2010-2011 Season, Concert 2
Bruckner
Bruckner Eighth Symphony
Benjamin Zander’s affinity for the music of Bruckner is a matter of public record, as witness the rave reviews that all his Bruckner performances have received over the years, and the Grammy nomination last year of his recording with London’s Philharmonia Orchestra of the Bruckner Fifth.
It is in his last completed symphony, the Eighth, that Bruckner’s grand musical vision achieved its most spacious and perfect form. In an almost alchemical way Bruckner’s humble Catholic faith combined with a sense of musical form and logic different from anyone else’s to create musical designs of a vastness and sublimity that are utterly unlike anything that came before. Bruckner’s originality is actually shocking. For most of the last century the composer was spoken of in the same breath as Mahler, but the two are quite different in a fundamental sense. Mahler wrestled with God most of his life, and in some of his symphonies attempts to take heaven by storm. Bruckner, on the other hand, seemed to regard heaven as his natural province, and when his music approaches those gates he seems to have not a moment’s doubt but that they will open of their own accord. And they do, in the sublime Adagio that lies at the heart of the symphony. Bruckner moves from one tableau upwards to the next in an attempt to depict musically, with the greatest vividness and explicitness, spiritual truths of which he is absolutely sure.
There was a time, not long ago, when the symphonies of Bruckner were a staple of the concert repertoire. Now, they are heard less frequently, perhaps because in their very certainty they seem out of step with our anxious and doubt-ridden times. But the tenor of the times gives us all the more reason to perform a work like the Bruckner Eighth, that can provide us all, if only for a while, so much solace, consolation, and hope. |
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Thursday, November 18, 2010
Sanders Theatre
Discovery Series, 7:00 pm
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Jordan Hall
Pre-concert talk, 6:45 pm
Concert, 8:00 pm
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Sanders Theatre
Pre-concert talk, 1:45 pm
Concert, 3:00 pm
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Current Season 
2010-2011 Season