The Europadisc Review
Bruckner - Symphony no.4
Pablo Heras-Casado, Anima Eterna Brugge
£13.75
Heavy brass? Lush strings? Vast ranks of woodwind? Interminably slow speeds, overused tremolos and overpowering unisons giving way deafening climaxes? No wonder the music of Anton Bruckner - whose 200th birthday fell last week - is off-putting to many music lovers. Even the more popular Bruckner symphonies, like No.4 in E flat major (the 'Romantic'), have their detractors. Yet there are other ways, which don't undersell the music's majestic architecture or sonic power, but at the same time reveal an abundance of colours and - most notable of all - an underlying delicacy which can confound the ... read more
Heavy brass? Lush strings? Vast ranks of woodwind? Interminably slow speeds, overused tremolos and overpowering unisons giving way deafening climaxes? No wonder the music of Anton Bruckner - whose 200th birthday fell last week - is off-putting to man... read more
Bruckner - Symphony no.4
Pablo Heras-Casado, Anima Eterna Brugge
The Spin Doctor Europadisc's Weekly Column
Works in Focus: Gustav Holst’s ‘Egdon Heath’ 17th September 2024
17th September 2024
Holst regarded it as his masterpiece, and so did his friend Vaughan Williams. Yet ever since its premiere in February 1928 Egdon Heath has stood in the shadow of two works Holst composed more than a decade previously, the St Paul’s Suite (1912–13) and The Planets (1914–16). Though it lacks the immediate tuneful appeal of those two works, this short tone-poem (under 15 minutes in duration) has in common with some of the more mystical passages of The Planets an atmosphere of detachment, coupled with passages reminiscent of the sombre yet noble tread of the trombones’ theme in ‘Saturn’.
Egdon Heath bears the subtitle ‘Homage to Thomas Hardy’, and its title refers to the fictional heathland described so memorably in the opening chapter of Hardy’s 1878 novel The Return of the Native. Holst prefaced the score with a quotation from the novel:
‘A place perfectly... read more