Bruckner 7, CBSO, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 25 April 2024. 5✩✩✩✩✩ David Gray & Paul Gray.
Photo Credit: Jenny Bestwick.
Bruckner 7, CBSO, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 25 April 2024.
5✩✩✩✩✩ David Gray & Paul Gray.
“A mighty interpretation and performance of a mighty symphony by Anton Bruckner.”
Schumann – Violin Concerto
Bruckner - Symphony No 7
Schumann’s Violin Concerto, drafted in the Autumn of 1853, has a most haunting of origins. This was Schumann’s last large-scale work, and he wrote it at a time when his life and mind were seriously unravelling.
His wife, Clara Schumann, and friend Joachim - the famed violinist for whom this concerto was written - thought it best not to put the work forward for performance. It could be that they took this decision out of grief, or perhaps they did not want the concerto to be the work by which Schumann was remembered. Whatever the reason, this is a subdued, introspective piece, and - for a concerto played by the renowned Joachim - lacking in overt displays of virtuosity.
However, there is one most defining feature: a (relatively short) slow movement, based on the simplest of tunes, that has an ineffable beauty; a beauty, fragility and humanity that somehow takes us into the mind of a man who was about to try to kill himself (by throwing himself off a bridge into the Rhine on 27th February 1854) and who would then spend the next couple of years of his life in a lunatic asylum. Such a human tragedy.
The concerto begins with an assertive opening involving the whole orchestra, and then gives way to sustained solo work. This is underscored by the strings and punctuated by statements from the brass and woodwind. Conductor, Markus Stenz, managed the complex dovetailing of the solo violin with orchestral strings marvellously well. Soloist, James Ehnes, played with a mellow, husky tone; almost viola-like at times. Ehnes spans out the melodic line of the ‘Langsam’ slow movement with expansive phrasing and exquisite calm.
For a work noted for its lack of bravura, the finale of the concerto does have some fiendish passage work, which Ehnes managed with flare. However, the band never quite projected a sense of complete commitment and presence in this performance, so that, at times, one felt one was seeing a tantalising sketch, rather than a fully rounded picture. A few more notches on the energy scale from the orchestra might have revealed more of the work; plus, there was some scrappy horn playing by the two horn players. This reminded us of the bad-old, pre-Yamada days, and we really do not want to go back there.
Thankfully, the horn section was swelled to five players for Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony. The horn section also benefitted from being joined by four Wagner Tuba’s – the strange brass instrument commissioned by and named after Richard Wagner for use in his opera cycle, the Ring. The instrument is a kind of hybrid between the French horn and the Tuba and is most usually played by horn players. And play them they did! The horns - and brass section as a whole – so essential in this powerful symphony – were magnificent.
Indeed, Conductor Markus Stenz gave a wonderful interpretation of this marvellous work by the elderly Anton Bruckner. While expertly fashioning the four, individual movements of this symphony, Stenz showed that they are but part of a much larger and longer story; that of the symphony as a whole. There was a terrific sense of storytelling, without there being any kind of specific narrative or ‘programme’ note provided.
The CBSO responded superbly well to Stenz’s masterly reading, and there was some outstanding playing. Each of the sections of the orchestra were on point, and the sense of communication and dialogue between all was magical. This was orchestral playing of the highest calibre, and a conductor whose interpretation took audience and players alike into a whole other world: a world of mountains and sunlight, of dark recesses and foreboding: to an overall sense of nobility, strength, and triumph of the human spirit.
Markus Stenz – Conductor
James Ehnes - Violin