David Dalle
Thursday November 28th, 2024 with David Dalle
Bruckner's 7th symphony.

Today we continue my Bruckner symphonic cycle with his 7th symphony in E major. This work was completed in 1883 and it became the greatest triumph in Bruckner's career. It premiered in Leipzig in 1884, with Arthur Nikisch conducting, to tremendous acclaim, and achieved even bigger success in Munich under Hermann Levi in 1885. Bruckner waited until 1886 for the Viennese premiere, as he was worried about his Viennese detractors. The usual suspects slammed the symphony, but the audiences loved it and it became his most successful and widely played work. The second movement in particular, the adagio, proved to be popular. An irresistibly haunting and mournful movement, it was inspired by Bruckner's grief over the death of Wagner in 1882. For the first time, Bruckner included four Wagner tubas (an instrument invented and commissioned by Wagner for use in his Ring cycle) in this movement. We will hear a legendary recording with the great Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Berliner Philharmoniker from 1949. Perhaps no other musical mind was as attuned to Bruckner as Furtwängler. Addressing the German Bruckner Society, of which Furtwängler was president, he said "Bruckner is one of those rare geniuses, seldom to be found in the whole of European history, whose natural destiny is to make the supernatural real, to force the divine into the strait-jacket of our human world". Furtwängler also said that "Bruckner was not primarily a musician at all, but a descendant of the great German mystics". In Bruckner, Furtwängler was able to give full expression to his most profound musical feeling. This recording is a very special one, as classical performance traditions have moved on, and it is impossible for any musical ensemble of the last 60 years, at least, to recreate this interpretive approach to performance.