Schubert & Bruckner With The Vienna Philharmonic

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 04 March 2025 17:08

Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At the extraordinary Stern Auditorium, on the night of Friday, February 28th, I had the pleasure to attend a superb concert presented by Carnegie Hall, the first of three on consecutive days featuring the stellar Vienna Philharmonic under the incomparable direction of Riccardo Muti, one of the greatest living conductors.

The event started auspiciously with an admirable account of Franz Schubert’s excellent Symphony No. 4 in C Minor, D. 417, the “Tragic,” from 1816. In interesting notes on the program by Jack Sullivan, he records some useful background:

One of the earliest defenders of the symphony in America was H. L. Mencken, whose eloquent 1928 article in The American Mercury perceived—at least in the slow movement—the work’s “tragic” qualities: “Of Schubert’s symphonies, the orchestras play the ‘Unfinished’ incessantly—but never too often!—and the huge C Major now and then, but the ‘Tragic’ only once in a blue moon. Yet the ‘Tragic’ remains one of Schubert’s masterworks, and in its slow movement, at least, it rides to the full height of the ‘Unfinished.’ There are not six such slow movements in the whole range of music. It has an eloquence that has never been surpassed, not even by Beethoven, but there is no rhetoric in it, no heroics, no exhibitionism. It begins quietly and simply, and it passes out in a whisper, but its beauty remains overwhelming.”

The initial movement’s Adagio molto introduction is solemn and strongly recalls the music of the composer’s great and inescapable precursor, Ludwig van Beethoven, while its Allegro vivace main body is graceful and much more energetic, although its ethos is on balance more serious than ebullient. The ensuing Andante is somewhat gentler and more Mozartean in spirit—it acquires a quiet urgency at times and is not without dramatic moments. The Menuetto that follows, marked Allegro vivace, has the vigor of a scherzo but it also contains a more subdued Trio section. The propulsive, Allegro finale has a suspenseful quality although it is also surprisingly playful, building to an affirmative conclusion.

The second half of the evening was even more remarkable: a fully assured realization of Anton Bruckner’s magnificent Symphony No. 7 in E Major, completed in 1883. The Allegro moderato first movement opens softly but majestically; bucolic passages lead to bolder orchestral statements—much of it is very Wagnerian—and it finishes celestially. The succeeding Adagio, which is possibly the most beautiful movement that Bruckner ever composed, is elegiac but transcendent; it too reaches an unearthly close. The Scherzo, which is not without its eccentricities, is forceful with dance-like interludes and considerable forward momentum and ends abruptly; the movement’s Trio is altogether more itenic in character. The Finale is somewhat hushed at its outset but the music rapidly intensifies, although more serene episodes alternate with more passionate ones; it attains a glorious climax.

The artists, deservedly, were enthusiastically applauded.

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