Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs is scholar on the music of Anton Bruckner (1824-1896).
He is also responsable for the Completion of the Finale of Anton Bruckner's Ninth Symphony, a task he delivers with the notable Italian conductor and composer Nicola Samale.
Cohrs writes essays about music, is guest conductor of New Queens Hall Orchestra in England and collaborator for the 'Kritische Gesamtausgabe' on the music of Anton Bruckner.
I took this portrait of Ben Cohrs at his home in Bremen Germany, june 2005.
more info on Ben Cohrs, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin-Gunnar_Cohrs
For more information on Life and Work of Anton Bruckner, please visit the excellent website of Connecticut USA based editor John Berky : www.abruckner.com
It is also very interesting to become a member of 'The Bruckner Journal' from London, www.brucknerjournal.co.uk of which Ken Ward is the editor, Raymond Cox managing editor, and Peter Palmer, Crawford Howie and Nicholas Attfield associate editors.
Ofcourse Anton Bruckner is also largely discussed at the chatsites www.brucknerfreunde.at with may thanks to Holger Grintz, and at http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/antonbrucknerclub with Marco Castellani and Michael Cucka moderating.
other important links are the Bruckner Society of America http://www.taxexemptworld.com/organization.asp?tn=797561
and www.bruckner.org
Bruckner, Mahler and other Classical Music are also largely discussed at the Mahler 7 Club at Yahoo with Alfred Eaker being the moderator and where I also learn a lot from other music specialists like Steve Vasta http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/Mahler7th/messages?o=1
many thanks to Dietmar Achenbach and Gerd Fassbender and their respective wives for their invaluable co-operation regarding all info on Anton Bruckner.
Internationale Bruckner-Gesellschaft Wien, President Dr. Thomas Leibnitz, redaktion Dr. Andrea Harrandt, Musiksammlung der Osterreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Herrengasse 9, A-1010 Wien.
Internationale Bruckner-Gesellschaft releases Studien und Berichte concerning life and work of Anton Bruckner with may thanks to Wiener Philharmoniker and Stift St. Florian for their invaluable co-operation.
In 2005 the dutch journalist Aart Van Der Wal contacted Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs, wich resulted in a nice article and interview with Cohrs. This article is on the website www.opusklassiek.nl and can be found via the links of -muziek -componisten en werken- Bruckner- Symphony 9 and it's unfinished Finale. It is also on John Berky's website. also on opusklassiek you will find an article of Ben Cohrs on performing practices of Bruckner's music.
Why did Bruckner's Ninth had to be completed?
Bruckner died in october 1896. He was still working on the Finale music of his last symphony during the last months of his life, even though his health condition was deteriorating seriously. It may well be that he actually finished the work, but that a few more months of lifetime failed him to complete the instrumentation.
After his death it seemed to have taken five days to seal Bruckner's workroom, during wich time friends and students grasped away some folios of the Ninth, considering them as memorabilia. In time some of these manuscripts have been rediscovered, others sadly are lost up to date. Maybe they are in the hands of autograph collectors.
In all Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs and Nicola Samale had to complete only a few minutes of music, quite a bit less than say the completional work done by Franz Xaver Sussmayer on Mozart's Requiem wich became worldknown.
'The' completion however doesn't exist. This can only come from Anton Bruckner himself. There are also other musicians who create a completion of the Finale, like American William Carragan.
What I obviously like about the work of Cohrs and Samale is that they always try to add as few music as possible of their own, in order to show us what Anton Bruckner might have intended.
For the completional work, Cohrs and Samale mostly used the sketches, left by Bruckner.
Bruckner sketched very substantial parts of the Coda of the Finale, like the beginning, the ascent to the final cadenca, aswell as the final Tonical D pedalpoint, wich brings the beginning of the Symphony in mind.
The music wich had to follow then has gone lost, but due to the testimony of Anton Bruckner's personal Doctor Richard Heller, Bruckner intended to end the work with a glorious 'Allelujah' in praise of the dear Lord. Musicologists see this Allelujah as a derivate from the trumpets of the Adagio, aswell as the beginning of the Symphony, inverted, and in D Major...
Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs appealed to all people who might have manuscripts of this Finale music in their possession, to post these or high contrast copies of them to Postfach 10 75 07, D-28075 Bremen, Germany.
Gert
