Bruckner: Turning the Corner

Anton Bruckner
Symphony No. 3 in d-minor

German Symphony Orchestra Berlin
Riccardo Chailly

It is possible that my friend, with whom I am undertaking this tour of all of Bruckner’s symphonies, forced my hand a bit when he commented recently that “Bruckner really turned a corner in No. 3,” but now that he did, I find it impossible to see the work in any other light.

The opening movement starts with some trademark over-the-top brass, but we get some weirdness as early as 1:13 in — there is something unsettling here in both brass and strings.  The passage at 3:10, albeit brief, sounds almost modernist, especially in the strings, and by the four-minute mark or so, Bruckner prefigures Mahler in no uncertain terms — slow and pastoral, yet with a lot of tension.  Shortly after — no more than a dozen bars, maybe less — the music gets downright spooky, the first expression of the movement’s subtitle of Misterioso.  A couple of minutes later, there are some pretty wild intervals between strings and oboe (and, a bit later, horn) — Bruckner had certainly not scored anything this bold in any of the previous symphonies.  The unsettled feeling continues to a greater or lesser degree for the rest of the movement, culminating in some real harmonic ambiguity towards the end, at 15:54 and again at 16:20, where Bruckner hints more at Debussy of La Mer than anything I know of Mahler, much less of Bruckner’s contemporaries.  He even plays with rhythm in ways he hasn’t up until this point — is that a bolero around the 18-minute mark?  To be sure, there is some patented Bruckner moments, too — the obnoxious climax at 11:00 followed by some anthemic chest-thumping, short but gorgeous horn and flute solos throughout, and an organic way he reworks the material of the opening themes in the second half of the movement.  But the gauntlet has been laid.

The Adagio is not as dramatic a departure from earlier slow movements: an expansive opening, lots of lush drama throughout, both in the dynamics and the harmonies, lots of beautiful horn writing — the instrument really carries the movement.  But even here, we get unsettled by the oboe and strings at the end of the first minute, albeit briefly, then again by the strings at 2:55.  There is rhythmic weirdness, too — I’m not sure what’s happening at 4:25, but it sounds as if the record skipped a couple of times… except I was listening on CD.  Finally, we get a seriously dissonant climax at 9:11 that will startle even the most absent-minded listener.  It seems that Bruckner has left the old, beautiful-but-predictable Adagios of earlier symphonies behind for good.

The Scherzo brings its own flavor of surprises.  After a characteristically brash opening, the second theme is a fast and very un-Brucknerian waltz.  And the Trio, again fairly long here, just like it was in No. 2, is also a waltz, slower and almost Straussian in feel.  Not entirely, of course — there is stuff here that Strauss neither could, nor needed to, write.  But the overall feel is unmistakably mid-19th-century Vienna.

There are more contrasts in the Finale.  After a bombastic opening (is Bruckner capable of any other kind?), the second theme is sweet, almost saccharine, built from the material of the waltz from the Scherzo, but in duple time.  Tricky.  The unaccompanied horn chorale is a pleasant surprise and an effective transition device, and after a false start or two, things get going and go to a much darker place, on average, than anything that came before, opening movement included.  There is more development in the second half, another brass chorale, a new theme, a recap of the “sweet” motif, and some other stuff besides.  The ending, though, is massively huge and unambiguous.  The overwhelming force of whatever un-namable thing inspires Bruckner has triumphed over, well, pretty much everything.