Page 223 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Coverage Book 2023-24

Hearing any Bruckner symphony in a concert hall is something of a rarity in the UK, but hearing

these three mighty masterpieces in the space of one weekend is a real luxury. Nothing yet has

been scheduled on the scale of Glasshouse’s Big Bruckner Weekend anywhere else in the UK

(and, one suspects, further afield) in the whole of Bruckner’s bicentenary year, and the
organisers deserve as much of a bravo as the team of musicians they assembled.

When heard in such close proximity the grandeur of all three symphonies becomes even more

apparent than usual, but what was most remarkable was the interpretative and musical variety on

display. As played by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, No 7 sounded bathed in sunlight,
shimmering with mysterious delicacy all the way through, and the conductor Domingo

Hindoyan energised every phrase with a twinkling spirit of the dance. In contrast, Alpesh

Chauhan conducted the opening of No 9 with a sense of shuddering darkness, but by the time

they reached the slow movement, via a hammer-blow Scherzo, the musicians of the BBC

Scottish Symphony Orchestra had created a vision of magisterial transcendence.

Mark Elder conducts the Hallé playing Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony
THOMAS JACKSON
But perhaps the highlight was the Hallé playing No 8 with surging brilliance and a sense of

unfolding something vast. Mark Elder — who, remarkably, was conducting a Bruckner