Best Sounding Bruckner Recordings

My favorite Furtwangler Bruckner is a VPO Eighth recorded in an empty Hall in 1944.  My copy is from a private label created for the fund raising telethons of WFMT in Chicago but it is available on many labels.  It was made the day before a concert performance that is also available as a recording, so if interested be aware.  Furtwangler usually did his best in front of an audience but my understanding is that this was not a rehearsal but a private performance before a few people as well as an air check for the following.  At any rate it’s gripping, with the voice of doom music late in the first movement having an especially powerful kick in the gut.
  And yes, it’s nice to hear Furtwangler WWII recordings without listening to Nazis in the audience hacking away.  I always get distracted hoping and one of them will die choking on his own secretions.

@mahler123,  What an insightful comment regarding Jochum's use of rubato!  Also interesting is your reaction to it.  Your comments resulted in me spending most of the day thinking about, but not listening to,  Bruckner.   I agree completely with your characterization of von Karajan as the anti-Jochum.  Since I have found Jochum (and Venzago) to afford agreeable Bruckner, it will not surprise you to know I am not overly fond of HvK's Bruckner.   I hear chants of "Heresy, Heresy!" off in the distance.  (I also prefer Kempe to HvK for R. Strauss- perhaps fodder for a new thread?)  HvK's Bruckner, and similar approaches to his music, inevitably make me feel unsettled, troubled, even fearful of an immanent musically induced apocalypse.  The 9th, in particular, creeps me out.  In a sense, Bruckner  (HvK) hits me as the anti-Bach.    

I don't put Bruckner in the very top tier of composers.  I also disagree with those who claim he wrote the same symphony 9 or 10 times.   BTW, my favorite Bruckner is the Te Deum, but I have yet to find a satisfactory recording.  Any guidance?
 

@brownsfan , I agree with you regarding Von K's Bruckner. I like a couple of his interpretations, but in general I don't hear of feel the different emotions in his Bruckner.

The Ninth was my “gateway “ into Bruckner.  The first Bruckner I encountered was the Fourth, when I was in College about 4 decades ago.  It was entertaining but one can only take so much medieval knights jousting background music.  I heard the Seventh in concert and was bored to tears except the Scherzo.  Finally I heard a Gunter Wand CD of the Ninth and was blown away.  I really hate the completions of the Ninth, not only because I am used to the 3 movement torso, but because anything that winds up coming after those final mystical chords just seems to cheapen the experience.
  I don’t listen my to the First two Symphonies, let alone the 0 and 00.  Of the Te Deum, my only recording is one that is tacked on to the end of Ninth as a Choral completion.  As I mentioned I hated any completion of the Ninth so I haven’t spun that CD for a couple of decades.  I did hear the Te Deum recently on the radio (I listen to Radio Venice, and the Bluesound App will identify the composition but not the performers), and liked it quite a bit, so I would also be interested in recommendations there.
  Karajan Bruckner is very polarizing.  Most critical opinion that I have read is negative, and it was only relatively recently that I began to investigate for myself.  I love it.  When Von K felt sympathy for a Composer he could do great things, and the playing of the Berlin Phil. Is breathtaking.
  I have heard good things elsewhere about Venzago.  Time to check Qobuz for his recordings.
   I listened to the Jochum/Dresden Sixth a few weeks back.  Maybe not as much rubato as I remember, or perhaps he tones it down in that relatively restrained work.  I will have to respin that cycle.
  Bruckner doesn’t consistently interest me as much as the composer with whom he is frequently compared and contrasted, namely Mahler, but in a few spots he really strikes gold.  He also is perhaps the most challenging Composer for an audio system, and therefore a great composer to discuss on Agon.

Karajan's performances of Bruckner #4, 7, 8 on EMI circa 1970 are magnificent IMO. The young Karajan with his Berliners approach Bruckner slowly and with such passion. These are the recordings that move me.

@mahler123, I absolutely agree with you regarding the completion of the 9th symphony. A fourth movement is unnecessary and "those final mystical chords" provide a finality to the beautiful adagio and preceding movements.