Dedicated and searching musicologist Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs died on November 21st.
I'm ignorant of Cohrs except for his work on Bruckner. Aside from the part he played in the completion of the 9th Symphony, I'm not sure what I think about the multiplicity of versions of the other symphonies - which, I'm pretty sure, Bruckner didn't intend to leave us. That is now an absolute minefield, with listeners largely in the dark as to what they're hearing - unless one is an expert.
Worse than a minefield, it's an industry! The people involved do Bruckner no favours in the long run, I'm sure.
Absolutely right. I thought Bruckner wrote 11 symphonies: some listings give details of over 30 different versions. The industry must be rubbing its hands - I've lost count of the number of releases conducted by Schaller or Poschner.
Expect to see more releases next year for his 200th anniversary.
Bruckner is surely over-exposed now? What is especially galling is that he apparently left behind a list setting out explicitly the version of each symphony which he regarded as the definitive, final one.
Both Bruckner and Mahler are seriously over-exposed now. It's absolutely mad - and the result is an awful lot of bad recordings. There was a time when conductors took time to learn this sort of repertoire and to my mind, with very few exceptions, the older generation did a better job than their younger counterparts.
Let's consider, maybe, possibly, eventually, not to rush you all, returning to the thread topic, Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs, a musicologist who left editions of Schubert, Bruckner, Lili Boulanger (edit: fixed. Not Nadia, my mistake. Her "Thème et variations : Morceau pour piano (1915)"), Chadwick (his "Tam O'Shanter"), among others (in some cases - the Chadwick? - these may have been not editions but prefaces to reprints written for MPH, but the Boulanger and others are, I believe, reprints), and whose connection with what you are saying seems tenuous at best.
Fair enough, so now that we've aired the Bruckner versions issue, perhaps we should consider Cohrs' work on neglected music.
Ben-Gunnar gave me once the score of his excellent orchestral arrangement of Ravel's "Toccata" and "Fugue" from "Le Tombeau de Couperin".
He had already planned a concert with the Göttinger Barock-Orchester, on 20th April 2024, with a program including his string orchestra arrangements of rare Bruckner chamber works.
He has also prepared a new completion of Mozart's Requiem.
On the label Accentus Music one can hear Cohr's new critical editions of Bruckner's Requiem, Missa Solemnis, Tantum ergo Magnificat and 8 other sacred choral pieces - as performed by the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, codnucted by Lukasz Borowicz.
Thanks, Adriano, for telling us about these projects - of which I, for one, was completely ignorant.