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University Centre Auditorium
October 26, 2007
There can be few great composers whose music provokes such disagreement among music-lovers as Anton Bruckner. Over a century after his death people are as likely (it seems) to hate his music as to love it.
The naysayers frequently point to Bruckner's odd personality: to his obsessive-compulsive disorder (as it would today be diagnosed); to his hopeless romantic attachments to young women; to his Austrian peasant manner which, despite decades of living and working in Vienna, he never lost. Not only that, they say, his music is tedious and repetitive, little more than competent. Why else would he have kept revising his symphonies?
Leaving aside the question of Bruckner's personality and how, if at all, it comes out in his music (funny how Wagner never suffers like this, despite being an infinitely less attractive personality), let us just reflect that Bruckner was perhaps the greatest organist of the second half of the nineteenth century, famed throughout Europe for his abilities to improvise - this is surely beyond the capabilities of the idiot savant some would like to portray Bruckner as.
But the organ, with its several manuals, and the vast, resonant space of the Abbey of St. Florian in Linz, hold the key to Bruckner's music: he uses the various orchestra choirs much like the manuals of an organ and his music needs time to breathe, to resonate - both in the acoustic space and in the listener's mind.
As to those multifarious revisions, they were frequently at the behest of well-meaning but misguided pupils (Löwe and the brothers Schalk). Bruckner himself was in no doubt as to the quality of his music and insisted that the original manuscripts be preserved for future generations.
It is ironic that the two most popular Bruckner symphonies - the fourth and the seventh - both, in some ways, present non-typical aspects of the composer. And even more ironic that the movement of the fourth which is best-known, the "hunting horn" scherzo, was in fact a replacement movement, composed when Bruckner revised the work in 1878.
János Sándor and the UVic Orchestra closed Friday night's concert with a marvellous performance of the fourth symphony, the "Romantic".
Bruckner's extended timescales require a firm hand on the tiller, indeed only a conductor with a keen grasp of - and ability to convey - the architectonics of the music, will ever really convince.
Fortunately Sándor possesses such ability in spades and is capable of unfolding great spans of music as if they were a single paragraph, which should and - as it transpired - does make him an ideal Bruckner conductor.
From the misterioso opening, with its famous horn call, to the massive final coda, Sándor conducted a performance of considerable authority. His players rose splendidly to the challenge, producing a range of sounds from the merest whisper to a full-throated torrent.
A few highlights of this superb performance included the second subject of the first movement, its lilting lyricism underlining Bruckner's position as the symphonic heir of Schubert; the cantabile theme of the second movement, equally delectable in both the cellos and, later, the violas; the winds in the gently rocking trio of the third movement; and the ominous tread of the lower strings which opens the finale.
Musically speaking the finale is the least satisfactory movement - Bruckner himself seems to have been aware of this, reworking it more than the other movements - and even Friday's performance could not quite paper over the cracks in the edifice. But the playing, from all sections of the orchestra, was (very nearly) enough to cast aside all doubts. And the final, blazing coda put the seal on a marvellous evening's music-making.
For those (guilty) who simply must know these things, the version performed was the so-called 1878-80 version in the edition by Haas - you can tell the Haas edition from the later Nowak of the same version from the very last bars of the work. Nowak incorporated changes Bruckner made in 1886, including the very audible one of having the third and fourth horns play the work's opening theme.
Before I leave the Bruckner, I cannot but mention, in particular, the first-class contribution of first horn Amanda Bogler; there is no more important single part in the entire work and she played it extremely well.
Mahler's Adagietto for Harp and Strings (the fourth movement of the fifth symphony) is in danger of becoming so familiar that one loses sight of just how good the music is.
Until, that is, one hears it done as well as it was on Friday.
I do not usually time performances, but the performance history - as captured on record - of this music is fascinating, with timings ranging from the sub-eight-minutes of the first recordings, by Mengelberg (1926) and Walter (1935) to the near-elephantine fourteen-minutes-and-change perpetrated more recently by conductors including Bernstein and Haitink.
Sándor, as I had expected, steered a sensible middle ground between the two, coming in at just under ten minutes. Which seemed ideal.
As did virtually every other aspect of the performance: pacing and dynamics were meticulously controlled so that, without forcing the music in any way, Sándor nonetheless conveyed every nuance of its emotional freight.
Any musician can tell you that playing quietly is far more difficult than playing loudly, which makes the achievement of the players that much more impressive: string tone was full-bodied and smooth, with a good weight at the bottom end - qualities displayed throughout the evening. Harpist Rosemary Beland provided the icing on the cake.
A sumptuous performance which makes me think that, over seven years after that wonderful Eighth, it is time to hear more Mahler from Sándor.
The concert opened with the Gluck's overture of Iphigenia in Aulis, in its concert version with the ending supplied by Wagner.
Although the name, to me, tends to summon schoolboy memories of struggling (not quite in vain) with Euripides's original Greek, the music is far more attractive.
Sándor directed a well-proportioned performance of great charm.
A truly satisfying evening.
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