Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 4 in E flat major, the "Romantic", can be heard in no fewer than eight versions: the spectrum of possibilities that Simon Rattle explained to the audience in the Alte Oper at the beginning of his guest concert with the London Symphony Orchestra, therefore goes far beyond what the customary differentiation between the two versions of 1874 and 1878 suggests. The changes that Bruckner made before the symphony was finally premiered in Vienna in 1881 may have been due to his scrupulous nature, but also to the challenge of composing symphonies on a scale that until then only Beethoven's Ninth had reached: Rattle pointed to this too out, who described the concert as a “look into the composer's studio”.
Rattle had preceded the performance of the second version with versions of the third and fourth movements, which the conductor and musicologist Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs had included as "retired movements of the second version" in Bruckner's Urtext complete edition, which he had been editing in Vienna since 2015.
The difference between the two Scherzo versions was particularly significant: the third movement, which dates from 1876 and was developed from the first version, with its constantly recurring horn signal, was particularly recognizable in its nervous and gloomy character thanks to the sharply honed intonation of the first hornist clear contrast to the spoils of the later "hunting" scary.
Excellent brass
Rattle had the London Symphony Orchestra, of which he has been chief conductor for four years, play it with that swift agility and that lean pathos familiar from his Bruckner performances with the Berliner Philharmoniker. The earlier version of the finale suited him thanks to its almost consistently faster basic heart rate.
The fact that the performance of the fourth symphony was convincing not only in its view of the creation process of the second version, but above all also through the great reproduction of the orchestra, was largely thanks to its excellent wind instruments, above all the highly demanded and extremely sovereign horn section.
The sharpness with which the strings articulated each accompanying figure was exemplary.
And the impressive minimal gestures that Rattle needed to achieve a maximum of differentiations in tempi, colors and volume ensured that his Bruckner interpretation was by no means exhausted in register or simple waves of increase.