David Dalle
Thursday April 25th, 2024 with David Dalle
Trumpeter Frank London; beginning an Anton Bruckner symphonic cycle with his 1st symphony.

Today I will be joined by the incredible trumpeter and band leader Frank London. London has had a very long musical career. He is a founding member of the Klezmatics, the Klezmer Conservatory Band, led the Glass House Orchestra, collaborated with John Zorn and countless other musicians and projects. Today, we are specifically looking at Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars. They released three albums in the early 2000s, and a fourth ,"Chronika", has just been released. Frank will be joining me in the second hour. To start the show, we will begin my Anton Bruckner symphonic cycle. 2024 marks the 200th anniversary of Bruckner's birth, in northern Austria just outside Linz on Sep 4th 1824. Bruckner is one of my favourite symphonists (with Beethoven, Mahler, Sibelius) and his nine symphonies still deserve more attention, particularly in the English speaking world (his symphonies did enter the repertory in the German speaking world in his lifetime and have been performed fairly consistently). Bruckner had a modest background, his father was a rural schoolteacher, and Bruckner's first teacher. Bruckner was a very hard working student and learned to play the organ as a child. At 13 his father died and he was sent to the Sankt Florian, home to the great St. Florian monastery, to be a choirboy. He excelled at all his studies and became an assistant teacher, first at the small village of Windhaag an der Maltsch. and later back at St. Florian. His tasks were extensive and involved a lot of manual labour: "Among the tasks of the teaching assistant, who had to be at the same time teacher, organist, music copyist, sexton, and farm hand, were the ringing of the morning bell and mowing, then dressing the priest, playing the organ, fetching the wine, serving at the altar, taking the children's practice, writing out a lot of music, getting the lunch, after-school hay-making, threshing, potato-digging, and ploughing, prayer-reading, ringing lights out and more. Bruckner was a teacher, servant, and farm-labourer in one." During all this time, Bruckner would continue to study music, especially music theory, and he became the main organist for St. Florian from 1848 until 1856. In 1855 he began studying with the renowned composer and music teacher Simon Sechter in Vienna. He would travel fortnightly to Vienna to study with Sechter. In 1856 he moved to Linz where he became cathedral organist. Bruckner in his 30's was known primarily as an incredible organist (and this reputation would last the rest of his life, touring France in 1869 and giving a series of organ recitals in St. Albert Hall in London in 1871, to great acclaim). He was particularly famous for his improvisations. Sadly, none of his improvisations were transcribed, and he composed just a handful of organ compositions. His few compositions at that time were almost all church music, including a Requiem and other choral works. In 1861, a 37 year old Bruckner completed his courses with Sechter and earned a diploma from the Vienna conservatory. He then began studies with Otto Kitzler, nine years his junior, who was the conductor for the Linz theatre orchestra. This proved to be the seminal event in his life. Kitzler introduced Bruckner to the music of Wagner, Liszt, and others. Encountering Wagner's music proved to be a Pauline conversion for Bruckner. It changed everything he thought he knew about harmony and composition. From that point on, Bruckner decided he wanted to compose symphonies. Bruckner studied with Kitzler until 1863, when he composed his first attempt at a symphony, but what is considered his first mature work was his Mass in d minor from 1864. In 1865, Bruckner visited Munich and heard "Tristan und Isolde" and met Wagner. He also heard Liszt's "Legend of St. Elizabeth" oratorio in Budapest. He then began work on his 1st symphony, which was finished in 1866 and received its first performance in Linz in 1868. It was at 42 years old that Anton Bruckner started his career as a symphonist, which his posthumous fame and reputation rests on. There are many foolish misconceptions and simplifications about Bruckner's symphonies, that his were simply "Wagnerian symphonies", that his orchestral compositions are founded in his organ playing, and not part of the Austro-German symphonic school, that they are "formless", and many other truly nonsensical opinions, particularly in the English-speaking musical world, from his death in 1896 to at least the 1980's. I will try and dispel some of nonsense around Bruckner over the course of this symphonic cycle, but for now we will get to his Symphony no. 1 in c minor. Though his encounter with Wagner's music was life-changing, this symphony shows greater influence from Beethoven and Schubert. I do believe Bruckner really found his symphonic voice starting with the second symphony, but the first is still a glorious piece, dynamic and bursting with energy and momentum, and wonderful brass (which features in all his symphonies).