featuring Günther Herbig and pianist Louis Lortie It will be some time yet before we discuss Bruckner’s final symphonic masterpiece here on the blog, even though we’re not actually that terribly far away, but I’ve mentioned somewhere before this odd … Continue reading NSO’s Bruckner 9
performed by the Hamburg Philharmonic under Simone Young, or as below with the Vienna Philharmonic under Carl Maria Giulini (cover image by Fábio Ferreira) Bruckner’s seventh symphony, one of his most famous and successful, was written between 1881 and 1883, … Continue reading Bruckner Symphony No. 7 in E, WAB 107
performed by the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra under Sergiu Celibidache (cover image by Eberhard Grossgasteiger) Its themes are exceptionally beautiful, its harmony has moments of both boldness and subtlety, its instrumentation is the most imaginative he [Bruckner] had yet achieved, and it possesses a mastery … Continue reading Revisit: Bruckner Symphony no. 6 in A, WAB 106
performed by the Hamburg Philharmonic under Simone Young, or below with a second favorite, the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony under Stanisław Skrowaczewski (cover image by Cassie Boca) Back to Bruckner. He’s a link between Beethoven and the next composer we’ll be … Continue reading Bruckner Symphony no. 5 in B-flat, WAB 105
with Leonidas Kavakos under Herbert Blomstedt Well, add one more to the list. Yet another world-class orchestra comes through Taipei, with a world-class conductor and soloist. I’ll be honest. When I heard about this concert many months ago, my first … Continue reading Gewandhausorchester Leipzig in Taiwan
performed by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Riccardo Chailly, or below by the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra under the late Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (cover image by Adam Edgerton) It’s been sometime since we’ve seen Bruckner. And aside from the revisit article … Continue reading Bruckner Symphony No. 3 in D minor, WAB 103
featuring Wen-Sinn Yang, cello The NSO finished their concert season two years ago, in the spring of 2015, with Bruckner’s eighth symphony, a monumental work with which I was unfortunately not familiar enough to appreciate in full at the time. … Continue reading NSO’s Bruckner 7
performed by the Fine Arts Quartet and Gil Sharon. People (rightly) think of Bruckner as a craftsman, a constructor of enormous, highly-developed, colossal symphonies, and there’s a reason for that. As we saw this week (with the exception of his study symphony, a … Continue reading Bruckner String Quintet in F major, WAB 112
performed by the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken under Stanisław Skrowaczewski Those names. The effect of its breadth and grandeur has remained with me ever since. -Robert Simpson (This article is tons longer than I thought it’d be.) So you may or may not … Continue reading Bruckner Symphony no. 2 in Cm, WAB 102
performed by the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken under Stanislaw Skrowaczewski That’s a mouthful, but it’s likely who I’ll feature in the rest of my Bruckner symphony articles. I’ll get to why on Thursday. For now, this. … much about the work betrays the style … Continue reading Bruckner Study Symphony in Fm (no. 00)
And the third in a series of two-night features that will continue through into next year. The only difference is that I’m not going to both evenings this time. I can only attend the second night, but a good friend is … Continue reading Concert Review: Munich Philharmonic and 曾宇謙
performed by The Berlin Philharmonic under Herbert von Karajan (or below in another performance I actually do enjoy [most of] by Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony. [I say actually because it seems this set doesn’t come up in as … Continue reading Bruckner Symphony no. 1 in Cm
He couldn’t stop himself. Is this the same image I used last time? While Brahms was perhaps compulsive about perfecting something before he published it, agonizing for ages over a work (his first symphony took something like two decades), Bruckner … Continue reading The Bruckner Problem
It’s a lot of music. This concert marks the end. It was the last completed symphony that Bruckner wrote, and it is the last concert of both the NSO’s season and the last concert of the month, thus beginning a long four-month stretch of no concerts at our National Concert Hall while it gets some renovations or something. I’ll be eager to see it in the fall. I can’t imagine it’s getting a huge makeover or anything, but who knows? It was a large crowd last night. Even from the downstairs entrance I went in to have dinner downstairs beforehand, … Continue reading Concert Review: NSO- Symphonic Milestone: Bruckner’s Magnum Opus
This piece has been revisited, and an updated article has been written. Please read it here. I’ll keep the original article (below) for posterity, but I would suggest reading the new article instead. Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Sir Georg Solti (Decca, … Continue reading Anton Bruckner: Symphony No 6 in A
Fugue for Thought 