Page 228 - Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Coverage Book 2023-24

Sir Mark Elder conducts the Hallé in Bruckner’s Symphony No.8 © Bill Lam

Despite the Hallé’s long tradition of performing Bruckner, upon taking up his
position as their Music Director in the Autumn of 2000, Sir Mark Elder declared,
‘You can be sure that one composer I won’t be conducting is Bruckner, because
I don’t understand his symphonies. In fact, his music means nothing at all to me’

– yet here, nearly twenty-three years later, he chose Bruckner’s Eighth
Symphony to be one of his last performances with them before relinquishing
his role at the end of this season. In the post-performance interview he
confessed to what was essentially a Damascene conversion following his 2005
performance of the Seventh symphony in St Paul’s Cathedral – whose acoustic,
he wryly observed, ‘gave us the opportunity to hear it twice’. Nonetheless, he
had conducted no other Bruckner before this fourth performance of the Eighth
in a few days, which makes the perfection of what we were privileged to hear
all the more remarkable. As he himself remarked, the acoustic of the hall and
the expertise of his orchestra enabled him to ensure that every strand of each
individual instrumental line was pellucid – the all-important harps and timpani,
for example, were always audible – in a concert of extraordinary power and
concentration. Sir Mark’s captaincy of what he humorously but accurately
called Bruckner’s ‘ocean liner’ was riveting, his gestures economical but
eloquent, his beat clear but subtle. There were too many felicities in his
direction to enumerate, so just one example will suffice: he constantly varied
the rhythm and graded the dynamics of the Scherzo without ever sounding
fussy or affected. He had a fiery, expressive and inspirational young leader as
first mate of the ‘ocean liner’ and a crew whose contentment at being aboard
was signalled by the manner in which they constantly communicated with each
other and smiled encouragement. This was an account to treasure.