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.

Bruckner: The Safe Symphony

Anton Bruckner

Symphony No. 2 in c-minor

 

Royal Concertgebow Orchestra Amsterdam

Ricardo Chailly

If we had to nickname Bruckner’s Second Symphony, the way Beethoven’s Sixth got nicknamed “Pastoral” somewhere along the line, I might suggest “Safe,” but that is not as bad as it sounds.  Perhaps Bruckner was looking for more popular and critical acclaim after the relative adventurousness of the First.  The first movement opens in an anthemic, expansive fashion.  Unusually, Bruckner gives short solos to the flute and clarinet as early as 1:45, but by and large there is no adventure here.  The second theme is also very expansive and pastoral (speaking of pastoral things), and also with no tension, except maybe a hint at 3:50.  The movement builds steadily, with nice parts for oboe, bassoon and, once again, flute — clearly one of Bruckner’s favorite instruments.  Horn introduces a new section around 6:00 which starts to develop the opening theme’s material, but again with no unusual harmony or dissonance to speak of.  There is a triumphant climax at 7:40, followed by some nice melodic passages for winds.  A lush melody starting around 12:50 or so foreshadows later movements, and the section at 15:00 has, like bits in the previous symphony, something Russian about it.  The whole movement is very even-keeled, especially in the second half, and, on the whole, dare I say it, a little boring.

The Adagio movement is full of melancholy beauty right off the bat, but we finally get a bit of dissonance at 1:48 in the way the solo violin is set against the strings.  This doesn’t last, however, and the horn theme at 2:50 is the basis for the rest of the movement.  The climax around 5:58 sounds very cinematic to my ear, and would work very well in a film soundtrack.  There is a new major-key theme starting at 12:00, and what little real harmonic tension there is in the movement, it is here.  By the 15:00 mark, we’re back at the opening theme.  Safe though it is, the whole movement is gorgeous.  It may not make you think, but check your pulse if it doesn’t make you feel something.

The Scherzo is energetic and, unlike in the First, the Trio section is obvious — it starts at 3:38.  It is pleasant, if somewhat repetitive, and surprisingly long.  There is a straight restatement of the opening theme at 7:35, but in the closing section Bruckner works in bits of the Trio material in an organic and subtle way.  One of the more pleasant surprises of the whole work.

Like the earlier movements, the Finale is full of lush consonance from the get-go, opening with a triumphant theme that is very Beethovenian in spirit, and a little in content, too.  The second theme is again very pastoral and a dramatic contrast to the opening — clearly a thing with Bruckner.  After the extremely slow section  at 5:10, there is finally some real harmonic tension in the strings starting around 6:25 or so.  The middle section is mostly slow and lush, with attractively prominent wind parts, and there is something about the Bruckner’s orchestral colors here that to my ear looks ahead to Mahler.  Finally, things begin to sound as if Bruckner decided that if the audience has lasted this long, they’ll stay to the end, and starts to experiment with some interesting harmonies at 12:27 and some previously absent chromaticism around 14:00.  The brass chorale at 16:14 if gorgeous and unexpected, and thus very effective.  Brahms would do something similar later.  There is ass-kicking brass in the final recap before the symphony closes with a highly triumphant, unabashedly major-key finale.

Bruckner: The Boring Symphony

Anton Bruckner
Symphony No. 1 in c-minor

German Symphony Orchestra Berlin
Riccardo Chailly

Bruckner composed the first of the symphonies he saw fit to perform in 1865-1866, conducting the premiere in 1868 in Linz.  He revised the symphony in 1890-1891, and it is this later version that we usually hear today.  It is clear from the first listen that most of the weight of the symphony is in the last movement.  It was also clear to me from my first listen that although it has its moments, on the whole the symphony is fairly boring.

The opening of the first movement is conventional, vaguely Beethovenian but not too much.  As early as a minute in, we get the foreshadowing of weirdness to come with an unstable chord or two in the strings, and it is these small moments of unexpected material that we have to listen for if we want to get something out of the symphony.  A chromatic second theme leads to some tension around 3:00, and we get another taste of weirdness to come in the ominous-sounding low brass around 4:50.  Not really a conventional sonata-allegro to my ear, the movement slips into development almost unnoticed and starts to build some real tension.  The brass chords around 7:10 are very much at odds with perfectly pleasant strings, and we get more unsettled harmonic stuff around 9:50 after a brief restatement of the first theme.  Eventually, things settle back down and a fragment of the first theme closes things out on an appropriately triumphant note.

