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    At 200, Bruckner Is More Popular Than Ever. Why?

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    Seven conductors share what it’s like to lead Anton Bruckner’s monumental symphonies, and why they resonate today.Bruckner, Bruckner, everywhere.There was a time, as recently as three or four decades ago, when this composer was a relative rarity, especially outside Central Europe. His reputation preceded him. He was a religious man alien to the modern world, the author of monumental symphonies that many listeners found monumentally dull.He was a provincial, uncouth, hardly a sophisticate like Brahms or Mahler. There was the forbidding editorial history of his nine (or is that 11? 18?) symphonies, and the lingering unease at his adoption by Nazi propagandists. If Bruckner was never exactly absent from the repertoire, he was long its resident eccentric.Even if some listeners still struggle with this music, though, there has always been a band of Bruckner devotees among scholars, critics and musicians. “There is no doubt that if people once grow fond of Bruckner, they grow very fond of him,” the editor of Gramophone magazine said nearly a century ago. And lately, more and more people seem to have grown very fond of him indeed.Performances of Bruckner’s symphonies seem more common than ever, and not just because this year is the 200th anniversary of his birth. Recordings come out constantly, with offerings that include fresh takes on period instruments and entire cycles from our most esteemed ensembles. It used to be that Bruckner had to be programmed with Mozart to draw a crowd; now he carries enough weight to bring Messiaen or Ligeti along with him. Attitudes have changed; clichés have quietened. Observers once talked of the “Bruckner Problem.” Now, we live in the Bruckner Moment.Conductors have played a major part in this transformation. Many of those working today are not just fond of Bruckner, but truly love his scores. For some, a performance of one comes close to a transcendent experience. Gone are the days when Bruckner was the preserve of the grizzled, graying maestro: Yannick Nézet-Séguin, for example, recorded the Seventh when he was just 31. Studying the music earlier in their careers, conductors have more opportunities to perform it; as technical standards have risen, even unheralded orchestras can give persuasive accounts of works that once posed challenges.So, what is Bruckner’s music like to conduct? Why do his symphonies, the expression of a deep Catholic faith, resonate so loudly in an increasingly secular age? How have these long, complicated works grown so remarkably in stature while our attention spans have become so brief? In interviews, seven conductors offered their thoughts; here are edited excerpts from those conversations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Violinist María Dueñas Makes a Carnegie Hall Debut

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      The stage of the Felsenreitschule, a theater carved from the side of a mountain in Salzburg, Austria, is about 130 feet wide. During concerts, artists come out from catacombs at the side, beginning a walk to the center that, depending on nerves, can feel punishingly long.The 21-year-old violinist María Dueñas made that journey under the spotlights for her debut at the prestigious Salzburg Festival one night this summer. But, instead of nerves, she felt comfort the moment she saw the seated orchestra.“I could tell, that I was in a safe space,” she said the next morning over coffee.She looked beyond the lights to the full house, taking in the audience’s energy. Once she found her place, nestled in the semicircle of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, she raised her bow and let out a steady, then soulful open G at the start of Bruch’s First Violin Concerto. During the slow second movement, she listened to the hall as she played and noticed that she couldn’t hear people breathing.Dueñas with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra at the Salzburg Festival.Marco Borrelli/Salzburg Festival“That, for me,” she said, “is a very good concert.” Stunned silence is common at performances by Dueñas, who, in an industry always eager for the next prodigy, has emerged as something particularly special: a strong-willed young artist with something to say, and the skill to say it brilliantly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: Philharmonic Returns to Classics, at Its Own Expense

