Rémy Ballot Conductor

http://www.pizzicato.lu/remy-ballot-spannungsvolle-neunte-bruckner/

Seit Celibidache hat wohl kein Dirigent mehr den großen Bogen im ersten Satz der Neunten Bruckner-Symphonie so meisterhaft weit gespannt wie der Franzose Rémy Ballot, dessen Achte Symphonie uns bereits so sehr begeistert hatte.
Mit breitem Atem baut er den Satz genau so auf, wie es der Komponist vorgegeben hat, feierlich und misterioso, und der mächtige Klang des ‘Altomonte Orchesters St Florian’ entfaltet sich in der gewaltigen Stiftsbasilika ungemein spannungsvoll.
Hoch interessant ist das Scherzo: statt der finalen Heiterkeit, die Decsey hier ausgemacht hat, inszeniert Ballot genau die Schwere, von der viele in diesem Satz nichts wissen wollen. Bis in die Trauer hinein scheint sich die Musik regelrecht dämonisch auszubreiten. Entlastete Musik habe Bruckner mit diesem Satz geschrieben, behauptet Decsey. Ballot widerlegt das mehr als eindrucksvoll.
Und dann das Adagio: Die ‘Verklärungshöhen’ ersteigt Ballot über Brüche, so höchsten Schmerz und höchste Seligkeit sublimierend. Auch hier bleibt die Spannung eine halbe Stunde lang erhalten, um Bruckners Erinnerungen und Erlebnisse zusammenfließen zu lassen, um Enttäuschungen und Sehnsucht zu vereinen. Ballots Umsetzung dieses Satzes ist tief bewegend. Und das diese ganze Symphonie so gut gelungen ist, liegt auch an der herausragenden Qualität des ‘Altomonte Orchesters’, das sich aus den besten Musikern Österreichs zusammensetzt.
Die zweite CD enthält eine Bearbeitung der Symphonie für zwei Klaviere, hervorragend gespielt von Matthias Giesen und Klaus Laczika, aber was sollen zwei Klaviere gegen Ballots Orchester?
Rémy Ballot’s long-breathed conducting gives an elemental power, great beauty and solemnity to the symphony.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenslaurson/2015/09/08/the-second-coming-of-sergiu-celibidache-bruckner-in-st-florian/#4f5e3ec34848

T’was a coolly refreshing evening in the inner courtyard of the vast baroque priory of St. Florian in Upper Austria, just before the final concert of the St. Florian BrucknerTage (Bruckner-Days) on August 21: The brass section of the Altomonte Orchestra – basically a purpose-assembled summer-band – get rid of excess energy by regaling the guests of the monastery’s restaurant with a selection of brass-band favorites from hunting songs to Wagner chorales: Got you in the mood alright for Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony under Rémy Ballot, a Sergiù Celibidache disciple with a penchant for glorious length, especially in the music of Anton Bruckner.

For this grand finale of the week-long celebration of Bruckner, the vast, gorgeous baroque basilica was filled to the brim, except for the side balconies, allegedly among the best places but cordoned off on this occasion. (That fact made a most determined Austrian journalist lady – habitually taking her seat there and with little intention to yielding to some stripling with a badge squeaking “Verboten” – reveal a whole new color-range in her vocabulary when she ultimately had to follow others’ instructions over her instinct.) With everyone seated and standing in the right places, the sounds of Debussy’s Images pour orchestra, the concert’s amuse-gueule, rose to the organ balcony on which I had found myself at the last minute.

Not seeing the orchestra from this position, there was a Bayreuthean feeling of being engulfed in wafts of sound stemming from nowhere, as the shimmering soft and pastel-colored music of Debussy floated up through the wide and reverberant space of the basilica. Short of Parsifal, what music could possibly be better suited to this acoustic approach than the perfumes of sound that are Debussy. (Well, Messiaen, probably, but that might scare more Brucknerians than it would delight, were it to share a program with the Ninth Symphony.) The performance matched the lovely acoustic and spatial phenomenon.
Bruckner’s symphonies are thought to inherit the space of cathedrals. To quote myself misquoting Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

Goethe, it is said, called architecture ‘frozen music’. If we turn the statement around, we have a description of music as ‘fluid architecture’, an always changing, living structure. No music fits this description better than that of Anton Bruckner… No gothic cathedral is as cathedral-like as is his Eight Symphony, for example. His symphonies… are monumental structures. Broad and somber, earnest and yet filled with a glory that comes to the fore, much like when visiting the Dome of Cologne or Notre Dame in Paris. They are architectural documents of faith, only purer, less tainted than the history of any actual cathedral would be.
It is true, Bruckner, the village school-teacher by training, organist by trade and largely misunderstood composer, probably only ever wrote music to the purpose celebrating the glory of God. But it is hard to speak about Bruckner passionately without drifting towards the cliché of the simple, honest, devout man, on bended knee before God the Almighty, ever self-effacing and really more an organist who had traded his natural instrument in for a symphony orchestra, yet continued to compose secular symphonies within a sacred framework: ‘his’ St. Florian, the place his musical career had started as a chorister.
t is also true that Bruckner’s music has a tradition of being performed very successfully in cathedrals. Some of the greatest Bruckner recordings hail from such spaces: Günter Wand’s mythically great Eighth from the Lübeck Cathedral or his similarly fine Ninth from the same place. Pierre Boulez‘ (of all people!) iron-fisted, magnificent Eight from St.Florian. Or Eugen Jochum’s autumnal grandeur in the Fifth from the Ottobeuren Abbey. Even Rémy Ballot’s two last recorded performances at the St. Florian Bruckner-Days of the Third and Eighth symphonies are being hailed as dark-horse favorites.

And yet, to argue that his music is more at home there, than the concert hall, would be going too far. The cathedral is not its natural home only because it is a cathedral his music evokes. Performing in such a space is only as successful as the result – and to get to a satisfying result, care must be taken and compromises made. The performance on this occasion suggested that plenty of care was taken, most compromises satisfactorily negotiated and the result was a very considerable one as an experience, if not a great one as concerns the performance per se.

http://www.wienerzeitung.at/themen_channel/musik/klassik_oper/799180_Bruckner-Ekstase.html

Platz schaffen im CD-Regal, wo man glaubte, alles dicht stellen zu können, weil ohnedies nichts Nennenswertes mehr hinzukommen würde - also bei Anton Bruckner. Doch weit gefehlt, denn dessen Neunte Sinfonie in der Interpretation von Rémy Ballot muss man eher haben als alle anderen seit anno Celibidache.

Die Ballot-Gleichung heißt Genauigkeit + Energie = Ekstase zum Quadrat. Wie der in Wien lebende Franzose den Anfangs-Bogen des ersten Satzes immer mehr spannt, ist unbeschreiblich. Das Stampfen des Scherzos entwickelt sich zur Dämonie - da reißen die Perchten den Höllenschlund auf. Und dann die Gegenwelt des Adagios - aber welche Brüche gehen durch diese Verklärung, höchster Schmerz und höchste Seligkeit in bestürzender Verbindung.

Das Altomonte Orchester St. Florian wächst, offenbar im Wissen, an etwas Außerordentlichem teilzuhaben, über sich hinaus. Eine maßstabsetzende Einspielung!

Die zweite CD enthält eine Bearbeitung der Sinfonie für zwei Klaviere, fabelhaft gespielt von Matthias Giesen und Klaus Laczika, aber von geringem Erkenntniswert.