The New York Times Nr. 18185 bespricht auf S. 2 das Konzert vom 7.11.1907 mit der 9. Symphonie:

"BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTA RETURNS

[...]

His Ninth Heard for the First Time Here [...]

     The Boston Symphony Orchestra returned yesterday to New York [...]. Both the orchestra and Dr. Muck were welcomed with joy by an audience as large as the hall would hold.     It must be confessed that the joy was somewhat sobered by the first piece upon the programme. Dr. Muck returned to the propaganda he made for Anton Bruckner's music last season, when he put the Viennese composer's seventh symphony on one of his programmes, by producing in New York for the first time his ninth, an unfinished work of portentous dimensions. New York has never accepted any of this music with anything like patience; and it has not been for lack of opportunity, in years gone by, to become acquainted with the possibilities that a new and unfamiliar manifestation of art may have seemed once, Bruckner's music has now nothing new, nothing that eludes the grasp of the concertgoer of the present day. It is all too easy to grasp the fact that it is, on the whole, a dull, uninspired groping after something that the composer was ambitious to attain but had not the power to.

     He had the power to write for the orchestra in a sonorous and immediately imposing style–a power that many learn nowadays in almost an equal measure. He had at times ideas grandiose, pathetic, or vigorous; but they mostly fall sterile, because he had not the power to bring them to any issue, to develop them in any sustained flight of eloquence or charm. This minute symphony is an epitome of his impotence as a composer of symphonic music. There are themes of ponderous weight and imposing promise; the adagio opens with one of true significance and a certain nobility; but once they are stated, the composer is at once in a dilemma.

     He goes on at the inordinate length which seems to be an indispensable part of his message; but nothing happens to hold the listener's attention or to satisfy his longing for some logical outcome. Phrases are carried through long strings of progressions like beads strung upon a necklace, with a total lack of connection except that of mere juxtaposition. They are reiterated with all the emphasis that the brass, reinforced by Wagner's tubas, can give; they are piled above long organpoints. They are put together like the pieces of a Chinese puzzle; but when the long task is done the result is no more inspiring or worth the doing than such a puzzle. The utterly arid results of all this are forcibly demonstrated in the two long slow movements of the symphony. The scherzo between them affords a certain relief, in its aerial lightness of orchestration, which is skillfully devised to give a factitious interest to ideas in themselves of little real value.

     Bruckner is credited with an ambition to embody in symphonic music the principles upon which Wagner worked. What that may mean has never yet been satisfactorily explained, since Wagner's principles are concerned with the relation between the music and the action upon the stage in the lyric drama. Bruckner, like many another, has learned much from Wagner's orchestration. He has appropriated, with rather more effrontery than most, Wagner's actual property in musical ideas; witness in this last adagio some very obvious helpings from "Eine Faust Ouverture." It was the fortune, or misfortune, to be played off against Brahms, the great representative of modern symphonic art, as a champion of the Wagnerian side. But those squabbles have to-day only a historical interest; and the peasant composer cuts a pitiable figure to-day in the suggestion af any such comparison.  His symphony was superbly played; nothing that Dr. Muck's devotion could do for it was left undone, and all its interminable length was expounded with anxious care and unflagging enthusiasm. The audience listened with amazing patience and attention, but the rustle of applause after the movements was but politeness toward Dr. Muck and his men.

     There was refreshment then in two classical works liitle known [... J. S: Bach, Beethoven ... Leonore ...] and it was heard with satisfaction." [keine Signatur] (*).

 

In der New York Tribune Nr. 22272, signiert "H. E. K." [Krehbiel], ist zu lesen:

"                            MUSIC.

     Why Dr. Muck should have exacted a penance from his subscribers at the first concert of this year's series by the Boston Symphony Orchestra it would be difficult to explain. To endure it was sufficient; there is neither desire nor energy left for the inquiry. Few of the subscribers were prepared for the blow, and few for that half of the panacea which came with the concluding number of the programme–the third of the four overtures which Beethoven wrote for his one opera. The other half was reasonable familiar, [... J. S. Bach ...]. The affliction, which endured an hour by the watch, was Bruckner's unfinished symphony in D minor. It is a part of history that the composer, feeling his vital forces ebbing away, remarked to a friend that his "Te Deum" might be performed as a concluding number. A pious feeling, with which it would be churlish to quarrel, has prompted a compliance with this suggestion on at least one occasion in Germany; last night it was left for the audience to feel "te Deum laudamus" that as much of the symphony as was written had been disposed of. The work is not new; it has been given a hearing by the Boston Orchestra in its own city, under Mr. Gericke, and by Mr. Theodore Thomas's band in Chicago, and at a Cincinnati festival. Two of these performances the present reviewer listened to with all the patient interest entailed upon him by duty; and he has never felt disposed to quarrel with the conductors who declined to put it into their schemes. Their reasons were doubtless ample to satisfy their artistic consciences, nor were they, necessarily, influenced by the easy wit which suggested that the symphony, being its composer's ninth and being in the key of Beethoven's ninth, should, like the latter, have a choral ending. But there is no reason why criticism should close its mouth in the presence of this work. There is no reason why–in spite of the simple, unaffected personal character of the composer, of which his champions make so much–it should not say that instead of being dedicated as he wished to the "dear Lord Almighty," it ought to be dedicated to the ineffable merit of the Rule of Three or the arithmetical table of Land or Square Measure. If ever there was a symphony built by rule of thumb–no less rule of thumb because it is that of a master technician–this is one. In invention of theme it is scarcely worthy of discussion, because when it presents a really pregnant thought that thought is not original. The composers's high imaginativeness has been lauded by no less an authority than Mr. Weingartner, but what praise ought we to have for an imagination which exhausts itself in mere reiteration of a thought–not developing its psychological contents, but simply presenting it over and over again with change of color–not moving it onward through a gamut of emotions, but simply piling it up, block on top of block until the composers's skill is exhausted and the hearer's endurance exhausted? It is a timid criticism which becomes dumb in the presence of a work of art only because it gives evidence of technical mastery. What the entire art-world–not only the musical–is suffering from is too much (heaven save the word!) virtuosity.

