Bruckner's Symphony No. 7

First Berg and Bach move you, then Bruckner overwhelms you. Breathtaking music as big as a cathedral.

What are you going to listen to?

'Es ist genug,' Alban Berg thought when he tried to contain the grief over a young girl who had died in his Violin Concerto , using the Bach chorale of the same name as a motto. For Bruckner, with his Seventh Symphony , it was by no means enough. On the contrary. With this work, he finally achieved the fame he had so long sought.

There was a tender affection between Alban Berg and Manon, the daughter of Alma, once the wife of Gustav Mahler and architect Gropius (father of Manon) and now married to the poet Franz Werfel. Great was the composer's shock when the girl died of infantile paralysis at the age of 18. With her in mind, he wrote his Violin Concerto in 1935, which he subtitled Dem Andenken eines Engels . A pupil of Arnold Schoenberg, he based the work on a twelve-tone series, but proceeded very idiosyncratically. Whereas his teacher prescribed that the series should have the suggestion of randomness and should have no hint of tonality, Berg flouts all that. His series goes from low to high, relating the first eight notes to the loose strings of the violin and Last four encompassing a sequence of four whole notes. With that sequence, Berg handles it with extreme emotion; each bar is imbued with the memory of Manon. For example, the beginning contains a Carinthian folk tune, the Austrian countryside where Berg first met the girl. The sequel represents her zest for life, complete with a piece of Viennese waltz. The second movement begins with a ferocious allegro, Berg's impotent rage at Manon's death, passing into a resigned adagio. There is a striking tonal element in this when Berg uses Bach's chorale Es ist genug , which is about the soul longing for rest after earthly life. Even Berg adopts Bach's harmonization which has firmly dissonant touches here and there and therefore fits seamlessly into a basically atonal work. The chorale also immediately explains the conclusion of the twelve-note sequence, as those notes form the first line of the chorale melody. Because the chorale is the linchpin of Berg's Violin Concerto , composer Martijn Padding wrote a subtle arrangement for orchestra over Bach's original notes as an introduction.

Things were not going well for Anton Bruckner in his pursuit of fame. He enjoyed some fame as an organist and teacher of music theory at the University of Vienna, but he had barely made a name for himself as a composer. It was sad that his most treasured brainchildren, his symphonies, hardly ever sounded at Concert Hall and when they did once they were received with disapproval. His Symphony No. 7, completed in 1883 also threatened to go the same way. And to think that, even more than its six predecessors, he had made it a grand monumental work. The adagio in particular was a masterpiece, a brilliant elegy to the Wagner he so adored, who had died in February of that year. He even used, as an extra tribute, the sonorous Wagnertubas in it.

But fate decided otherwise. The young but already famous conductor Arthur Nikisch caught sight of the symphony's manuscript and decided to perform it with his Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. To increase the chances of success, he prepared audiences and press with meetings in which he explained the music and the composer. With success because the reception of the music, except for a few critical noises, was favorable. And the ball rolled on. The Munich court orchestra's performance under the great Wagner conductor Hermann Levi became a triumph and, to his amazement, Bruckner suddenly gained the status of a celebrated composer. When the Vienna Philharmonic played it to great acclaim a few years later, his fame was definitely established. 'From now on, in the philharmonic concerts of the Vienna Philharmonic, every new symphony by Bruckner will be turned into resounding reality from the score pages,' conductor Hans Richter spoke enthusiastically at the post-concert party. Henceforth, Bruckner could count himself among the great composers that Vienna had produced.

Kees Wisse