David Harbin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>I despair of finding an wholly recommendable Bruckner 6 and feel the field
>is wide open for a newcommer.  I have not heard the (unavailble - deleted)
>Cleveland Orchestra recording, but if any orchestra can pull off the Bruckner
>6 it must be this magnificent US band.

The 6th is my favorite Bruckner symphony and I'm very picky with it.  Basically,
I can categorize all Bruckner 6th recordings as being in one of three camps:

a) the expansive
b) the propulsive
c) the "in-between"

Examples of a) would be Klemperer (awful in the 1st movement, but much better
in the rest of the symphony) and Eschenbach/Houston (even worse than Klemperer;
the music actually comes to a standstill in a few spots).  I would also put
Celibidache in this category, but he is infinitely better than the above
two, and is not so slow as people might think.  His is the recording I would
take to the proverbial desert island if I had to take only one.

Examples of b) would be Jochum/Dresden, Sawallisch/Bavarian State Orch.
(Orfeo), and Dohnanyi/Cleveland.  These three are superbly played and are
among the best recordings of the work (the Dresden brass may be off-putting
to some, but I love it).  The only problem with the Sawallisch is that the
sound may be too bright for some, but effective use of your tone controls
should tame that.

The "in-between" camp features some of my favorite recordings, like
Kubelik/CSO (issued on a Kubelik/CSO tribute set that is sadly deleted),
which features a nearly ideal handling of Bruckner's tempo relationships,
especially in the outer movements.  Two others in this camp are Blomstedt/SF
on Decca and Keilberth/BPO on Teldec.  Blomstedt's Adagio is beautiful and
the orchestral sonorities in the Keilberth recording are to die for (only
the beginning of his last movement is too slow for my taste).

I prefer the earlier Tintner recording to the one with New Zealand in which
the playing was too scrappy for my taste.

Ramon Khalona