Members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Photo by Jag Gundu (edited for Blue Riband)
The Toronto Symphony Orchestra presented a mixed program of a work each by Richard Wagner and Anton Bruckner on February 20th, 2020 at Roy Thomson Hall.
Wagner — Siegfried Idyll
Bruckner — Symphony No. 7 in E Major
1. Allegro moderato
2. Adagio: Sehr feierlich und sehr langsam
3. Scherzo: Sehr schnell
4. Finale: Bewegt, doch nicht schnell
‘Majestic Bruckner’ continues till February 22nd at Roy Thomson Hall.
The TSO’s performance of Bruckner’s Symphony No.7—prefaced with Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll—was that of an orchestra in top form, as usual, on any given night they’re the best band in town and this program was no exception. But it’s also sometimes the case that an orchestra can play the hell out of a piece and still leave you befuddled, head-scratched by the experience. In the event of which attention of a review should instead turn to the work itself: why is this piece performed regularly by orchestras? It’s much ado about something, without a clear picture of what that something is. The whole work few no sharp edges, nothing really to grasp on to, it plays out like one of those ratatouille recipes that get carried away with an excessive list of ingredients and end up tasting like nothing at all. It definitely isn’t boring, it just feels like the result of a symphony that was written for symphony’s sake. I know the classical canon is nearly beyond debate, but that’s quite a separate thing from wondering what the intrigue is to a concert going public in 2020.
Donald Runnicles. Photo by Jag Gundu (edited for Blue Riband)
Perhaps the intrigue lies in finding out what’s left when you do without the many hooks and projectiles that accompany a more spirited orchestral piece like the TSO’s Scheherazade from the previous week for the sake of a spectacle of an-hour long compilation of repetitive sentences, endless paragraphs of the kind of music you forget while you’re listening to it. The climaxes aren’t convincing, and the many sombre pianissimos fall short of a lasting effect. Perhaps it’s the case that works like these can be used to show off an orchestra, like the way we labour through a dense classic novel in order to put some space in-between more eccentric reads. Even conductor Donald Runnicles’s helpful preamble—to commit to the long journey ahead—was all but forgotten by the midway mark of the symphony.
There is some truth in the claim that he uses the orchestra like an organ. You will not find in Bruckner the wealth of instrumental combinations that you find in his near contemporary, Brahms. In Brahms at his best, you sense the dialogue of human life. In Bruckner, you sense something more massive and, in some ways, more ancient… “” Robert Philip, The Classical Music Lover’s Guide
But before Symphony No.7 got underway, Runnicles introduced the Siegfried Idyll as a door into the Bruckner Symphony. Written as a gift for his wife, and named after his son, Wagner’s Idyll, as least in contrast to the following Symphony, is a perfect example of what Friedrich Nietzsche meant by his ambition “to say more in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book — what everyone else does not say in a book…”. Nietzsche and Bruckner were both at one point fervent and enthusiastic followers of Wagner’s ‘music of the future’; though the former eventually jumped ship for several reasons (not the least being Wagner’s anti-semitic bent) while Bruckner remained a lifelong devotee (though I’m not sure how this symphony could be associated with music of the future) and smearing himself, to a lighter degree, in the same taint of bigotry. Wagner was in fact a bit reticent to receive Bruckner into his circle, eventually won over by the late-blooming composer’s tireless insistence with letters that referred to Wagner as ‘master’ this and ‘master’ that. Indeed I think Wagner’s Idyll manages to say more in its twenty minutes that Bruckner’s hour-long landscape of perfectly round objects. In Siegfried Idyll, as delivered by Runnicles and the TSO, is an elegiac and pastoral landscape with a steady flow of soothing breezes from woodwind, flutes in particular; an altogether more terrestrial landscape than the heavens to which Bruckner’s endless sermons are directed.
The progress from one to the next symphony is one of intensification. It is always the same man who speaks but he does not repeat himself… “” Erwin Doernberg, The Life and Symphonies of Anton Bruckner
On second thought, however, there is perhaps a genius to the style of the Bruckner-type in orchestral music, at least in comparison to more flavourful, colourful composers: they write music for an audience with less saccharine tastes, and with much less of a demand for the excitability of anything akin to the Mannheim crescendo in music. Another Nietzsche quip might be relevant here: “They climb mountains like beasts,” he said in The Wanderer and His Shadow, “stupid and sweating; it seems that no one bothered to tell them that there are beautiful vistas along the way.” Considering the stylistic uniformity amongst his symphonies and his very few idiosyncrasies (save for the duplet-triplet combination of the ‘Bruckner rhythm’), he appears to be a composer for those who prioritize a certain academic subtlety over everything else in music. His style is also a revelation of the incredibly slow metabolism of the faithful kind, the kind that translates in politics to a Mackenzie King and in literature to a Dostoevsky.
Donald Runnicles and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Photo by Jag Gundu (edited for Blue Riband)
Much of the first movement involves a whack-a-mole of the three themes introduced at the start and interchanged throughout, the main one being the longest theme the composer ever wrote. Anticipated climaxes are avoided, derivatives and inversions to themes abound, changes in character and sudden pauses come together in a loose sonata form that ends with the recapitulation of third theme. The whole sombre length of the slow second movement, introduced by a quartet of Wagner tubas—an ode to his dear master who died just as it was being composed—was one long and dolorous passage punctuated only by the singular proclamation of a duo of cymbals and triangle; and even this lone climax was contested by Bruckner at every step of the process. It isn’t until the Scherzo that one finds a sharp edge and a bit of action courtesy of a sprightly trumpet theme bolstered by clarinet and ostinato on strings, a homage to Wagner’s Ride. But even this mildly spirited theme is exhausted by repetition. and by the fourth movement, vaguely in sonata form, initially profound climaxes become devoid of gravitas. A first theme similar to that of the first movement is repeated, followed by an outburst by the orchestra, which is answered by a bar of silence. A second chorale theme is driven up to a climax, on the other side of which is a reprisal of the first theme. The orchestra builds up again for one final heave, and rising arpeggios on strings brings the ‘journey’ to a close—though I’m not quite sure I saw any beautiful vistas along the way.