Kritik zur 8. Symphonie [am 20.11.1929 in London] von Ernest Newman in der Sunday Times (*)

und von A. H. Fox-Strangways in The Observer Nr. 7226 auf S. 14:

"            THE PROBLEM OF BRUCKNER.

     Bruckner is certainly a problem. We have Prof. Decsey (his pupil) telling us that he may be coupled with Beethoven and Brahms as a symphonic writer, that his music is based on the latest Wagner, and that in the Vienna and Berlin of to-day it is received as if it were a celebration of the mass. And here we have his eighth symphony, his final word, performed, and our ears tell us we have never heard such a number of platitudes and mannerisms within the space of an hour. The whole work is very, very full, full, full, full of sequences, seq . . .  (no room for eight of them)–they are generally in powers of two, not, like Franck's, examples of the Rule of Three. The general effect is, after a time, that of bad stammering. One can say of the modulations–violent wrenches up or down a tone or a semitone–that they must have been startling at the time. But it is difficult to find an excuse for the entire absence of cross-rhythm (except for one elementary little 3 x 4 = 2 x 6 in the scherzo), and cross-rhythm has been the very life of music since the days of the Chaldeans. The melodies are the worst: they really have no meaning, unless they have that meaning which no one thinks worth expressing. One can only suppose that Bruckner must have been a fascinating personality, and simply mesmerised people into thinking his music as good as he was.

     Herr Otto Klemperer conducted. There was nothing to do really but to beat time, and though we have a conductor or two who cannot do that, most babes can. He did a good deal more, certainly, but only by way of simulating a passion that nobody felt. hardly (if we may whisper it) himself. He, or the work, or "the show," was received with the usual English hospitality which dispenses us from the labour of discernment.

     As to Brahms, Bruckner's symphony is later than Brahms's four,  [... Beziehung zu Brahms und zu Wagner ...] and the gap between Wagner and Beethoven was probably, whatever the young bloods may say, greater than that between Wagner and Schonberg and Co. Bruckner takes Wagner's wand, but calls no spirits from the deep." (**).