set of Bruckner

I missed noting the bicentennial of Anton Bruckner's birth, which was Sept. 4 while I was up in Oregon. But I didn't neglect celebrating it later, by buying the new box set of his symphonies, the "Complete Versions Edition," conducted by Markus Poschner. It has all 11 of his symphonies, including the two unnumbered ones, in 18 full versions plus a few extra versions of individual movements. It's not actually complete complete, but it has all the standard editions, except for the Robert Haas combined edition of the Eighth, which took what Haas considered the best parts from two competing versions, which is no longer considered a kosher procedure.

So far I've listened through the 3 versions of the Fourth, plus the single versions of the Fifth and Sixth, plus the 'student' symphony in F Minor, which I'd never had a satisfactory performance of before. Judging by his Fourth through Sixth, Poschner isn't the greatest of Bruckner conductors, but he does well enough with the F Minor, especially the Andante movement which is just charming.

What can I say of the multiple versions? The standard 1880 version remains the best-sounding Fourth, the 1876 version sounding too sketchy and the 1888 version too clotted. The other symphonies in multiple versions (1, 2, 3, and 8) I don't know as well, so that will require more chewing. But first I want to listen to the other noncanonical symphony, "Die Nullte" or No. 0. There is no attempt in this set to produce a hypothetical completed version of the finale of the Ninth, which Bruckner left in sketches when he died and has been worked on by several people, none of them really satisfactorily. It was in putting all the pieces together in final form that Bruckner's genius principally lay.