Wagner L
Anton Bruckner and the critic Edward Hansrik, paper-cut painting, by Otto Burrell, now in the Austrian State Museum
Bruckner on the podium, paper-cut painting, by Otto Burrell
Otto Burrell's pen drawings on Bruckner
◎ Wang Ji feast
In early spring in mid-March, the NCPA Orchestra's two consecutive nights of concerts are named "Ten Years of Jiayin", which is intended to pay tribute to the artistic journey of conductor Lu Jia to the 10th anniversary of his appointment to the National Centre for the Performing Arts. The two concerts are structured in a typical NCPA orchestra concert repertoire: the first half has a different repertoire, and the second half ends with the same tome symphony. This time, the second half was Bruckner's Ninth Symphony.
Not all concerts of commemorative colors can reach a high level of art at the same time, and this time, in my opinion, it is undoubtedly a real "win-win" situation. After more than two years of not having the opportunity to hear the european and American first-class orchestras perform live, Lu Jia and the National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra's Bruckner Ninth Symphony is a valuable spiritual journey.
The transparent world is still a stout "big python"
Even for the world's top orchestras, reaching the peak of art in the performance depends on various factors such as the favorable time, place, and people, among which there are both subjective and objectively uncontrollable accidental factors. In his later conversations with the famous Viennese music critic Franz Endler, the master conductor Karajan recalled his early years of study in Vienna that for a young student like him from Salzburg, the Hall of the Friends of Music (the Hall of The Musikverein, as we know it) is the "Hall of God", and he is certainly pleased to think that what he hears here is the best concert in the world, but in fact, the attentive listening day after day allows him to discover, Even the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra performs low-level concerts. This applies to any symphony orchestra in the world. Looking back at the concerts of Lu Jia conducting the National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra in the past decade, there are of course unsatisfactory moments, which are inconsistent with the praise of "ten years as a day". But one of the important criteria for measuring the level of an orchestra and a conductor is the height that the cooperation between the two can reach, like a sports competition, or like mountaineering.
And among all the contingent factors, there must be the inevitable factors that make a wonderful performance. For Lu Jia, in addition to his talent, skill, experience and dedication as a conductor, there is also his love and understanding of Bruckner music. Lu Jia once famously expressed that Bruckner's music is a transparent world. This is a view that many people who are difficult to get close to, or even lifelong, can't understand for Bruckner's music — how can "a transparent world" come from in Bruckner's thick and dense sound?
Indeed, for the listener who has not yet entered the music and spiritual world of Brückner, when the drums and trumpets are played in unison like a huge wave again and again, when the stout music of Brookner's contemporaries and peers (the wrongdoer) Brahms ridicules as "the big python of the symphony" cannot see the end at a glance, it is transparent or impenetrable, which is indeed a problem. I believe that many people, like the author, have lingering memories of the Bruckner Symphony of "vomiting and laughing". And a similar mindset is not limited to the average audience. Saint-Saôn, born 11 years later than Bruckner, the famous French composer who is beloved by music lovers for his "Carnival of Animals" and "The Third "Organ" Symphony, said a playful and evocative word about Bruckner's symphony, although it does not sound like Brahms's poisonous sentence, but it is also very consistent with the description: "There is neither beginning nor end, but this is lasting!" ”
"The Ninth Curse"
The version of Bruckner's Ninth Symphony chosen by Lu Jia was an unfinished version of the three movements, rather than the version used by some conductors and orchestras to continue to write a fourth movement based on the manuscripts left by Bruckner.
Bruckner's symphony is also an example of the legendary "ominous ninth" or "ninth curse": Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner, Mahler, and Dvořák all died after completing their ninth symphony. Fearing the Ninth Spell, Mahler deliberately failed to include his Song of the Earth in the symphony sequence, believing that he had successfully escaped the spell, so he lost his vigilance as he proceeded to the next symphony and wrote the Ninth Symphony, but he did not overcome the spell in the end, and the Ninth Symphony became the last symphony he completed. Bruckner, Mahler's teacher at the Vienna Conservatory, also failed to reach the end of the Ninth Symphony. After writing the first three movements, according to his biographer Carl Grabe, "When the doctor and those around him had discovered that he was confused and the signs of aging could not be concealed, he was still writing the ninth final movement with a tenacious musical consciousness." Although Bruckner made his will and said, "I believe that death will not take away my pen," the final movement was not completed, making the symphony another "unfinished" masterpiece in the symphonic literature, like Schubert's.
