Review: Domingo Hindoyan's Bruckner at Philharmonic Hall ****1/2

Anton Bruckner was, by all accounts, a pretty peculiar man.

He was obsessed with counting architectural features, had a troubling fascination with corpses and, as he grew older, an unhealthy interest in teenage girls. Counting bricks apart, that's just the kind of thing that would get you well and truly cancelled in this day and age.

Peccadillos and unsavoury predilections aside, over the course of certainly his early career, Bruckner’s music was also dismissed by some of his contemporaries (the self-consciously cosmopolitan Viennese thought him a naïve and overly pious country bumpkin). Brahms was particularly sniffy, although Mahler was supportive.

That’s not to say that he didn’t have any successes during his lifetime – his Seventh Symphony for example was particularly popular with contemporary audiences, and conductor Hermann Levi described it as the greatest symphony composed since Beethoven.

Now two centuries after his birth (the bicentenary being this September), Bruckner’s ambitious and visionary symphonic work is being properly celebrated, not least by modern day supporters like the Phil’s chief conductor Domingo Hindoyan.

Since his arrival at Hope Street three years ago, Hindoyan has brought Bruckner to the fore in the programming, with performances of the composer’s Fourth and Eighth Symphonies – there’s a new recording of the former, and now the Seventh.

And if you’re someone who is still to be won over fully by Bruckner, you certainly can’t fail to admire the scope of ambition within his symphonic voice and appreciate the originality and construction of this monumental work, with the tidal ebb and flow, swell and recede, within its movements – presented here with tender care and attention to detail by Hindoyan.

The adagio second movement, a homage to Bruckner’s hero and mentor Wagner and which saw the Phil’s new quartet of Wagner tubas appearing for the second time in a week, was especially powerful while the Phil’s string section shone, particularly in the second of the movement’s two contrasting themes, a transcendent, elegiac melody with a percussive full stop.

It was followed by an almost jaunty, full throttle scherzo which was propulsively played with the strings delivering an insistent rhythmic motif and bright interjections from principal trumpet Fabio Brum.

While Bruckner didn’t go in for irresistible earworms, or even particularly hummable tunes, the same certainly can’t be said of fellow Austrian Erich Korngold, master of melody and king of 1930s Hollywood soundtracks.

Above: Johan Dalene. Top: Domingo Hindoyan.

Young artist in residence Johan Dalene harnessed the full sweetness of his Stradivarius in the lushly romantic opening of Korngold’s Violin Concerto, a toothsome theme the composer repurposed from his score for the 1937 Errol Flynn melodrama Another Dawn – its sweeping, soaring phrasing over harp and celeste a breath-catching delight.

Dalene offered an expressive singing tone and expansive phrasing, along with a double-stopping cadenza punctuated by orchestral plucked strings, while elsewhere the Phil matched him sweet note by sweet note as the movement came to a spiralling conclusion.

The second movement, a sublime ‘romance’ in the key of G, was exquisitely played, with palpable emotional connection, while the finale – a capering allegro embedded with yet another achingly attractive melody – allowed the young Norwegian to showcase the full range of his virtuosity, not least in the pure clarity of the violin’s highest range, set against the Phil’s richly textured accompaniment.

Dalene returns to the Phil in April to perform Nielsen’s Violin Concerto. If you didn’t catch him playing Korngold, don’t miss his return.

Meanwhile, the RLPO itself heads further north tonight to repeat its performance at the start of Gateshead Glasshouse’s (that’s the Sage in old money) ambitious Bruckner weekend which will feature the Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Symphonies.