Bruckner’s Fifth

Musical Critic David Moratón

With Eliahu Inbal as conductor, the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra performed a more than acceptable symphonic version of this great symphonic monument.

When I was a teenager, and had much less patience and awareness now, I remember that I developed one of my most ancient musical quotes – from those I don’t want to remember – what I called “Bruckner mix”: I recorded all the “fortissimo” moments from Bruckner’s symphonies, one after another, without rest. Pain, without rest, I would take those topics forged by moments of power, vehemence, forcefulness, incomparable metallic strength, quarks and octaves, representing an increase in the quantum of interior energy. And I continued believing that this was the characteristic of the precise genius: to have the transmitted capacity of energy. Nobody does it like Bruckner.

However, with time I have learned to value the importance of his “valleys”: the more intimate, more rested, more collected moments of the genius author, who put the patient spectator to the test, and who more than on one occasion, have been considered tedious, or of difficult audition. Now I consider that these moments are absolutely necessary to balance, encouraged by the massive weight of the themes we mentioned before, in such a way that these can be played really slowly, in a way that allows us to rest, wait, enjoy.

This is always exemplified with doubt in his Symphony no. 5 in B flat major, which is left to the structural management of all the other compositions by Bruckner. It is not plethora of musical islands, which are communicated through silences. I suppose it represents a great challenge for any conductor, knowing how to unite the sound instances, alternating the cut moments of great power with the long periods of transition. We could listen to this interpreted in the Auditorium on January 10th by the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of Christian Thielemann, within the program of the 23rd Festival of Music of the Canary Islands. And almost two months later, on March 3rd in the same venue, the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra gave its version of the work, under the direction of Eliahu Inbal.

It is inevitable to make comparisons. Although Thielemann and the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra brilliantly achieved the feat, an effort of precision and intensity in the execution of the work, managing to achieve the cohesion of the first movements no more than nothing by the tendency of the conductor and a practical professional emotion from a skilled conductor lacking in warmth. In the version of the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra with the veteran director Eliahu Inbal, precisely the opposite occurred. His direction was sufficiently conscientious, and at the same time emotional, so that the first movements seemed to flow naturally. However, the scherzo would have needed more definition and more intensity in the main violins so that their repetitive structure would not come to exasperate the spectator. Regarding the final movement, I was moved by the version of the OST, much more vivid, with metals that contributed, this time without crushing any other instrumental section, to achieving the sensation of such exultant optimism and victory over the adversity that Bruckner achieved with this work.

I am sure that Lu Jia could feel content to be present at the good performance of this orchestra, forged through a good baton stroke during several years. By the way, the “Bruckner Mix” ended up being destroyed. Since Bruckner is magnificent, such as it is. And above all, if a good interpretation is supported.

El Dia, Tenerife, Spain
10 March
2007