Stories: The continuous evolution of conducting Bruckner

Chronologically contemporary with Brahms, Bruckner is considered a forerunner of the stylistic break with Romanticism and the first pioneer in the evolution of the symphonic genre. We all see in Bruckner a composer who, by transferring a part of Wagner’s harmonic world into his works, reforms the symphony, seeing its limits and trying to overcome them.

But from a comparison between his symphonies and those of Brahms (we often forget that, for example, Brahms’s third and fourth symphonies were written at the same time that Bruckner was working on his seventh symphony, or that the first version of Bruckner’s eighth symphony was composed while Brahms was working on the Klaviertrio op. 101), we see, without taking anything from the Romantic spirit and Brahms’s formal perfection, an epic breath and a harmonic courage that still surprises us today.

The Wagnerian lesson – developed by Bruckner in a symphonic sense and then implemented in his works – gives the symphonic genre, which Wagner considered obsolete, a new lifeblood. This would later be developed with new harmonic and formal freedoms by Gustav Mahler, Franz Schmidt, Jean Sibelius, and, later, by Carl Nielsen and Dmitri Shostakovich.

Approaching Bruckner is not easy for a conductor, especially considering that there are two schools of thought for this composer: German and Central European.

Many exegetes emphasize the architecture of Bruckner’s symphonies, highlighting the “block” instrumentation and considering it an interpretative key: the contrast of the blocks and rhythmic severity.

It may be true that from this conception one can highlight the harmonic and formal audacity and, therefore, in a certain sense, the modernity of the composition. An explanation for this view is that Bruckner was a splendid organist and his orchestral writing derives from the contrasting sonorities that the organ can create, neglecting a melodic linearity in favor of a harmonic and sonorous verticality.

But this explanation rests on feet of clay: one of the most crucial objectives for an organist is precisely that of “making the instrument sing”, and the quality and imagination of Bruckner’s melodic lines, often neglected by many interpreters who favor a rhythmic precision that borders on cold analysis, speak a different language, without considering the religious aspect: a Catholicism, the Austrian and therefore Central European one (hence the strong and heartfelt Catholicism of Bruckner), far from the rigidity of the Lutheran reform, far from the Calvinist harshness, therefore a warm, sweet, and very affectionate religious approach, utterly devoid of Nordic severity.

As I was saying, the approach to Bruckner is challenging for the conductor, especially if he is young and therefore not yet an expert on the road that leads to Bruckner, which is the one that passes through Bach, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Wagner. Many conductors do not conduct Bruckner precisely because they feel distant from this sweet epicness. Those who approach it without grasping it have a vision that is sometimes rigid and analytical, and therefore distant from the sweetness (a sweetness that I would define as Schubertian) inherent – ​​even in the triumphal “grandeur” of many passages – to this music.

I remember that one of my first experiences with Bruckner as a young conductor (I like to emphasize that at 37, as a conductor, you are just starting) was with my beloved Tonkünstler Orchestra in Vienna with the Seventh Symphony.

The Tonkünstler Orchestra has a long tradition, and has been the protagonist of countless first performances (including Arnold Schönberg’s Gurre Lieder in 1913). It has been conducted by the most famous conductors, and it boasts extraordinary experience and knowledge, especially in the late-Romantic repertoire. Bruckner’s symphonies have always been an eminent part of its repertoire, so in 1996, conducting Anton Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony with this orchestra was a lesson of great importance in my education.

At that time, I had a Brucknerian vision, dictated by my inexperience, diametrically opposed to the one I have now: I believed in Bruckner’s vision as a revolutionary (of course, I still believe in it in part) and I saw Bruckner as the great intellectual of music who leaves no room for freedom of expression or, even less, for feeling (note: not for sentimentality, but for pure and frank feeling). At that time, I abhorred all the customs of innumerable ritenuti, rallentandi, and variations of pace that had been superimposed during the hundred years of performance practice (after all, we will never know how Bruckner’s works were performed during his life).

At a certain point in the symphony, during a rehearsal, a question comes from the first music stand of the second violins: ‘No ritenuto here? Nothing?’ I reply, with the arrogant confidence dictated by inexperience: ‘Of course not!’ I was wrong, of course. I wanted to highlight the Brucknerian audacity of the harmonic and sonorous contrasts, but I did not consider the beauty and importance of the melodic lines.

Clearly, not all the so-called “traditions” are justified: the work of the interpreter, therefore of the conductor, should also be to study them, understand their history and logic, and decide to implement them or reject them. Even better, however, is to study a score “ex novo”, start from a “tabula rasa”, and build, according to one’s own experience, one’s sensitivity, one’s taste, instinct, and stylistic knowledge, one’s interpretative vision, or rather, performing vision.

This, of course, applies to any musical work. In Bruckner, this approach is particularly demanding. Like Wagner, Bruckner eschews ideological considerations. These composers’ human and philosophical scope is so broad that it does not lend itself to hasty general considerations. Their works and style transcend intellect and feeling, making balance and human experience, even more than merely musical experience, essential to grasping their greatness and beauty.