Staatskapelle Berlin Brings Mozart and Bruckner to Life

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Parent Category: Other Festivals

Category: Music

Published on Monday, 06 February 2017 18:44

Written by Jack Angstreich

Daniel Barenboim

The heightened expectations aroused by the excellent earlier concerts in the Anton Bruckner symphony cycle at Carnegie Hall, presented by the sterling Staatskapelle Berlin under the accomplished direction of the esteemed Daniel Barenboim, were amply fulfilled on the evening of Friday, January 27th. Each program thus far had featured a wonderful concert work by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and this one opened with a superb account of the extraordinary Sinfonia concertante in E-flat Major, with admirable soloists Wolfram Brandl on violin and Yulia Deyneka on the viola. 

The series may have reached its peak in sublimity, however, with the gripping performance of the popular Symphony No. 7 that followed. The applause was fittingly rapturous. But, another summit was scaled the following evening with a stunning realization of the equally grand but even more challenging Symphony No. 8—heard here in the Robert Haas edition —which garnered another thunderous ovation.

The final program in the cycle, presented on the next day, opened with a glittering account of another lovely Mozart piano concerto, the 23rd. The concert concluded awesomely with a powerful version of the towering, unfinished Symphony No. 9. The applause surpassed that of all the previous evenings and members of the audience handed Barenboim individual red, long-stemmed roses in appreciation of a landmark series, purportedly the first complete cycle of the canonical Bruckner symphonies in New York history. It was exceedingly edifying as well as an enormous pleasure to be able to attend all these performances led by a living legend.

To learn more, go to: http://www.carnegiehall.org/

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