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      Led by Manfred Honeck, the orchestra all too quickly revisited Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and, with Vikingur Olafsson, Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1.A risk of programming standard repertory works over and over is that an orchestra is practically begging to be compared with its own recent performances — not to mention a huge and ever-growing body of recordings. Why should someone buy a ticket to a concert if they just heard the same group do the same piece, or if they can stay home and listen to dozens of masterly versions online?That question came to mind on Friday, when the New York Philharmonic played Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony at David Geffen Hall. Just over a year and a half ago, the ensemble did Beethoven’s Seventh at Geffen under Esa-Pekka Salonen — a stirring rendition that balanced accented force and long-lined legato into a propulsive, joyful whole.If the work came around every five or 10 years, it would be easier to judge each arrival in a vacuum. But the Philharmonic’s choice to perform it again so soon — its programming this season is particularly uninspired — meant that Friday’s concert, conducted by Manfred Honeck, was inevitably going to be held up against the last one.Honeck, who led without a score, is experienced in Beethoven’s classic; his 2015 recording with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, of which he is the longtime music director, is one of the finest in a crowded field. But under his baton, the Philharmonic didn’t come close to matching its February 2023 self, let alone Pittsburgh’s rich, vigorous example.In the first movement, Honeck lingered over pastoral passages, perhaps to try and provide respite from — and intensification of — the relentlessly rhythmic surrounding music. But the orchestra negotiated these transitions of speed and atmosphere in a way that was stiff, not agile. An unusually drawn-out tempo in the third movement’s contrasting Trio section could have conveyed wistful longing if the Philharmonic had fuller, creamier tone, but as it was the orchestra just seemed strained by the slowness.Honeck always approaches standards like this with fresh ideas. He presented the second movement as a hushed hymn rather than the traditional sturdy dirge, a choice that elicited extraordinarily soft, silky sound from a group that generally doesn’t like to whisper.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: Under Manfred Honeck, the Philharmonic Becomes One

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      In a program of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, a guest conductor coaxes a sumptuous sincerity from the orchestra’s musicians.In a thrilling concert of Russian staples on Friday night, the conductor Manfred Honeck unified the players of the New York Philharmonic using something we don’t often hear from the stage of David Geffen Hall: a distinct point of view.Guest conductors arrive each week through a revolving door to present concerts with the Philharmonic after just a few rehearsals with the players. Ideally, an ensemble’s music director — in this case, Jaap van Zweden — provides continuity, but with repertoire that ranges across centuries in any given season, or indeed in any given program, the Philharmonic can sometimes appear faceless. Add the challenges of calibrating its sound to the acoustics of its new auditorium and you end up with some listless performances.Enter Honeck, the music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. In a program that paired Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony with Rachmaninoff’s beloved Second Piano Concerto, Honeck effortlessly coaxed sweep and sweetness, breadth and refinement, from the players. The concert had startling cohesion in its musical values.A conductor known for his intense warmth in general and his rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth in particular, Honeck brought the comfort of certitude to works composed in the shadow of doubt. In his sketches, Tchaikovsky noted that his symphony contains “reproaches against xxx,” which some read as struggles with rumors and anxiety about his sexuality. The Second Piano Concerto was the first piece Rachmaninoff wrote after the fiasco of his First Symphony; he dedicated it to the doctor who treated his creative block with hypnotherapy.For an orchestra that sometimes only goes through the motions, this program was animated by an expressive meticulousness. The Philharmonic’s strings shaded melodies to make them truly sing by using a variety of dynamics within a single phrase. The woodwinds handed off phrases with snappy coordination. The brasses, which Honeck put to ominous use in the Tchaikovsky, snarled and shone, and the horns traced rainbow arcs over the stage in the Rachmaninoff.Perhaps Honeck’s neatest trick was his ability to conjure lightness and amplitude at the same time. The strings’ opening melody in the Rachmaninoff had Romantic grandeur and beguiling translucence, blanketing but not muffling the piano’s arpeggios with gauzy tone. The waltz in the third movement of the Tchaikovsky was practically airborne, its elegantly asymmetrical melody generating an unlikely aerodynamic quality despite its sumptuousness.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: The New York Philharmonic Brings Back the Standards