     It was a fine audience that heard Bruckner's symphony last night, though not as numerous as most of its predecessors last year. It heard the work respectfully, and got all the recompense it could out of the Bach suite and the Beethoven overture. [... über den Flötisten Maquarre ... "Leonore" ...]. It is the proper introduction to the opera for which it was written.

                                                H. E. K." (**).

 

The Sun Nr. 69 (New York) schreibt auf S. 7:

"         MORE BRUCKNER PROBLEMS

The Boston Orchestra Wastes its Sweetness on the Desert Air–[... Bach ...]–Beethoven Also Performed.

     The Boston Symphony Orchestra has come to town again. [...]. The Bruckner composition was heard for the first time in New York, having been unusually slow among new things in reaching this city.

     The first movement of this symphony was begun toward the end of April, 1891. The composer had advanced as far as the completion of the scherzo by February, 1894. The adagio was finished on October 31, 1894. Bruckner died in 1896, leaving some shadowy sketches of the last movement. The first performance of the three parts left by him took place in Vienna in 1903. Bruckner's "Te Deum" was employed as a conclusion to the symphony. The first performance in this country was by the Chicago Orchestra, under Theodore Thomas, on February 20, 1904. It was given in Boston under Mr. Gericke on March 31 and April 2 of the same year.

     For the instruction and uplifting of this public Dr. Muck has already produced the seventh symphony of Bruckner, a work which contained at least one movement worthy of a seat before the throne of Beethoven and Brahms, but the three movements heard last night were sorry and depressing companions to the thoughts of Beethoven and Bach with which they were associated.

     An analytical description of this composition would be almost as tiresome as the music itself. Rather let the performance pass into the limbo of all sad things with a fleeting record of impressions. The solemn presentation of final and unfinished works by misunderstood masters sometimes palls upon even the most indefatigable listener, and the frequent parade of the morituri te salutamus becomes distasteful to delicate sensibilities.

     If it be necessary to the preservation of the peace of nations, let us grant that Bruckner was a genius. If we must do so let us admit that he was the champion of Wagnerism in symphonic guise.We cannot by either process rid ourselves of the conviction that he was an artistic ascetic, dwelling in a region of melancholy brooding, shut out from that touch of nature which makes the world kin.

     A dreamer of dreams, he was not a seer of visions. A worshipper of ideals, he was not a creator of ideas. He conceived his compositions in the sterility of an emotionless love, brought them to birth in the labor of a stern determination and reared them under the rod of an almost fanatic self-flagellation.

     The results were children of fancy, pallid, intellectual, anæmic. Weingartner admired the man for his unswerving devotion to his own unpopular ideals, but sometimes such ideals, as in the case of Wagner's, have in them the potentiality of a world compelling force. Like Emerson's perfect reform, they begin as private opinions and end as such.

     But Bruckner's ideals are individual. At least so they seem now. Conductors, carried away by wonder at the rigorous continence of the musical treatment of the theme, the anchoritic abstinence from every thing that can appeal to mere sense and the scholastic hold of all that seems abstruse and abstractly scientific in the art of musical construction labor to endear him to the popalace, but the populace, as a part of it did last night, turns a cold shoulder upon it and revels in the simple, hearty, direct utterance of old Bach.

     One could well fancy last night that he heard the auditors saying with one accord: "We are sorry that this earnest and hard working person died before he wrote the last movement, but nevertheless we wish that since this had to happen it had happened before he wrote the first." Even the scherzo, which contains some flashes of melodic grace and some sweetness of instrumental diction, did not suffice to lift the lethargy into which the acidulous first movement sank the hearers. The final adagio invited to darkness ans slumber, and doubtless there were many who wished that they dared to sleep openly in the sight of men.

      We trust that Dr. Muck will spare this public further hearings of Bruckner's demonstrations of thematic theorems with corollaries on harmonic coefficients. There is enough beautiful music to provide New York with entertainment less narcotic. Let these learned proclamations be reserved for the academic consideration of the Bostonians.

     After the Bruckner composition [... Bach-Suite ...].

     It remains only to be said that Dr. Muck conducted last night with his unfailing in sight and that the orchestra, though disclosing some important changes in its ranks, played like the Boston Symphony Orchestra." [keine Signatur] (***).

 

 

Ein Inserat in The Philadelphia Inquirer Nr. 131 auf S. 15 macht auf die Konzerte vom 8./9.11.1907 mit der 5. Symphonie aufmerksam:

 

Aufführung der 5. Symphonie durch das Philadelphia Orchestra unter Karl Pohlig in Philadelphia [Hauptkonzert am 9.11.1907] (°°).