But Bruckner's "unfinished" is very different from that of his predecessor Schubert on a musical scale: Schubert's "unfinished" symphony in B minor is usually played for less than 30 minutes, while one movement of Bruckner's ninth symphony, which is relatively short, is also more than 10 minutes long. Thus, the performance of Bruckner's Symphony, even at a faster speed, takes at least 65 minutes, while in the performance of the conductor Chelibidak, who is known for his breadth and slowness, the time is close to 1 hour and 20 minutes, that is, similar to Bruckner's longest Fifth Symphony.
Such time is enough for those who love Bruckner music to wander in a "transparent world", and can also allow the symphony orchestra with brilliant tones to fully display its strength and brilliance. As conductor Otto Klemperer wrote in his message to the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra in March 1967 on the eve of its 125th anniversary: "Furtwängler once said to me about your group, 'Unless you hear them play Bruckner, it is impossible to get a correct impression of the orchestra.'" He was absolutely right, because when I conducted Bruckner's Fifth Symphony in Vienna in May 1933, I felt the incomparable beauty of the sound played by this group. ”
But for less powerful orchestras, Bruckner's symphony is also very easy for brass instruments to dominate at any time "with an overwhelming advantage", leaving the listener with a sense of hoarse exhaustion. As a lover of Bruckner, Lu Jia has a deep understanding of Bruckner's music, and also has enough inspiration and skill to lead the National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra to present a "transparent world" for Bruckner. One of the most important points is that he was able to make the orchestra burst into thunder in a dense strong performance, while always maintaining the timbre beauty of the orchestra to the greatest extent, reflecting the artistic achievement of a conductor who interpreted Brückner's music in "blending" the timbre of the orchestral music. When Bruckner's music is no longer a deafening noise, but a resounding sound endowed with a Bruckner-like magnificent color, stepping into the magnificent grandeur of Bruckner's symphony becomes possible for the listener.
There are countless unforgettable moments in Bruckner's Ninth Symphony, in which Lu Jia conducts the National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra, and what impresses me most is the brilliant aftersound at the end of each movement that is not always encountered even in the best performances of the world's top orchestras, a feeling that is extremely difficult to describe in words but is real, highly in line with the music critic Harold S. C. Schoenberg describes Furtwängler's style of conducting in his book The Great Conductor: "Particularly memorable is the kind of sound he gives to a chord, which he makes full of color and clarity... Lingering in the air, glowing. ”
"The hard work of 'ten years offstage' was exchanged for the magnificent sound of the late Romantic works of Germany and Austria." This line written by music critic Zhang Tingyu in the review of the "Ten Years of Jiayin" concert is quite pertinent. The Interpretation of Bruckner's Sixth Symphony in A major by the National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra's "Bruckner Code" concert on 20 March last year has shown a new level of understanding by continental orchestras and conductors in the field of Bruckner interpretation. Both the overall performance of the orchestra's various parts and the invaluable sound beauty of the band are admirable. That night's performance also had what conductor Stokovsky called excellent performance: "The orchestra players have a tacit understanding of each other, feel the same feelings, and work with the conductor to improve the expressiveness of the music." This ideal band play is full of inspiration. ”
To date, the National Centre for the Performing Arts Orchestra has performed Bruckner's Symphonies No. 2, 4, 6 and 9, with Lü Jia conducting the second, sixth and ninth and Lv Shaojia conducting the fourth. Although not yet halfway through the overall number of Bruckner's symphonies, the experience of playing Bruckner was accumulated and the right style was found in Bruckner. Moreover, the Wagner trumpet purchased by the orchestra in 2017 also solved the instrumental problems for playing Bruckner's late symphonies. Before the arrival of the third movement of the broad Bruckner Symphony No. 9, there was a special appeal when the players in the fifth to eighth seats of the eight players of the horn part put down the horn and picked up the Wagner trumpet, which was quite fresh for many concert listeners. It also means that a new timbre will be integrated into the soulful final movement that is about to be played.
This instrument, despite its name as the "trumpet", was not played by a trumpet player, and Wagner's bold idea of combining the deep tone of his beloved trumpet with the ability of the horn to play melodies was actually turned into a reality by the excellent German instrument craftsmen! Thus a new instrument appeared not only in the dark orchestra of Bayreuth's Ring of the Nibelungen, but also later on the concert stage for Bruckner's Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Symphonies, Richard Strauss's Alpine Symphony and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.