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      Manfred Honeck led a program that teased at novelty, then settled into well-known works by Mendelssohn and Dvorak.It had to end at some point.For the past month, the New York Philharmonic has been an unexpected source of novelty: premieres, queer cabaret, the orchestra’s first performances of works by Eastman, Kodaly and Martinu. But last week, Strauss’s rare “Brentano-Lieder” was followed by the familiar creeping back in the form of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony.And now comes a program (despite a brief opener from the underrated Erwin Schulhoff) of well-worn pieces by Mendelssohn and Dvorak that were most recently heard here in 2019 — which, with pandemic closures, might as well have been last year. Fortunately, there are few conductors as trustworthy in the standard repertory as Manfred Honeck, who led the Philharmonic on Thursday at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center.The Czech-born Schulhoff crossed paths with the likes of Dvorak and Debussy before embarking on a promising career that was cut short: first by Nazi blacklisting, then by his death, at 48, in the Wülzberg concentration camp. His Five Pieces for String Quartet, from 1923, is a modern treatment of a Baroque suite, with each movement inspired by a specific dance style. The work’s chamber scale came to the Philharmonic transformed, in an arrangement for full orchestra by Honeck and Thomas Ille, who have also collaborated on symphonic assemblages from operas such as “Jenufa” and “Rusalka.”All arrangements are acts of translation, and here Schulhoff’s humor was lost along the way. With a massive sound from added brass and percussion at the start, this Five Pieces was less lightly playful and more Mahlerian — witty and ironic, but with martial heft. Once tinged with Debussian sonorities, the third-movement Czech dance was a dark memory of Dvorak. In the tango that followed, what was previously implied in rhythm became literal in exotic-Spain castanets, and the closing tarantella took itself too seriously.There is nothing inherently wrong with arrangements, an art form in themselves. But this take on Schulhoff felt like a missed opportunity. Among the lessons we have learned from the pandemic is that orchestral programming doesn’t need to be formulaic, that a string quartet can easily share the stage with a symphony. And Schulhoff — chronically underrepresented, especially on Philharmonic subscription concerts — would benefit from advocacy for music that is truly his.Ray Chen made his Philharmonic debut in Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, which he took up with the spirit of a Romantic hero.Chris LeeMendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor is a common rite of passage for violinists, and on Thursday it was the vehicle for Ray Chen’s Philharmonic debut. Charismatic and expressive, he took up the work like a Romantic hero while Honeck maintained a modest, if indistinct, accompaniment in the orchestra. That would have left room for any soloist, but Chen rarely dipped below mezzo forte in volume, his force evident in the many bow hairs he broke during the performance.Chen’s full-bodied lyricism nevertheless made for beautifully contoured phrases in the violin’s highest, riskiest registers. The concerto calls for that often, but not always, and his interpretation, delivered as if with a sticky, heavy bow, rarely mined the contrasts of flowing melody and bouncing agility. Only in the sprinting theme of the finale did he at last find a lighter touch. More relaxed yet was the encore, his own fantasy-like arrangement of “Waltzing Matilda,” the unofficial national anthem of Australia, where he grew up.Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony clocked in longer here than in many other accounts. But Honeck’s reading was one that rewarded patience — the introduction making up in atmosphere what it lacked in drive. That was just the start of a thoroughly fresh performance, one in which loudness, for example, was never simply loud; it signified festivity or tumult, or both at once. His Adagio, begun with Brahmsian lushness, was unafraid of silence, revealing the holy in the pastoral. The finale had the feel of a dance suite, a subtle nod back to the Schulhoff, with Dvorak’s series of repeated phrases a journey from the lofty to the frisky and affectingly wistful.As guest conductors have passed through recently — with Herbert Blomstedt and Gustavo Dudamel on the way — the Philharmonic players have shown a promising malleability often missing from concerts with their music director, Jaap van Zweden, who leaves in 2024. And under the right baton, they can even be forgiven for putting on the classics. As they proved with Honeck, standard doesn’t have to mean stale.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Saturday at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More