Segerstam/Bruckner 8 - Barbican, 28.2.15

[Prommer]

Thanks HL. I sat in the Choir for a Bruckner 8 a few years ago at the Proms that Haitink conducted and it was unremittingly LOUD!

[Beef Oven!]

I wasn't aware of any angry looks on the night but then surveying the 10 double basses, eight horns , four tbs. plus tuba ,three harps and extended string sections and anticipating an ear- splitting blazefest I made a tactical retreat to a seat , it turned out, right behind the disgruntled Brucknerian. Good move - the performance was very loud. I did though notice some extreme concentration from the leader of the viola section who,like the rest of the band , played their hearts out. They might have found Leif's conducting still a bit free .One gesture , arms splayed out for the tuttis I've only seen used before by goalkeepers trying to put penalty takers off or free fall parachutists stabilising their decent . I did bump into one player after the concert who agreed it was slow but didn't seem fazed by it at all, I get the impression orchestra players are pretty thick skinned and can cope with just about anything.

Or maybe they don't share your view.

[P. G. Tipps]

I agree with every word* of scotty's #83 (as I often do when he talks about Bruckner). Whatever the experience people felt at this performance, it had nothing to do with the tempi Bruckner wrote in all three versions of this work.

(* = "every word", including the last four )

Thank you, ferney ...

Nothing like a controversial Bruckner thread to get me reaching frantically for that keyboard!

Of course, the real controversy here is about the conductor and (thankfully) not the composer ...

[Beef Oven!]

Thank you, ferney ...

Nothing like a controversial Bruckner thread to get me reaching frantically for that keyboard!

Of course, the real controversy here is about the conductor and (thankfully) not the composer ...

Since when does a few anoraks (me included!) bickering about something that is irrelevant, constitute a controversy?

[Flosshilde]

surveying the 10 double basses, eight horns , four tbs. plus tuba ,three harps and extended string sections and anticipating an ear- splitting blazefest I made a tactical retreat to a seat , it turned out, right behind the disgruntled Brucknerian.

Tut tut - moving seats? Just not on, you know

Was that a rare case of moving from a dearer seat to a cheaper one (from closer to the stage to one further away)?

[Flosshilde]

Nothing like a controversial Bruckner thread to get me reaching frantically for that keyboard!

Oh, I don't know - I can think of a few other topics that get the same response from you, Scotty.

[Prommer]

Have just listed to the account of the adagio again. Wowser. Immense!

[Beef Oven!]

Have just listed to the account of the adagio again. Wowser. Immense!

[Prommer]

Re stick wavers, would that more conductors took a Leif out of HIS Bruck-ner...

[P. G. Tipps]

Have just listed to the account of the adagio again. Wowser. Immense!

Wowser?

Drowser more like it ...

[Prommer]

Rattle has just started having a go at AB's work... Suspect he was wary of doing it with the BPO.

But from now on, having got a taste for it, we will require regular re-leif...

And occasional dollops of Stanislaw. Who I see is back with the LPO later this year for No.5.

When's his No.3 from last year out on disc?

[Simon B]

Rattle has just started having a go at AB's work... Suspect he was wary of doing it with the BPO.

Didn't Rattle/BPO do Bruckner 7 at the Proms quite a while ago?

Hmmm, even longer than I thought (not sure where the last 9 years of what passes for my life has gone!): 2006 http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/archive/s...ember-02/12791

[ahinton]

Rattle has just started having a go at AB's work... Suspect he was wary of doing it with the BPO.

But from now on, having got a taste for it, we will require regular re-leif...

I wouldn't have credited SR as having an especially winning way with Bruckner but taking the risk of being the first to perform and record his Ninth Symphony using the latest version of the tetrumvirate's edition of the finale has undoubtedly paid off well.

But let's Leif that on one side for a moment.

I finally persuaded myself to pitch in - with all the misgivings that I still couldn’t quite manage to shake off after having read references to the Eighth being elasticised to almost an hour and three quarters to find out what Segerstam - one of the greatest living conductors of Sibelius, Nielsen, Pettersson et al - actually did with (or possibly to) that monumental work.

Impressions at the outset were twofold and primarily prompted by the fact that, even after a few pages, I somehow felt an instinctive confidence that the playing would be of the standard that BBCSO usually reserves for its very finest performances, provided that they could maintain it throughout – a fairly tall order even for them, given that they don’t usually work with Segerstam and had in any case been anticipating playing it under Bychkov, namely (a) why wasn’t it being performed in a concert hall instead of the Babycan and (b) if only it had been, I'd have wanted to be there rather than iPlayering it (and it sadly seems that there were plenty of unoccupied seats).

An idiosyncratic take on the work, maybe, yet one that kept convincing by contriving somehow to keep falling short of actually sounding like one; more to the point, I think, it took us (albeit incidentally) into the territory of “there’s no one single correct, sacrosanct way in which to perform” this monumental work or indeed anything else worth performing – and that, as it turned out, was the very least that it did!

