Scintillating Bruckner from Ryan Wigglesworth and the BBC Scottish SO at the Proms

Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony made its composer’s international reputation in 1884. In many ways, it is the quintessential work of the composer’s symphonic output, containing the grandiosity of the Eighth, the rhythmic energy of the Sixth, and the harmony of the Fifth. It is long – we have to wait for thematic material to come together – but not quite as long as the church organist-composer holds us in suspense during some of his other works. In the hands of Ryan Wigglesworth and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, it was made into an agile beast, but this was also a performance of subtle gradations and emotional intensity. The orchestra have performed the work a few times in recent times and their familiarity was on full display at their BBC Proms appearance in the Royal Albert Hall. 

Ryan Wigglesworth was known primarily as a composer before launching a simultaneous career on the podium. The concert began with an impressive premiere of a work from his own pen, written in memory of Laura Samuel, the orchestra's Leader who died last November. With echoes of Bach, this short piece was an impactful essay for string orchestra, with well-played solo parts across the stage.

A brisk reading of Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 20 in D minor followed, performed by Georgian pianist Mariam Batsashvili. The concerto is one of Mozart’s darkest: its D minor tonality drives forward an impetuous opening movement well suited to Wigglesworth’s conducting style. Batsashvili played with an elegance and clarity that added all the necessary colour to this texture.

The highlight of the evening, however, was the Bruckner which was, in some ways, a very British reading of the piece. This is not a bad thing; we do not have to have our Bruckner Viennese. By British I mean a certain unpretentiousness in speed, and a clarity and efficiency in tempo that was all to the good. Moreover, Wigglesworth got his players’ teeth into the logic of Bruckner’s writing by pacing the repetitions and crescendos with great skill. 

The second movement is a languorously beautiful homage to Wagner, with its main themes well known to the listener by its end. But Wigglesworth avoided any sense of stasis by ratcheting up the intensity with every repetition: the result was a scintillating finish, with a dark C sharp minor tonality shimmering across the Royal Albert Hall. It is a space that is perfect for such symphonic mountains as these, but also one where the efficiency of this orchestra’s reading allowed for clarity of expression.

Bruckner’s symphonies are often termed ‘cathedrals in sound’, a phrase repeated so often as to be tiresome. Instead, this rendition gave more of the subtle and rigorous energy that builds up a sense of emotional grandeur. Bruckner wrote the Seventh in tribute to Wagner. Rather than expecting these behemoths of Romantic fervour, it was refreshing to listen to the calculated intensity of the BBC SSO’s interpretation. Perhaps we should hear agility as much as we do grandiosity.

Wigglesworth himself has spent much of his career in liturgical settings, and an attention to Bruckner’s choral works for a Roman Catholic setting has much to say about his symphonic repertoire. In those other works, he harks back to the direct but intricate style of Palestrina and other Renaissance composers: a polyphonic style not lost in his orchestral music. Conducting without a score, Wigglesworth gave a dynamic and convincing reading of a symphony that, in the wrong hands, can well be otherwise.