesting moments and occasional special insights, but overall I find that it is not as inspired as his later EMI Staatskapelle Dresden set...which is uncontrollably passionate, dramatic, and spiritually prophetic.
If anything, it makes an excellent starter set...but you'll want to invest in his EMI without question...now re-issued on the Brilliant Classics label!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Used this is One Great Bargain!
Comment: Bruckner is amongst my favorite composers of the 19th century's second half. That is, he is a favorite when he is properly presented. I've heard Jochum several times in person playing these works and own most if not all his other versions on CD as well. This set is better played than the EMI/Dresden version, although that one has more "guts" because the orchestra is going all out at every moment. While the brass go sharp a lot in Dresden, the whole point is to wring every last ounce of energy out of the orchestra, no matter how good or bad.
I think this is the best complete set as a starter. The recording, made in the stereo era when multi tracking was not used to "remix" the orchestra after the fact, shows off Jochum's balances, not those of a producer or engineer. I find them far superior to later DGG versions where the product tends to sound the same from conductor to conductor after about 1975! Von Karajan's are so heavily played with that real life and his recordings never quite come together.
A few spots: The magical ending of the Fifth Symphony. It is powerful, rich and glowing, and yet compliments the softest passages while still making the difference between them sound as correct in balance as possible. Jochum was, after all, an organist! He understood Bruckner AS an organist, and that's why he is so special in his interpretations of the composer. The 42 Furtwangler would be my other choice, but it does not have the upper registration sheen that the modern recording does (that doesn't matter to me, but it will to some. WF also takes wildly varying tempi and Jochum is more centered, still they are both at the very top.)
The slow movement of the 7th. The penultimate cadential measure before the slow build of the great final climax; the second violins play the last two beats - four 8th notes: A, two F##s, (the open G string) and then, all while slowing, the final 8th G#. These are done without vibrato on the A and G# to match the open G string on the F##s. This moment sets up the rising firsts as well as the main them in the seconds and violas as C# minor is reestablished all the way to the gigantic climax in, of all keys, C major. It is a small point, but one I always listen for. If it is rushed the whole climax can be ruined. If it is covered up it doesn't make the cadence sound right. With every Jochum recording of the piece it ever so quietly stands out, not just this DGG version. The cadence to, as well as the flow of the C# minor theme is prepared for perfectly here. I admit it is a small thing. Still, if you can turn off the phone and TV and just listen to the flow of the work, you'll hear this moment as something very special.
Finally the 9th. While I will always take Giulini's version with Vienna as the last word in this piece, Jochum gives it the master's touch. How rare it is to hear the introduction played with such economy while maintaining its utter sense of the mysterious. Recent recordings have been so badly balanced that it makes me wonder if the conductor listened to the playbacks! And then as we build to that first big octave drop from the whole orchestra we get a "luftpause" just before it. Jochum is consistent with this approach throughout his career. Most conductors don't use one at that point, but it is a special touch, one that represents the changing of manuals on the organ as well keeping the listener slightly off guard.
I could write thousands of words about these performances, but I'd rather just say, I think they're the best overall modern set, and for the used price of $23 that I just saw, its a steal. I paid full price for mine when they first came out on both LP and CD. If only I'd known Amazon was on the way....well, I wouldn't have waited. These are too good to wait for :)
Customer Rating:
Summary: Jochum-the high priest of Bruckner
Comment: During a few weeks in June, 1974, I had the good fortune to see Jochum
conduct at the Tanglewood Festival, where he performed the Bruckner 4th Symphony with the Boston Symphony. It was an intense experience to see this musical giant turn the Boston SO into a real Bruckner orchestra that summer evening. I had the chance to speak with him on a few occasions about his approach to Bruckner...in his kind grandfatherly voice he said that Bruckner "must all come together....an organic whole". Like Furtwangler, who Jochum apprenticed under in Berlin in the early 1930's,
Jochum's approach is never static....he fluctuates tempi and phrasing in a way that builds up and releases tension while at the same time never forgetting the overall structure of the work. His DG traversal of the Bruckner symphonies in stereo was a groundbreaking project when it appeared as a set in the 1960's. It's spirituality (remember that Jochum was also a church organist like Bruckner) is unmatched in the stereo era. He was a conductor in the Bruno Walter mode....with a very collegial approach to conducting which made orchestral musicians give their all in performing his vision of these great symphonic masterworks. If you want THE reference set of the Bruckner symphonies for the last 50 years, this is the one to get. His Dresden EMI
remake a decade later would a second choice in this repertoire.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A balanced and deep performance
Comment: I was looking for Bruckner's cycle and I bought this one because previous good reviews and also because a program in Spain's Radio Clasica did a retrospective of Eugen Jochum that I enjoyed a lot. This is what I expected: deep, balanced and with the right tempi. The quality of the sound is good, too (at least, in my poor-man set) and the price is moderate (for us, who pay in Euros, I would say even cheap).
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