The Adagio opens with some seriously dark and strikingly modern-sounding strings under a horn pedal, but unfortunately the mood doesn’t stay as melancholy as I might have liked.  I’m not sure how I feel about the flutes at 2:20, but the tonal colors are nice once other woodwinds come in.  The darkness clears up relatively quickly and the movement proceeds mostly in major.  Strings around 5:00 are compelling, and the counterpoint between strings and flute at 7:30 is effective.  There are some moments of tension later in the movement (e.g. around 8:30), but on the whole there is not a lot to hold one’s interest, and the overall effect is a little flabby.

Bruckner opens the Scherzo on a rousing note, and I suppose some people would call the wind colors in the opening vibrant; to my ear garish is a better descriptor.  Opening ideas develop for a while starting around 1:50, then we abruptly get a brand-new theme at 4:10.  Is this the trio?  I wasn’t sure.  There is more subtlety and variety in this section, but in the end it still doesn’t grab me that much, though I can’t argue with the gorgeous tonal colors in the low brass around 6:10.  At 7:30, we get a restatement of the opening — that second theme was the trio, after all.

Finally we get to the main event.  The opening of the Finale is super-dramatic; all I could think of is theme music for a final battle scene in a film.  Mild dissonance in the quiet passage at 1:15 leads to a slower, much more pastoral and, to my ear, slightly flaccid second theme.  There is more battle after that, and by the four-minute mark we’re in the development. Interestingly, Bruckner develops the second, pastoral theme first, though he does eventually get to the battle stuff, too.  There is new material starting around 6:40, and it is probably one of two or three most compelling bits in the whole work, with some really interesting chromatic movement in the strings.  Unfortunately, the music bogs down after this, the beautiful clarinet solo notwithstanding.  There is a tumultuous new section just before the ten-minute mark.  It reuses bits of the opening theme and manages to build emotional tension without much corresponding harmonic tension. Around 12:19, Bruckner recaps the opening with bits of the second theme woven in — whether you consider him one of the “greats” or not, it is moments like this that make him a solid candidate.  Too bad we had to wait until the second half of the last movement to hear it.  There is a faux finale just after 13:00, with more stuff after that that sounds unrelated to me.  There is a dense buildup to the real finale.  Once again the colors are very nice, but the overall effect is busy, and the main feeling I had once the symphony ended was one of relief.

A Symphony of Contrasts

Anton Bruckner

Symphony No. 0 (“Nullte”) in d-minor

 

German Symphony Orchestra Berlin

Riccardo Chailly

 

Bruckner’s Symphony 0 was actually his third, completed in 1869.  The designation “Nullte” comes from the fact that, apparently unsatisfied with it, Bruckner withdrew it (“annuliert”) from the body of his published work.  If I had to sum up the symphony in a single phrase, I would have to call it a work of extreme contrasts, in the end a little too extreme for my ears.

 

The opening of the Allegro is dramatic and attention-grabbing, and Beethoven’s influence is immediately obvious, but things get odd pretty quickly.  It is possible that hindsight is our worst enemy here – Bruckner’s dedication to his Catholic faith and the large body of sacred music he composed are both well-known – but it sounds to me that this sacred music creeps in everywhere in the first movement.  As early as the three minutes in, the swelling strings wedge a hymn of praise into the music.  At around 4:00, a chorale-like passage in the low reeds harkens back to Bach, or perhaps even earlier, but definitely to the mysterious world of the cathedral.  A brass passage that thematically seems to come out of nowhere does the same around 6:30.  The contrasts have begun. The pastoral-sounding section with its chirping bird-like flute around 7:00 also comes out of nowhere, disorienting us briefly until the opening theme eventually recaps.  Only a minute later, though, Bruckner wallops us with a decidedly un-Beethovenian, densely chromatic section that looks sideways at Wagner and perhaps even ahead to Mahler.  I still can’t decide whether it is revolutionary or simply weird.  The development starting around 9:30 is nice, with some good solos in it, but before too long we get another slow, hymn-like passage out of nowhere, followed by a recurrence of the chromatic material around 13:30.  The long pause at 14:20 is far longer than any I’ve heard elsewhere, and then – a brand-new slow theme that to my ear bears no melodic relationship to anything that came before.  Someone intent on assigning programmatic meaning to music and, again, informed by Bruckner’s religiosity, could plausibly argue for the first movement as a depiction of a struggle between good and evil.

