Each week I listen to a classical piece I've never heard before, and then I report out my thoughts. For the week of 11/29/20, I listened to Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 4 in E Flat Major.
Evidently there are 30-plus versions of Bruckner's nine symphonies -- and there's even a "Symphony 0." I tried to determine which version of the symphony was being performed in the video above/left, but I didn't see any indication other than it was Bruckner's Symphony No. 4. UPDATE: After listening to Bruckner's Symphony No. 4, I have rated it a blue light saber. Continue scrolling down to see my comments. I know very little if anything about the works of Anton Bruckner, so I ran a Google-search on “Anton Bruckner’s greatest works,” and one site recommended a neo-Brucknerite start with his Symphony No. 4 in E-flat Major, the “Romantic.” So that’s what I did. Now that I've listened to Bruckner’s 4th for the first time, I’ve got to be honest – it really didn’t do much for me. Overall I thought the piece was uninteresting. It showed promise at the start with its soft, woodland call from the horns – and there were other spots of interest here and there – but the work just never really grabbed my interest. It was soft. It was loud. It was beautiful. It was dramatic. At times it tried to approach sublimity. There were sumptuous segments of lush strings. There were tender parts with mellifluous woodwinds. There were gallant sections bursting with brassy fanfares and grandeur. Very lofty stuff. **yawn** Don’t get me wrong. There was some very beautiful stuff here, and it was pleasant enough to listen to, but overall it was just too – boring? Lackluster (although it did have some luster)? Humdrum (although one could hum along – and there were drums)? I dunno. I just found it uninteresting, and I don’t mind monotony. I even enjoy the works of Stephen Reich. At least his music is interesting. There was a portion of second movement that caught my attention – but not for long. The third and fourth movements had a great deal of ebbing and swelling with respites of anticipation, all leading to surges of brass. Lots and lots of brass. And timpani. Then the tide would recede. Then the tide would build again. It seemed very formulaic to me. Like those big crowd pleasers in Broadway shows. This was just the symphonic hall version of that. Coincidentally, shortly after I’d listened to Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4, I received an email from a friend with a recommendation of a podcast to check out. It's called "Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast," HERE. I glanced through the episodes and saw that the installment from September 24, 2020, focused on Bruckner’s Fourth – so I listened in. The host, Joshua Weilerstein, first explained the “Bruckner problem,” the issue that centers on the various published editions of Bruckner’s symphonies (discussed briefly at the top of my comments). Weilerstein reported that there are seven versions of the fourth symphony, so I have no idea which one I heard. He also talked about the “epic scope and grandeur” of this symphony. True enough, it was epic and grand -- or, at least, it tried to be. He spoke of its “peaks and valleys” as it journeyed to its “glowing and ecstatic conclusion.” There was most certainly a colossal effort on Bruckner’s part to be epic and grand and ecstatic. Weilerstein described the composer’s “passionate outpouring” as big blocks of sound with big blocks of themes. Block, block, block. Unfortunately, all I heard from Bruckner was blah(k), blah(k), blah(k). Banal passage after banal passage. Bruckner nicknamed the symphony the “Romantic” himself, and here is his description of what the music is meant to evoke: “Medieval city. Dawn. Morning calls sound from the towers. The gates open. On proud steeds, knights ride into the open. Woodland magic embraces them. Forest murmurs. Bird songs. And thus the romantic picture unfolds.” Doesn’t that sound a bit too goofy? Okay, maybe I’m being hypercritical. Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4 does have merit. It was just not to my taste. However, I tend to think many in the audience in the video above agree with me. Listen to their applause at the end. It’s polite – but not exuberant.
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A New Hope:As the header above says, each week I will listen to a piece of classical music that I've never heard before, and then I will report out what I thought about it. Archives
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