In many places outside of Theo, the ownership of the Wagner takes some time. We can read from the entry "Wagner tuba", or "Wagner Tuba", in London's Covent Garden Royal Opera Orchestra, "it was not until 1935 that Bichem got a set of Wagner tuba from Mainz". That is to say, one of the main opera houses in the world for opera performances, it was only nearly 60 years after the premiere of The Ring of the Nibelungen that it "got" this special instrument that Wagner requested on the score!
"Good playing is always good for understanding music." Schumann's simple words apply to the music of any composer, including the works of Brückner and Mahler, and they represent the culmination of human exploration in the field of complex music in the second half of the 19th century.
At the "Bruckner Code" concert last March, a somewhat puzzling phenomenon was that mozart's 33rd symphony in B-flat major received sparse applause from a small number of audiences between the four movements of Mozart's 33rd Symphony in B major in the first half, while there was no applause between the four longer movements in the second half until the end of the song. Concerts like this are enough to give us the satisfaction of realizing that our country has begun to have a sizable and quiet enough audience, and that even without the fictitious titles about the "expressive content" of the music, without gossip anecdotes and chicken soup stories of the soul, the "Bruckner Code" can be interpreted as the performance progresses.
This is confirmed again by Bruckner's Ninth Symphony, a year later, and Bruckner's complex and esoteric music is showing real appeal to listeners of all ages. This phenomenon cannot be explained by the usual "vassalage" psychology of high art, but rather the embodiment of the appreciation and understanding of the music listener, can it be said that in Bruckner's "Ocean of Choppy Harmony" (Wagner), our listeners are gradually getting better by feeling a unique sense of magnificence and inspiration expressed by this music?
"Intelligence" is at odds with achievement?
Almost all of Bruckner's biography and accounts of his life will refer to this paradox: this poor child, born on September 4, 1824 in a modest house in the village of Ansfelden, Upper Austria, who lost his father before the age of 13, sang in the children's choir of St. Florian Church in Linz, received a musical education in the church, worked as an assistant teacher and church organist, was ignorant and naïve, even a celebrity who became a famous music capital. Still considered to retain the rustic atmosphere of the countryside, the manners and dresses are never decent, but why is he gifted to write the most magnificent and majestic symphony in the world? The Austrian music theorist Manfred Wagner, in his book Anton Bruckner – Life and Composition, could not contain his anger at the world's vilification of this great musician with great talent:
How infuriating it would be to imagine a composer that stops at his silhouette. In fact, Otto Burrell's special paper cuts out the image of Bruckner are so impressive that all of Bruckner's portraits, sculptures, and photographs can no longer have the same effect.
In Otto Burrell's paper cut of Bruckner, Bruckner's body proportions are completely out of balance. He was only twice his width, had a large bald head, a typical eagle hook nose, barely a neck, and a five-short stature, either wearing fat pants or making helpless gestures.
And the first to write a biography of Bruckner, Franz Brenner, in a level of malice, increased in viciousness, and he actually called Bruckner the "fruit wine brain melon" of Upper Austria! "This big-bellied man with a round bald brain is a shining sign of success in resisting the rise in meat prices, and he is reminiscent of a giant pear with two legs." Even musicians like Donald Tovey, known for their insights, wrote: "As for Bruckner, though he conceived of a magnificent beginning and a twilight-style climax, he spent his life clinging to the classical sonata as understood by the country organist." In his commentary on music for the New York Philharmonic, music critic Edward Downes' exposition of Bruckner's symphony itself is mixed with anecdotes about the composer's disrespect, such as Bruckner's telegram from a prankster at a party saying that a certain country wants to support him as king, and he is so excited! For example, out of his desire to marry a "suitable and lovely lady", he made a marriage proposal when he first met the lady.
All this constitutes the "Bruckner mystery" that contradicts "intelligence" and achievement, so much so that the Oxford Dictionary of Concise Music reminds the reader in the "Bruckner" entry: "Composers who create such elaborately organized complex symphonies (most of which are more than 1 hour long) are by no means simple-minded people. And Manfred Wagner's analysis may be more convincing, and it is more able to explain the common feature of many seemingly stupid and talented "Parsifal" (Parsifal is Wagner's last musical) characters, including Bruckner, that creative people show different personalities and behaviors from ordinary people because of their creative potential, and all of this is more prominent, more talked about, and exaggerated as they become celebrities. And only by truly delving into the composer's music can we sincerely recognize the excellence of his creator, so as to abandon the anecdotes and admire the masterpieces of music and the people who created them.