Admit it. The first time you heard that
Pierre Boulez had recorded Bruckner's Eighth, you laughed. How could you not? The only thing more ridiculous than
Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the high priest of authentically autistic performance practice, conducting the authentically ecstatic music of Bruckner is
Pierre Boulez, the high priest of excruciatingly objective cerebral modernism, conducting the profoundly subjective spiritual music of Bruckner. The question was: would
Boulez conduct the mighty and majestic Eighth as an exercise in counterpoint or a musical meditation on the numinous? You had to ask? Of course,
Boulez does what he always does: he plays it straight. If the Eighth were only a superbly composed piece of music, that would be enough, because
Boulez leads the
Vienna Philharmonic in a thoroughly lucid performance of Bruckner's score. Not only does
Boulez hear everything in the score, he lets the listener hear everything in the score. But nowhere does the listener hear more than is in the score because
Boulez's objectivity cannot imagine the immensity beyond the score, the immensity that Bruckner heard and which a great performance forces the listener to confront. Although the
Vienna Philharmonic plays with great beauty of tone and Deutsche Grammophon's live digital sound from Bruckner's St. Florian in Linz is awe-inspiring,
Boulez is only conducting the notes. The numinous immensity beyond the notes is silent.