As old timers may recall,
Wilhelm Furtwängler's 1952 recording of Franck's D minor Symphony with the
Vienna Philharmonic completely recast the French late Romantic religious symphony as an Austrian late-Romantic religious symphony -- that is, as a symphony by
Bruckner -- and thereby fatally undermined both its integrity and indentity. Here,
Yannick Nétzet-Séguin reverses the operation by turning
Bruckner's D minor Ninth Symphony into a pseudo-French symphony, thereby undermining both its sense and sensibility. He accomplishes this dubious feat by altering crucial aspects of the score.
Nétzet-Séguin's tempos are unsteady and often incorrect, charging forward where he ought to pull back and pulling back when he should charge forward. His phrasing is unusual and improbable, altering accents, changing balances, and varying colors so the music sounds less like rough-hewn
Bruckner and more like smoothly polished
Saint-Saëns. Worst of all,
Nétzet-Séguin's Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal sounds unconvinced by the worth of the music, letting its developments drag and its sonorities sag. The super audio sound here is spectacular, with quiet passages that have real presence and loud passages that have the impact of a Mack truck, but
Nétzet-Séguin's interpretation is so wrong-headed and the Montreal musicians' performance so lackluster that this recording is unlikely to convince either
Bruckner's adherents to listen all the way through.