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Orchestra Scales Summit Of Bruckner's 9th

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By KURT LOFT, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 20, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG - The canon of classical music includes plenty of truncated masterworks, notably Bach's "Art of Fugue," Mozart's Requiem and Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony.

But none creates such an overwhelming sense of finality as Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 9, left in limbo at the composer's death in 1896 and The Florida Orchestra's featured work this weekend. It ranks as one of the season's highlights, judging from Saturday night's ravishing, 62-minute performance at the Mahaffey Theater.

About a thousand people braved thunderstorms to hear this majestic music, although Bruckner isn't to everyone's taste. His best symphonies are massive cathedrals in sound, tectonic in their movement, with great thematic waves crashing into one another.

If recent performances of the Seventh and Eighth symphonies showed the orchestra's Bruckner at its most inspired, the latest adventure under the baton of Stefan Sanderling ushers listeners into a mystical realm without tangible dimension.
Sanderling brought a vital forward thrust to the opening movement, his musicians playing with both bite and luminosity, and the brass section proving its mettle with ear-splitting climaxes. A choir of horns always seemed to hover over the strings, creating an intense, at times furious, contrast.

The orchestra pushed with all its weight in the scherzo, its jagged, demonic rhythms sounding like a crazed army on the march.

The adagio is Bruckner's final statement, his meditation on life and premonition of afterlife that stretches nearly half an hour. The orchestra gracefully developed the movement's varied themes, which moved around in a number of different keys until an earth-shattering climax combined six contrasting notes at once.

The musicians added colorful flourishes throughout, including poised solos by principal oboist Katherine Young. As the symphony drew to a close, listeners could almost feel that Bruckner was done, spent, his struggle with life at an end.

The evening opened with a rare performance of Olivier Messiaen's "L'Ascension: Four Meditations Symphoniques," which underscores the composer's profound views on the Catholic faith in a succession of musical collages.

The orchestra played with commitment and finesse, from the opening brass antiphons to the monochromatic meditation for strings that closes the work. Barbara Bird, a French instructor at St. Petersburg College, did an excellent job as the bilingual narrator.

A second performance is tonight at 7:30 at Ruth Eckerd Hall, 1111 McMullen Booth Road, Clearwater. For tickets, call (727) 791-7400.

Reporter Kurt Loft can be reached at (813) 259-7570 or kloft@tampatrib.com.

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