Late Bruckner symphonies are undoubtedly red-letter diary events, particularly with a conductor of the reputation Andris Nelsons carries these days. The young Latvian, clearly well suited to the drama and power of Bruckner, drove a deeply moving performance of the Ninth Symphony which was turned with utmost care and conviction from terror to solace.
The tone was set by the dark tread of the opening brass calls, echoing back and forth across the long row of horns, Wagner tubas, trumpets, trombones and tuba ranged along the back of the orchestra. The stillness of the opening moments, and the wonderfully slender sound of those horn calls was quickly replaced by the blaze of the whole section, reinforced for the occasion with a bumper player for each of the horns, trumpets and trombones. Nelsons, himself an erstwhile trumpeter, handled the brass with masterly attention to both detail and colour, shaping phrases lovingly while balancing the section to create the richest of golden glows. The strings found a similarly pleasing balance between richness of colour and careful attention to articulation. Nelsons tended to smooth over the corners between Bruckner’s great musical paragraphs, engineering subtle variations in tempo to even out the musical line. This never threatened to reduce the intensity of the sound, but offered a listener-friendly guide through the symphony in bringing such a sense of cogency to its complex architecture.
The second movement tiptoed into view with the lightest of brushes of bow on string before erupting into a particularly brutal account of the scherzo’s main theme. At each opportunity, Nelsons would lunge forward with arms outstretched to demand more of his timpanist and brass players. They were happy to oblige, such that the end of the movement was blindingly violent in its sweeping three-beat pulse. The softer middle passages of the movement, by contrast, were breezy and light of foot in their delicate woodwind figures.