I rushed out of Old Street Station, 19 years old, late as usual. Up Clerkenwell Road next, violin banging on my back, then hard right into the grounds of St Luke’s church.
I spent much of my free time there, watching orchestras rehearse, studying the conductors I’d marvelled at on YouTube live and in the flesh.
Today, the repertoire was Bruckner’s 9th symphony – a piece I wasn’t familiar with. I didn’t want to miss a note.
When I arrived, everything was quiet. They must have played through and started the real work of rehearsing already. I crept up to the balcony and slid into a seat, peering over the railing.
I’d become interested in Bruckner a few months before. So though I didn’t know the music, I knew the man.
I knew he was an outcast. A strange, tortured soul who wandered through town dishevelled and unkempt.
I knew people steered clear him, leaving him to mutter to the God he longed to meet and the demons he struggled to banish.
And I knew each symphony was the story of this conflict. Biblical in scale. A contrast of anguished strings, filled with mankind’s failings, and crystalline winds, choirs of heavenly hosts.
In other words, I knew what I was going to hear. Or so I thought.
They began with the end of the first movement. The conductor asked for just celli and bass. Bars and bars of pulsing triplets. Low, ominous.
Then, they went back over the section, adding hovering viola tremolo and plaintive violins. Little fragments that begged and called to one another.
Next time round, the woodwinds joined, distant fanfares in answer to those frightened strings.
Something vast and very far off was emerging. The air was charged.
Every breath was held, every figure still, save for those playing.
No one dared disturb the spell, as it slowly brought the music to life.
All that was missing now was the brass. For the last time, they began again.
At first, nothing changed.
And then, rising out of this sea of texture, came trumpets, trombones and horns.
They were near-inaudible at first. Then, like a wave, they grew. Burnished bronze and glowing gold, yet somehow as deep and dark as an ocean trench.
The sound subsided, only to rise again and again.
Always louder, deeper, richer.
A searing current, filling the winds above and the strings below with new life.
With the intensity near-unbearable, the wave broke. A wall of sound that stretched from blistering winds high above to cavernous bass far below.
The note held, threatened to never end, and then with one final crash vanished.
Silence.
To this day I don’t quite know what I heard. Was it the sound of total triumph or of despair? A brave cry or a terrified scream?
I have listened, again and again. But the mystery remains.
Luckily, so too does the power, the majesty of those bars. Unchanged and just as I heard them that day, just as you will hear them now
The Recording
There is one name that is utterly synonymous with Bruckner. A man that shared Bruckner’s vision of titanic musical scope. A man that believed, like Bruckner, in a higher truth buried deep in the mysteries of the universe.
His name was Sergiu Celibidache, the famed Romanian conductor. In Bruckner, he found not only great music but also his autobiography.
Like Bruckner, his life was defined by struggle. The heir-apparent to Europe’s top job, the helm of the Berlin Philharmonic, he was robbed of the job, thanks to a blazing row with the orchestra just days before the appointment. The post went to his rival, Herbert von Karajan, and the rest is history…
From then on, like Bruckner, he lived on the outside, part genius, part eccentric. As likely to be hounded out of rehearsals and forced to cancel by irate orchestras as he was begged to return after stellar performances. He existed in exile, fuelled in part by his strange cocktail of Buddhist and Christian beliefs, in part by his temper, and above all, by his extraordinary rehearsal demands, which were often double those of any other conductor.
His recordings were rarely released – he didn’t feel the medium could convey the spiritual message of his live performance. But, after his death, a stream of recordings have been made available, recordings that confirm what the reviews said:
That here, surely, was one of the greatest Bruckner conductors ever to have lived.
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The clip below starts two and a half minutes before the section I wrote about today. The extra context gives that moment much more power. It’s still only 4-5 minutes of music total so give it that extra time if you can.
Also, if you can read music and want to see and hear all the layers I mentioned, click here for a pdf of the score. If you scroll to the end of page 40, you’ll find where the clip begins.
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