Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 5

What a remarkable story with Anton Bruckner, who may be one of the best classical composers you've never heard of.  Bruckner (1824-1896) wrote eight symphonies and an unfinished one that are some of the most powerful, creative of the genre, massive works that, like those of Mahler and the operatic works of Bruckner's idol, Wagner, were the epitome of the monumental orchestral piece.

Bruckner came from northern Austria and, when he went to Vienna, the epicenter of so-called "serious music," he was ridiculed for his country appearance and manners.  Moreover, the gentle and sensitive composer was convinced by friends that he needed to be more like Wagner and urged him to revise his works to the detriment of the originals.

This was especially true for the first four of his symphonies, though Georg Tintner, the conductor who recorded all the symphonies with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for Naxos, observed that, with the fourth, the revisions helped, whereas, with the first, these degraded the original, which was much superior. 

In his informative liner notes, Tintner observes that "the Fifth Symphony, the most intellectual of all Bruckner's works, is furthest removed from the seductive world of Wagner's harmony and orchestration."  The conductor also wonders why this and the Sixth Symphony were not subjected to endless revisions as was true for the others.  Yet, when it finally premiered just before Bruckner's death and nearly twenty years after it was composed, it was in a "discredited, reorchestrated and cut version."

Tintner's mission with his recording of all the Bruckner symphonies was to present them, as much as possible, as the composer intended.  This untutored ear takes in the very soft openings to some of the movements, such as the first, and then either sudden dramatic passages or build-ups to great intensity and passion, with powerful dynamics driving the music to heights that are among the finest symphonic statements encountered (albeit with limited knowledge).  Tintner does suggest that the phenomenal finale "is certainly one of the greatest" in the "symphonic literature."

These massive, intense symphonic works can go on for lengthy periods—this one stretching over 75 minutes—so they take a level of concentration and endurance from a listener and this one needs to be in the right mood to take these (including works like those of Mahler and Wagner) on, but they can be highly rewarding experiences.  Bruckner's Fifth, with some of the best known of his majestic melodies, delivers when that mood is there.

Anton Bruckner: Symphony #7

Somehow, a few years back, YHB became a fan of Anton Bruckner (1824-1896), a composer whose long, complex and dynamic symphonies are in a league with those of Wagner and Mahler, though the works of those two are far better known.

Yet, Bruckner is fascinating, because he reached back into the past to evoke the melodic phrasing of Beethoven, adapted the current work of his idol, Wagner, in harmonic sophistication, and pointed the way to the future with unusual modulation and unexpected dissonance.  This made the composer something of a traditionalist and a groundbreaker simultaneously.

Bruckner was born in a small town in northern Austria, where his father was a schoolteacher and his first music teacher.  He became known as an excellent organist and developed his skills further at a monastery at St. Florian nearby.  Later, he trained to be a teacher and worked as an assistant, though he had a terrible time in the field, thanks to the humiliation he suffered at the hands of his boss.  His sense of inferiority, perhaps inborn, was certainly enhanced during those years.   Indeed, his symphonies were marked by continual revisions, so that the term the "Bruckner problem" was coined to deal with the issue of the various editions of the composer's works.

The composer did find a better teaching position at St. Florian and, by the mid-1840s, was also beginning to compose music that showed his future direction in life, though he was a notoriously late bloomer.  He was appointed organist at St. Florian in his late twenties and continued teaching until his early thirties.  He did not write his first major work until he was forty and success and attention eluded him until he was well into his sixties.  Strangely, though he continued to be recognized as a virtuoso in organ performance, he never wrote any works for the instrument.

After become a music teacher at the Vienna Conservatory in 1868 and then at the University of Vienna seven years later.  A son of the country at heart, the unsophisticated, religiously devout, insecure and simple Bruckner struggled to find acceptance in the wordly capital of his country.  A thorough disciple of Wagner in an era in which advocates of the latter battled with supporters of Johannes Brahms regarding which "school" of music wsa superior, Bruckner found himself severely criticized for his choice.

Still, he pursued his singular composing vision, writing several symphonies that were published and performed, though he was unappreciated for about twenty years.  Only with the completion of his fourth symphony, the only that he named, calling it "Romantic," was he given some recognition of his unique talent.  At the very end of 1884, however, with the premiere of the seventh symphony, which was published the next year, he finally found acclaim and favor.

And, it is a spectacular achievement, filled with beautiful melodic themes and figures, ingenious harmonies, and a refined sense of the building, subsiding, rising again, and then release of tension that marked the composer's work.  Typically, there were some revisions in the years immediately following

Like the other monumentalists Wagner and Mahler, listening to a Bruckner symphony takes patience and time.  The seventh clocks in a 67 minutes (though paling in comparison to the nearly 90-minute eighth and a final unfinished ninth that was already 66 minutes through three movements, while the incomplete finale could perhaps have been a half hour in length) with the first two movements taking over two-thirds of the length. 

The 26-minute adagio, in particular, is a gorgeous example of Bruckner's sense of structure and dynamics, rising and falling in rhythmic and harmonic tension and featuring many episodes of beautiful melodies.  The more compact scherzo and finale feature more examples of dramatic bombast complemented by contemplative passages, including the sweeping and graceful melodies of the former and the monumental buildup of the finale. 

It is worth noting that the symphony was written during the last illness of Wagner, though it was dedicated to Bavaria's King Ludwig II, a patron of Wagner and whose reign soon ended with strange intrigue and even more bizarre death of the deposed sovereign.

Bruckner lived another decade or so after the seventh symphony and has remained a relatively unappreciated composer since.  Though the photo above is from a late 1990s disc issued by an Austrian label, the conductor Georg Tintner was a one-man revivalist of Bruckner's works through a series of recordings made for the Naxos label and other entries from the Bruckner symphonic catalog will come from that impressive series.