Though they were written in what was, for Bruckner, quick succession in the early 1880s, and neither was subjected to the kind of revision that makes establishing definitive versions of many of his symphonies so problematic, there’s no connection between the Sixth and the Seventh to really justify bundling them together in a two-disc set like this. Both recordings are taken from concerts the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra gave in Amsterdam under Mariss Jansons in 2012. The playing, as you might expect from this supreme orchestra, is magnificent; and, as you might expect from this conductor, the performances unfold like perfectly lubricated machines. But what both works lack in all this efficiency is any real character. There’s too little of the Sixth’s quirkiness – Bruckner called it the “sauciest” of his symphonies, but Jansons smooths its oddities out, making it sound like a lighter-weight version of the symphonies around it. Neither its slow movement nor that of the Seventh (Bruckner’s elegy to Wagner) plumbs the emotional depths they might, and even the glorious lyrical arch of the Seventh’s first movement remains surprisingly earthbound.
