Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Claudio Abbado - Anton Bruckner: Symphony No.9 (2014)

In his final performances with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in August 2013, Claudio Abbado conducted Anton Bruckner's unfinished Symphony No. 9 in D minor, and this recording is drawn from the best takes from those concerts. Considering that this rendition came near the end of Abbado's life and stands as a worthy testament to his achievements, it's easy to read too much into the interpretation, and to view it as a mystical or transcendent reading because of the circumstances. On the one hand, Abbado's understanding of this symphony was as thorough as any conductor's, and the Lucerne musicians played with seriousness and dedication, offering a version that has impressive power and expressive depth. On the other hand, there are many competitive recordings that either match Abbado's for strength and feeling, or surpass it in purely technical terms of sound quality and reproduction. Certainly the sound is exceptional, according to Deutsche Grammophon's high standards, and this stereo recording is exceptionally clean and noise-free. Yet there are several audiophile recordings of the Ninth available that provide deeper and clearer sound and offer a richer listening experience. So as compelling as Abbado's last recording is on many levels, for Brucknerians and fans of state-of-the-art recording, it's still a contender among many.

Review by Blair Sanderson, Allmusic.com

Claudio Abbado conducted his final concerts at the Lucerne festival in August last year. The programme consisted of two unfinished symphonies – Schubert's eighth and Bruckner's ninth – and this disc of the Bruckner, compiled from the whole series of performances, conveys some sense of just how special an occasion it was, and how those who were lucky enough to be there are unlikely ever to forget it. The Bruckner symphonies Abbado conducted with the fabulous Lucerne Festival Orchestra in the last decade of his life were very different from almost any other conductor's treatment of the composer, and also from his own earlier recordings. There was a transparency to them, which is beautifully captured again on this disc, especially in the great transfiguring adagio with which the torso of the ninth ends; it's a soundworld that belies all the cliches about Bruckner's scoring and the ponderousness of his symphonic thinking. By comparison Abbado's earlier version of this symphony, recorded with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1996, seems mannered, and almost impatient; in this final musical testament, time seems infinitely elastic, and everything has all the space it needs.

Review by Andrew Clements, The Guardian

Most of the differences between this Bruckner Ninth Symphony, which was recorded in concert just five months before Claudio Abbado’s death in January, and the rather less flexible version he made in 1996 with the Vienna Philharmonic (also live, and also for DG) are relatively subtle. I note near the very outset of the work a wind chord that on the original broadcast wasn’t quite unanimous is now fairly tight, so I am assuming a limited amount of ‘patching’, though there are no audible edits.

The contrasting qualities of the two orchestras are brought to the fore around 12'13" into the first movement (11'28" on the VPO disc) – the interplay between winds and strings, which is more expressively drawn on the Lucerne disc. Also, there’s added presence among the pulsing basses as the coda to the first movement builds. The blinding light suggested near the start of the Adagio, where brass choirs exchange declamatory fanfares (1'56"), is also clearer on the new disc. Then again, put on the start of either Scherzo and you could as well be listening to the same recording, such was Abbado’s consistency.

I’d say that overall the new version is the more affectionately played, the earlier one bolder, with a more impressive yield of tonal power. Not so much, though, as Bernard Haitink with the LSO at the Barbican, a far broader reading than either of Abbado’s, immensely impressive on every page, almost Celibidache-like in fact, though without the light and shade of my current digital favourite, Herbert Blomstedt with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, a Bruckner orchestra through and through with just the right sound properties for the music, mellow yet potentially dynamic. Rattle, the BPO and the speculative ‘completed’ finale is also mandatory, certainly for those who care about how the Ninth might have ended had Bruckner lived to complete it. But Abbado in Lucerne radiates clarity, wisdom and vision, qualities that over the years one had come to expect of him.

Review by Rob Cowan, Gramophone