OK, I wish now that I’d listened to it without any of these preconceptions, not least because at the stunning close of the first movement I caught myself thinking “mon Dieu – we’re there already?! – not possible, surely?” – so much for distendedness, which was notable only for its utter absence. Everything was beautifully contoured by conductor and players with nothing unconvincing about either the overall architecture or the fine detail – and the worst risk when anything’s being "stretched" like this (if indeed it was), namely a compromise in the maintenance of due – and sometimes heart-stopping – tension, was quite simply nowhere in evidence.

By the time that I'd got as far as the trio in the scherzo, I'd more or less come to the conclusion that the most unconventional aspect of this performance was the sheer size of the orchestra performing it – considerably larger than usual ("'three harps, if possible', sir? – nonsense! of course three harps are possible, so you shall have them, along with 18 first violins…"18? 18??? – but is my symphony good enough for this?") – and never the worse for that. OK, BBCSO has a well-deserved reputation for being able to sight-read anything from Haydn and Mozart to Ferneyhough and can turn out performances from middling to splendid on the most modest amount of rehearsal even under conductors with whom they’re unaccustomed to working, but on this occasion they sounded for all the world like the finest of central European orchestras. OK, I did wonder if, exceptionally, that trio section occasionally seemed to threaten to hover between the uncertain, the lacklustre and the point-provingly pedantic, but, frankly, these turned out to be the only moments of possible questionability. The scherzo as a whole rather tended towards the kind of grandness that inhabits the remainder of the symphony than to prioritise energetic forward momentum, but sag it just wouldn’t, which just goes to show, as throughout, how very much in control of it all Segerstam ws.

The divine adagio – well, yes, OK, more lento than adagio – with those astonishing pre-Vaughan Williams passages with the harps decorating writing for strings divided into more parts than the composer ever divided them into elsewhere; well, what’s to say? What fabulous string playing! Where were the occasional moments of scrappiness or lapses of concentration that in so unconventionally expansive an interpretation might be expected if not quite forgiven? This adagio ran to 34 minutes, so I'm told. I did not notice and cared even less. It sounded more like one single very, very long bar than I think I’ve ever heard it do even under conductors of the order of Wand and Abbado. The brass playing at climax points was appropriately forthright but never overbearing, let alone crude. The overall balance must in part have been helped by the massiveness of the string section, but only in part, since the "chamber music" instances were likewise so finely judged that on occasion I found myself wishing that this was how it would always be done. And, once again, this gigantic slow movement never once lost either momentum, energy or tension – and to maintain the requisite contrasts in tension levels requires the utmost concentration not only from the conductor but also from every individual at all times; to succeed in doing this alone is a remarkable achievement that I imagine would be right at the far edge or, or beyond, the ability of most conductors and orchestras not accustomed to working together, yet there were so many more things in the performance that made this movement live in its own unique world and draw us all right into it as though one could not possibly want to be anywhere else – ever.

Certainly by the time that slow descending major scale finally brought that movement to its sublime close and one adjusted oneself to what was about to follow, any doubts – not only about the performance on its own terms but also about where it stood in the pantheon of Bruckner 8s during the past decades – had simply ceased to live and have being. The principal reservations had, of course, been about how the symphony could possibly expect to occupy almost 105 minutes and still hope to be Bruckner at the peak of his powers, let alone sustain the listener’s concentration; all were swept away never to be seen again and, mercifully, before the first movement had really gotten into its stride. The finale, too, was one of the most controlled and compelling that I’ve ever encountered; was there any evidence of exhaustion within the orchestra? – rather the reverse, if anything, as the playing continued to espouse the uppermost echelons of Austro-German orchestral playing and there was a palpable sense of what pianists John Ogdon and Reinier van Houdt felt about massive Sorabji works somehow granting energies to its performers despite the immense demands that at the same time it makes upon them. I would have expected quite a few more minor slips and glitches along the way under these unusual circumstances; that there were so very few in number and of such minuscule significance speaks with its own eloquence such as almost to beggar belief.

If this is what Segerstam can do with a work of such greatness – and clearly it is – then, once the performance is over and one beings to reflect, it’s hard not to start thinking of the repertoire that one’s dying to hear him conduct next; a good start would surely be the same composer's Ninth Symphony in the proper four-movement form as which it should now always be performed (and of which we now know he actually wrote a good deal more than was long thought – and there might yet be still more pages of it in his hand to come to light).

The orchestra deserves all the accolades that it can get for this performance; I wonder how much rehearsal they had for it? In it, Segerstam has shown himself beyond question to be one of the great conductors of our time, not merely willing but determined to take risks and meet them head on with immense success. But the ultimate star of the show? Well, Bruckner, of course. I cannot imagine what he’d have made of the performance, but I do know that he would have been moved beyond tears to witness the sheer love and unwavering commitment of the conductor and every single player involved.

Now I know that most of the above will cut little ice with our resident teabag and a few others, but hopefully because of its obvious lack of eloquence rather than the content itself - so, come on, where's Jayne Lee Wilson when she's most needed?!...

[Nick Armstrong]

Brilliant post, ahinton - both its eloquence and its content! - thank you. You put several fingers precisely on what I sense made this performance transcend mere 'being different' or 'being slow'

I loved your phrase in relation to the adagio: "It sounded more like one single very, very long bar than I think I’ve ever heard it do even under conductors of the order of Wand and Abbado"

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Wowser?

Drowser more like it ...

"Immense"?

"Obese" more like it!