Tag: Günter Wand

Schubert & Bruckner At The Proms: Saying Goodbye To That “Magic Wand” Conductor, 24 August 2001

This was the seventh and last time that I saw the great, nominatively determined conductor, Günter Wand, perform. It was his last Prom and one of his very last performances.

We heard:

  • Franz Schubert – Symphony No. 8 in B minor, ‘Unfinished’
  • Anton Bruckner- Symphony No. 9 in D minor

Here is the BBC Prom stub for this concert.

I’m not certain that Janie and/or the Duchess were as awe-struck by this event as I was. We’d actually made one or two failed attempts to see Gunter perform Bruckner in the preceding years, which meant that I was especially delighted that he was well enough to attend and perform the advertised programme that night.

Wand’s touring that summer and autumn with the NDR Symphony Orchestra (now known as the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra) was his last hurrah. This link, and the following embed, is their performance of the Bruckner, a few week’s before our Prom, at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in Lübeck.

Returning to our Prom, it gathered rave reviews.

Here’s a link to the one in Classicalsource.com

This obituary piece from music-web-international also contains a review of the 24 August 2001 concert.

Coincidentally, trawling my log, my first encounter with Günter Wand, in November 1986, included the same Bruckner Symphony in the programme. I have a private recording of the 1986 concert, made in rudimentary fashion by setting the 1980s gizmondry to record while I was out!

Now I have found the formal 2001 recording in the public domain, I must make the time to listen to both recordings and see if I can sense Gunter’s journey with that astonishing but unfinished piece.

I was trying to think of something profound to say, to conclude this Ogblog piece. But given the two unfinished symphonies that were performed that evening, surely it is more fitting for me to…

The Night That Günter Wand Changed The Programme & Conducted His Last Prom, Royal Albert Hall, 9 September 1995

The BBC Proms stub for this concert – click here – reminds me that we had booked to see  Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor, as well as Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. But instead we got:

Anton Bruckner – Symphony No. 8 in C minor (1890 version, ed. Nowak)

My log note describes “Brucknergate” as follws:

It was meant to be a different programme, but Gunter changed it.

Well, I suppose Günter was a Bruckner specialist and I quite often booked to see him conduct Bruckner’s works anyway.

Mercifully, The Duchess (Janie’s mum, Pauline) seemed to accept the change with grace at that time. She possibly felt that the change meant that she had dodged a bullet in the matter of procuring interval drinks, as there was no interval given that it was a one piece concert. Pauline’s idea of a fair deal was for me or Janie to buy the tickets, the other of me or Janie to buy the dinner and she would buy the interval drinks…

…unless we were at The Questors Theatre, where she was a member, in which case she would do the theatre tickets, while Janie and I would procure the drinks and meal. (The Duchess received a few free guest tickets each year as part of her membership package, we later discovered.)

But I digress.

Strangely, I have found a recording of this very concert on YouTube, which I can share with you right here:

According to the accompanying verbiage, this concert turned out to be Günter Wand’s last stand…in the matter of conducting BBC Proms.

Rick Jones waxed lyrical about this concert in his trio of Standard Proms reviews:

Wand Prom Jones StandardWand Prom Jones Standard 11 Sep 1995, Mon Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Martin Kettle in The Guardian compared this Wand performance of Bruckner 8 with previous ones a little unfavourably while still praising the performance. A case of “the Kettle calling the Wand slack” or something like that:

Wand Prom Kettle GuardianWand Prom Kettle Guardian 12 Sep 1995, Tue The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

In the end, I suppose I should be glad to have been there for this one. I had been following Günter Wand around the Proms for best part of a decade by then.

A Bit Of Schumann & Brahms, Royal Albert Hall, 4 September 1993

Janie’s first encounter with Günter, was this. Possibly Pauline’s too, although she “will have done all that” with Janie’s father decades earlier, no doubt.

Günter Wand had a close working relationship with the BBC Symphony Orchestra for the Proms for a long time.

Here is a link to the BBC stub for this Prom.

We heard:

  • Robert Schumann – Symphony No. 4 in D minor
  • Johannes Brahms – Symphony No 1 in C minor

It was good.

Robert Henderson in the Telegraph also thought it was good:

Wand Prom Henderson TelegraphWand Prom Henderson Telegraph 08 Sep 1993, Wed The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

So that proves it.

Going It Alone At The Proms With Anton & Günter, Royal Albert Hall, 9 September 1990

Annalisa was due to join me at this concert, but had to pull out at the last minute for some reason. The reason is not captured in my log. It was a Sunday, so I expect it was a health reason rather than a work reason.

Anyway, I hobbled to the Albert Hall alone for this Prom. I think it was the first time I had been to the Proms alone and possibly was the only time I have done so to date (the date of writing this being late 2024).

I say hobbled, because the cursory “traction” approach to my multiple prolapse was obviously not working and I was still in a great deal of pain with my back after my injury in June that year. Indeed, I associate my evening alone at the Proms with Anton & Günter as the point at which I resolved that I would have to try something else, but that I was determined to try something other than major surgery before possibly submitting to that as a last resort.

This was a one piece concert:

Anton Bruckner – Symphony No 5 in B Flat Major, performed by the maestro Günter Wand conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

I suspect that Bruckner 5 is a good number for contemplative thought – it is certainly long enough. I do remember finding this performance especially moving and being really taken with it.

It was filmed and the film has been released on DVD – here is an extract:

If you look very carefully you might spot me sitting in the stalls on my tod.

This review from the Bucks Examiner says a lot:

Wand Ashmore BucksWand Ashmore Bucks 21 Sep 1990, Fri Bucks Examiner (Chesham, Buckinghamshire, England) Newspapers.com

Robert Henderson’s review in The Telegraph was no less glowing:

Wand Prom Henderson TelegraphWand Prom Henderson Telegraph 14 Sep 1990, Fri The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

I was there, folks. I was there. No doubt uncomfortable, fidgeting and barely able to walk for five minutes afterwards…but I was there.