 

The opening of the Andante second movement is episodic, strung together from thematic fragments.  The wind passage at 1:45 is only one example.  The orchestration, though, is nice and lush, and the strings around 11:00 are deeply melancholy.  Beethoven’s influence is much less obvious here.

 

The Scherzo, to my ear, has something distinctly Russian about it, even though I can’t put my finger on what it is, exactly, that makes it so.  Something in it, I think, echoes Tchaikovsky, no doubt by coincidence.  Things get pretty bombastic pretty quickly, especially in the brass.  The trio section, on the other hand, reaches much further back, almost to something Haydn might have written, before the bombast returns and, frankly, overwhelms a little.

 

The finale, marked Moderato, takes up the bombast of the scherzo almost as soon as it begins – around 1:20.  It strikes me, once again, as Beethovenesque, but this time it is the “heroic,” anthemic quality that makes it so, even as the melodic and harmonic material is Bruckner’s own.  After the second theme is introduced at 2:50, the movement doubles down on the contrasts between energetic fast and pastoral slow sections.  There is some interesting texture in the strings towards the end of the movement.  The symphony ends, after a hair less than 50 minutes in Chailly’s rendition, just about the way you would expect.

 

A morsel of carrot on the tip of a conductor's baton

National Symphony Orchestra's performance of Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony last Saturday was not bad. On the contrary, it was excellent. I cannot recall the orchestra sounding better, and the massed violas in the third movement, accompanied by nothing but a quiet pizzicato in the double basses, produced some of the finest sound from the notoriously ornery instrument I have heard anywhere. But it could have been much, much better. The credit for nearly ruining the performance goes to guest conductor Andrew Litton's introductory remarks.

Now, just making some remarks, while unnecessary, could be forgiven. And to be sure, Shostakovich can benefit from historical context more than most composers. The relevant information could easily be placed in the program notes, or the interested listener could look it up in any number of print or online sources, but ok, talk if you must. The coup de grâce was Litton's musical examples. He started with a few bars of the opening, as if to apologize for the movement's supposed stasis and to assure us that it really does make musical sense, but it got worse. One of the Eleventh's most famous features is Shosti's use of songs popular in Soviet Russia of his time, most of them rousing numbers intended to motivate workers and soldiers. While it's true that a typical American concert goer of today almost certainly does not know these songs, anyone with half an ear can tell where they are. Any pop, or folk (for that is what these songs had become), tune worth its salt sticks out immediately in the context of a large-scale symphony. But Litton insisted on having the orchestra play every single one, stripped of its context, bookended by explanations, to hammer us over the head with their prominence and illustrate the ideological ambiguity the composer introduced by syncopating, transposing, or otherwise changing the raw material of these songs, lest we forget that Shostakovich was a Very Complex Man working under Very Complex Political Circumstances. For one example, he went so far as to play over the PA a recorded sample of a version as it was performed in Russia by the Red Army Chorus before giving us the composer's rendition. What gives? Surely a conductor of Litton's caliber knows that a symphony only makes sense when played in its entirety, from beginning to end, in order? Imagine an accomplished chef carefully preparing a four-course meal, but before serving it to you, he hands you a fork with a piece of carrot on it and says, “This is one of the main ingredients in the salad.” Then, a spoonful of rice: “This is what the first course will be served with.” After that, a mouthful of freshly ground black pepper. As you choke on it, the chef says, “This is the principal seasoning I used in the main course.” Is that how you would like your meal introduced?

The experience was so bizarre that it provoked a reaction from the audience. After one particularly martial passage, complete with a staccato snare part, and Litton's comments about the brutality it supposedly portrayed, someone screamed “Got it!” A few moments later, a voice clearly yelled out, “Stop talking and play your music!” Rude to be sure. Some boos from the audience ensued. When Litton was finally done talking, he got some strong applause, no doubt as a sign of support and a desire to put the heckler in his place. At least I hope that was the reason. If, on the other hand, the patrons genuinely enjoyed having a bunch of unmoored musical morsels stuffed down their throats and washing them down with a lecture, then classical music is truly dead, not because the audience is getting old and dying, or because the tickets are too expensive, but because we are no longer capable of hearing a complete work on its own terms and forming a personal relationship with it without a crutch. Say it ain't so.

