Bruckner in Wellington

Just back from this most excellent concert. The only work on the program was the 80 minute long Bruckner 8th symphony in C Minor. Lawrence Renes masterfully conducted our most excellent New Zealand Symphony. This very important monument of the symphonic repertoire was given A no. 1 treatment. It has been a favorite of mine for like 30 years now so I know it really well. It is a great work but it needs care. A performance of it can go wrong especially in the slow movement if the conductor does not know what he is doing. But rest assured that Renes knows what he is doing. He tapers the sound to nothing (and has about seven different levels of nothing that he asks for and gets from our god-like orchestra) and he also gets the most delightful grand sounds where needed. A sense of the large-scale structure of this work was everywhere present.

Yes this is a rave. It was totally awesome.

The shattering climax at the end of the first movement was, well, shattering (Mission accomplished) and the coda that followed it, which feature broken bits and pieces of various themes, was so appropriately perfectly desolate. This work is just great here: there is this big climax and then it is like everything is broken, ruined, lost, destroyed, FUBAR, perditum, deletum (you get the idea) and so the movement limps to an ending with these fragments trying to say something, anything and yet all there is to be said is the fact that there is nothing to be said. From this dark spot the symphony rebounds of course and we have at the very end of the symphony a blaze of C major that has been earned and which is transfiguring. Good good stuff.

Keep your eyes out for Renes and run to hear him in anything at all I think but especially in Mahler and Bruckner.