Page 41 - Winterreise Coverage Book, 2021 - 22

Anton Bruckner, modernist trailblazer? So thinks François-Xavier Roth, one of
the more inventive conductors working today. Roth has been working on a Bruckner
cycle with his Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne, Germany, of which this is the first
evidence on record. To illustrate the composer’s progressivism in concert Roth, has
performed the Third Symphony with Ligeti, the Eighth with Lachenmann and this
Seventh, which was taped live in December 2019, with music by Graciane Finzi. The
pairing doesn’t make it to disc; what is left is Bruckner quite different from the norm.

Not for Roth all that guff about “cathedrals of sound” — this is lighter, lither and
faster than the Bruckner we so often hear, fully 10 minutes swifter than Andris
Nelsons’s recent account of the same piece with the Gewandhaus Orchestra of
Leipzig. Surely influenced by his work with his period-instrument ensemble, Les
Siècles, Roth is less interested in grand, architectural paragraphs than in briefer,
accentuated phrases; thinning out some of Bruckner’s textures, his emphasis is not
on gravity of utterance, but on variety of sonority. It will take some getting used to,
but that’s the point. And if I’m not yet entirely convinced, it’s telling that I want to
hear more. DAVID ALLEN

Henze: ‘Nachtstücke und Arien’

ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra; Marin Alsop, conductor (Naxos)