Roasted Carrot and Chickpea Salad with Chiles, Cumin and Dill

Carrots and cumin are a classic combination, I was tired of seeing an old can of chickpeas every time I opened the cupboard, and I happened to have a bunch of fresh dill left over from making potato salad a few days earlier, so:

• 4-5 medium carrots, scrubbed, sliced diagonally into 1-inch-thick slices
• 1 Tbsp. + 2 Tbsp. olive oil
• 1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 1 4-oz. can whole mild green chiles, preferably Hatch, drained and sliced
• 2 tsp. whole cumin seeds
• Juice of 1/2 fresh lime
• A handful of fresh dill, finely chopped (about 2 Tbsp.)
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

 

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.
2. Toss the carrot slices with 1 Tbsp. olive oil in a medium bowl. Sprinkle with a pinch of salt and toss again.
3. Turn the carrots out onto a cookie sheet or shallow roasting pan large enough to accommodate the carrot slices in a single layer and roast until tender but not mushy, and the edges are slightly caramelized. This shouldn't take much more than 10 minutes, depending on the thickness of the carrot slices.  Remove from oven and let cool for a few minutes.
4. Combine the roasted carrot slices, chickpeas, sliced chiles and cumin seeds in a bowl.  Add the remaining 2 Tbsp. olive oil, lime juice and dill.  Season with salt and pepper.  Gently but thoroughly mix the salad, cover and let stand at room temperature for a couple of hours or in the refrigerator overnight.  This will soften the cumin seeds and release some of their aroma.

Serve at room temperature as a side dish, part of an appetizer buffet, or bring to a picnic.  Feel free to adjust the amounts to taste, as well as substitute whatever fresh leafy herb you have on hand for the dill.  Cilantro works particularly well, but parsley will do in a pinch.

Royal Philharmonic at the GMU Center for the Arts

Some soloists, conductors, and perhaps even entire orchestras just aren't cut out for performing music written in certain styles or periods.  They are just not generalists.  Such was the case last weekend with the Pinchas Zukerman leading, from the violin, the Royal Philharmonic at George Mason's Center for the Performing Arts.  They opened with Bach's A-minor violin concerto, and it was quite likely the most boring Bach I have ever heard.  The orchestra's playing was baby-bottom smooth, with a dynamic range narrower than a bigot's mind.  This is music that cries out for playfulness and zest and can sustain almost unlimited amounts of experimentation and irreverence, but the Royals sawed away like automatons for the entire concerto.  Zukerman himself, his technique as smooth and characterless as that of his troops, looked bored, just standing there with no expression on his face (except maybe that of mild disdain) and consequently none coming from his fingerboard.  If you care so little for this music, why play it?

Zukerman and Co. followed up, less radically than it sounds on paper, with Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4, scored for strings, and although I do not know the work intimately, it was obvious from the first few moments, that the group was much more in their element than on the Bach.  The smoothness and “of a piece” nature of their sound served the orchestra exceptionally well as Schoenberg's diffuse and mysterious score moved between the sections.  Written when the composer was on the cusp of his twelve-tone breakthrough but not yet there, this is gorgeous music, the the Philharmonic did it full justice.

The coup de grace of the concert came in the second half, as Zukerman and Canadian cellist Amanda Forsyth attacked Brahms' Double Concerto, Op. 102.  Clearly, Romantic symphonic material (the Concerto started out as the composer's Fifth symphony) is where both the soloists and the orchestra were fully at home.  The dynamics, so constricted on the Bach, were sweeping, and the tutti sections were delivered with unshakable authority.  Zukerman played well, but, for my money, was blown away by the glamorous and talented 47-year-old Forsyth (incidentally, Zukerman's third wife – what's with young soloists falling for cranky old conductors?).  Her tone was beautiful, yet full of character, with just enough juice in the attack to make her 1699 Testore cello sound distinctive on every note.  Spectacular performance of one of my favorite works by one of my favorite composers.  By the end, I was perfectly happy to forgive Zukerman and the gang their strangling of the Bach, though I must insist that the credit for lifting the violinist and his orchestra to such soaring heights go primarily to Forsyth.