Just as his idol Richard Wagner wrote works that detractors find appallingly long, Anton Bruckner’s symphonies are lengthy beasts – the Fourth Symphony runs for well over an hour. But just as it’s possible to come out of five hours of Götterdämmerung without having felt for a moment as if anything has dragged, it’s possible, it turns out, to come out of Bruckner’s Fourth without having experienced a dull moment and quite fancying the idea of hearing it all again.
And that was how things went at the Stockholm Konserthuset last night, with the performance by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and their Chief Conductor Ryan Bancroft. The main credit for this goes to the sensitivity and precision of Bancroft’s conducting and the exceptional quality of the brass players.
That quality was evident from the first notes played by Principal Horn Martin Schöpfer on top of tremolando strings – fearfully exposed as many of the horn lines are in this symphony – which rang with total authority, a sound that commanded attention. As those lines were traded delicately with woodwinds, you almost didn’t notice the arrival of the strings and their crescendo until suddenly, with the first iteration of the main motif, the full power of the combined brass section was upon you.
People often talk about Bruckner building cathedrals of sound. But you don’t have to comprehend the whole cathedral to enjoy this music: you can also take it piece by piece, admiring each stone as the edifice progresses. In this performance, every motif, every progression was worth savouring. New themes were delivered with clarity. Variations in key or rhythm piqued your interest. Repeats came back like old friends that you were thrilled to hear once more. And throughout, Bancroft’s control of dynamics and balance were remarkable. With all that sonic power at his disposal and all of Bruckner’s continually shifting instrumentation, the chances for getting the balance wrong are legion, but Bancroft never seemed to put a foot wrong, conducting with an honest simplicity to which his musicians seemed perfectly attuned. I noted one section in the second movement – all the strings pizzicato except a bowed viola theme – whose balance was sheer perfection. The gamut of emotions was spanned, from the shock-and-awe brass to the gentle courtliness of the third movement trio.
This wasn’t, I suspect, Bruckner as you would ever hear it in Vienna. The RSPO is not an orchestra with an enormous, swoon-inducing string sound; this really was an opportunity for the brass and woodwind to shine. They illuminated the variety in this substantial work in brilliant colours, and I just kept wanting to hear more.
The Bruckner was preceded by Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor. As often, when looking back on a programme of this type, the concerto seems fearfully lightweight in comparison, even when the concerto is one as attractive and beloved as the Mendelssohn. That’s the more so with a soloist like Augustin Hadelich, whose tone is beautiful but who is firmly on the lighter end of the scale that runs from “elegantly classical” to “heart-wrenchingly romantic”. Bancroft held the RSPO in great restraint to ensure that Hadelich had space to shine, which was at its most effective in the fairy feet dancing of the third movement, which tripped with merry lightness.
Where Hadelich really thrilled was in his encore, his own arrangement of a Bluegrass fiddle tune, Orange Blossom Special, where he seemed not only to play the fiddle line but half the rest of the band at the same time. A treat.
