This is a pretty good recording of a pretty good performance of a pretty good symphony. Koch's live digital sound is direct, if a bit too in your face.
Christoph Eschenbach's conducting is forceful in the fast movements and suitably reverential in the solemn Adagio. The
Houston Symphony's playing is powerful in every movement but still subtle enough in the delicate woodwind passages. And
Bruckner's Symphony No. 2 is a convincing work even if it is often too massively overscored and monumentally overwrought for its own good. If this were the only recording of the work one ever heard, it would be more than adequate. But if one can only hear one recording of the work, stick with either of the three
Jochum recordings, performances so overwhelmingly forceful and powerful that they convince the listener that
Bruckner's Symphony No. 2 is more than a pretty good symphony.