Bruckner No.5 in Hong Kong

Anton Bruckner (1825-1896) has never really been popular amongst music lovers in Hong Kong. One of the reasons might be that his works have often been regarded as long, sprawling, and structureless. Is that so? I tried to find out last Saturday.  The HKPO presented a program of his Symphony No. 5 in B flat under guest conductor Lawrence Renes. Renes was the assistant to Edo de Waart in 1994 to 1996, whilst the latter was with the Netherlands Radio Symphonic and between 1998 to 2003,  the Chief Conductor of the Het Gelders Orkest, Arnhem and between 2001 to 2006 the Music Director of the Bremer Theater and the Bremen Philharmoniker. He has a very broad range, including works by Mahler, Wagner and Bruckner and gave the US premiere of Tan Dun's Tea in 2007 and the Uk premiere of John Adams's Doctor Atomic. He graduated in 1993 at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.

There is no doubt that the symphony in four movements Adagio, Adagio Sehr langsam, Scherzo in Molto vivace (Schnell) and a Finale in Adagio is long. It lasted a full 90 minutes, more than double the length of a "normal" symphony. The explanation might be found in the fact that he started life as a church organist and throughout his life, he has never really weaned himself from that early influence.  

Bruckner was the eldest son in a humble family of a village school master with 5 children in Ansfelden, North Austria, started training in music at 4, became a substitute church organist at 10 and made a residential chorister at the Priory of St. Florian at 13, after his father died, then became a school teacher of various countryside schools. At 25, he returned as the Organist of the same monastery in 1850, where he remained for a decade. In 1855, he started to learn composition from one of the most prolific composers of his age, Simon Sechter, who had more than 8000 compositions under his name. Having such a background, it is not surprising that his first works were church music. He only started his first secular mwork in 1862 and his first symphony in 1863. Then he took over the post of Professor of Counterpoint from Sechter at the Vienna Conservatoire and continued to compose and teach until his death.  He wrote nine symphonies, but in fact, 10 by re-charactersizing one of his earlier symphonies as something else. 

Bruckner No. 5 was composed between 1875 and 1878 and underwent a number of revisions but was never performed in his lifetime. However, a drastically shortened version of it was done by one of his students Franz Schalk,  in 1894 in Graz by which time, he was too sick to attend. Then in 1936, another version of it, edited by Robert Haas, closer to his original was performed. In 1951, Leopold Nowak, an authoritative Bruckner scholar, further revised it again in what is believed to be Bruckner's original intentions, based on his 1878 version. The version performed by HKPO was the Nowak version.  

Bruckner's method of composition is rather like improvisation at the organ where he would try out different combinations of various motifs and he is said to treat the orchestra as "choirs of different instruments".  The No. 5 has been nicknamed "pizzicato"because three of the 4 movements started with string pizzicatos. In it the same musical motifs are played by different sections of the orchestra, sometimes, faster, sometimes slower, sometimes as variations a few notes higher up or lower down, sometimes louder and sometimes softer, as dialogues between the different sections of the orchestra and sometimes by all the sections of the orchestra together. In this symphony, he made maximum use of his favourite counterpoint technique and built the various motifs into a massive Gothic cathedral-like structure. This is a technique first perfected by Beethoven but Bruckner pushed it even further. One of the motifs in different forms was repeated 50 times!

The first movement alternates between solemnity and genttleness, between strings and winds and brass. The second, sometimes termed "Church of faith" because of its religious mood, plays around with two alternate themes by the lyrical oboe and the heavier strings. The third is lively and fast and is said to contrast between rustic and urban feelings. The final movement brings together all the previous elements introduced in the previous movements in the form of a double fugue. Like all late Viennese music at the end of the 19th century, composers then were far more concerned with the texture of the sound from different sections of the orchestra than the formal structure of the music. Whatever the truth may be, Brucker's No. 5 was a sonic experience one I am never likely to forget. I was impressed by the enormity of its soundscape, especially the explosive contrasts and unisons between its brass and its strings.