Bruckner, ed. Kito Sakaya Symphony no.9 in D minor WAB109 (1887-96)
with performing edition of finale by Nicole Samale, John A. Phillips, Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs and Giuseppe Mazzuca (1983-2012) as revised by John A. Phillips (2021-22)

Hallé / Kahchun Wong

Hallé CDHLD7566 [two discs 88’24’’]
Producer Steve Portnoi Engineers Tony Wass, Edward Cittanova

Recorded 26 October 2024 at Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

The Hallé furthers its association with principal conductor and artistic advisor Kahchun Wong in this recording of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, the finale heard in a new edition prepared by John A. Phillips as the ostensible culmination of a process extending back across four decades.

What’s the music like?

Although his introductory note leaves no doubt as to his advocacy for Bruckner Nine, Wong’s approach is not an unqualified success overall. Doubts such as they are centre on the opening two movements, the first of which lacks that sustained inevitability and cumulative intensity necessary to make its extensive span cohere. Aptly contrasted in themselves, its three themes follow on each other without establishing any greater continuity and while the approach to its development yields tangible ominousness, the ensuing climax conveys less than the ultimate terror, though its coda does attain a fearsome majesty. Wong’s take on the second movement succeeds best in its trio’s speculative flights of fancy, which only makes the relative stolidity and emotional disengagement of its Scherzo sections the more surprising and disappointing.

The highlight is undoubtedly the Adagio. Without intervening unduly in its evolution, Wong ensures cohesion over a movement manifestly riven if not outright fractured by the starkness of its thematic contrasts. The journey towards its seismic culmination feels as eventful as it is absorbing and while that climax is less shattering than it can be, the clarity afforded its dense harmonies could not be bettered. Wong is mindful, moreover, not to allow its coda to broaden into an extended postlude but instead to keep this moving in anticipation of what is to follow.

This is hardly the place to go into the whys or wherefores of the ‘SPCM’ edition of the Finale. Given his intensive research into the issues of what is extant and what Bruckner intended for the crowning movement of his grandest symphonic design, Phillips is ideally placed in making his revisions to a completion which renders some striking yet often disparate material from a focussed and convincing perspective. The main alterations are those made to its latter stages, more streamlined and with less overt rhetoric than in the 2011 revision as recorded by Simon Rattle (Warner) though, to this listener at least, the 2008 revision as recorded by Friedemann Layer (Musikalische Akademie) still remains the most convincing in context. Whatever else, Wong conveys the extent of this gripping torso right through to the elation of its apotheosis.

Does it all work?

How well this performance succeeds depends on how one judges the necessity of that closing movement and the persuasiveness of Wong’s interpretation as a whole. Pertinent comparison might be made with the Hallé’s previous recording (also on its own label) – Cristian Mandeal drawing a response that, in the first two movements, has a power and intensity in advance of this newcomer. Interesting he should eschew the finale while instilling into those three earlier movements a sense of completion which, whether or not intentionally, is its own justification.

Is it recommended?

It is, whatever the reservations here expressed. This is not the final word on a four-movement Bruckner Nine any more than on Wong’s evolving interpretation though, with realistic sound alongside Phillips’s detailed while informative annotations, it is evidently a mandatory listen.

Listen / Buy

You can read more about this release and explore purchase options at the Hallé website

Published post no.2,518 – Wednesday 30 April 2025