Bruckner - Symphony No.7
Bayerischen Staatsorchester; Kent Nagano
Sony Classical 88697909452
The critic Edouard Hanslick ridiculed Bruckner so much that when he was decorated by the Emperor and asked if there was anything he could do for him, Bruckner naively answered (I paraphrase), “please, Majesty, do something with this Hanslick, he is making my life miserable!” Seriously though, little Bruckner, the Austrian country bumpkin kept writing his symphonies one after another not really caring what the world was thinking about them but by the time he wrote the Symphony No.7 in E major the world was noticing. The rest is history as the rather hackneyed expression goes.
Indeed Bruckner is enjoying a tremendous renaissance these days. What was at one time the sole territory of the great German-Austrian tradition, with venerable old conductors like Klemperer, Celibidache, Schuricht, Wand, Karajan and others is now the property of a new generation no longer German nor old, let alone venerable.
One of these is Kent Nagano and this new recording by Sony Classical makes us listen with renewed interest. It is so fresh and exciting and indeed unpredictable that it is as if we have never heard the symphony before. From the first bars on, where the theme appears as if it has descended from heaven (in fact it came to Bruckner in a dream) with a pianissimo tremolando in the violins generating tension, the first movement builds with a sense of inevitability culminating in a magnificent peroration in the brass. The second, the essence of the work and one of the most beautiful adagios ever written, simply glows and the famous climax with the cymbal crash is overwhelming. The typical Brucknerian scherzo thumps along merrily like Fafner and Fasolt albeit with a sensuous lyrical trio interlude, perhaps reminding us of Fasolt’s love for the goddess Freia.
The finale is always a stumbling block for conductors but with a faster than usual tempo Nagano resolves the problem and the symphony ends in an outburst of glory.
