Concert Review: Knocking Out the Heavyweight

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the Bruckner Seventh.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Esa-Pekka Salonen does his best Karajan face. Photo © Signum Classics.

In the course of his conducting career, the Finnish composer Esa-Pekka Salonen has focused heavily on the music of contemporary composers and the 20th century. True, there's been Beethoven here and there, and excursions into Wagner. However, as Mr. Salonen prepares to take over a new job in San Francisco, a reconsideration of repertory is no bad thing. This might explain why the first of Mr. Salonen's two concerts this weekend with the Philharmonia Orchestra focused exclusively on one of Anton Bruckner's enormous late symphonies, specifically the Symphony No. 7.

Concert Review: The Philosopher's Stone

Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin at Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Bruckner (left) and his critics, Eduard Hanslick, Max Kalbeck and Richard Heuberge.

At the end of its first week, the ongoing Carnegie Hall Bruckner marathon has moved into familiar territory this week, leaving behind the obscure early symphonies for works which, while not programmed with great frequency nonetheless show up regularly in the repertory of large symphony orchestras. Here it was the turn of the Symphony No. 6 (nicknamed "The Philosopher"), paired with Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 22, a genuine crowd-pleaser.

Concert Review: Controversy and Counterpoint

The Bruckner odyssey continues with Symphony No. 5
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Bruckner-Orgel in St. Florian, Linz, Austria, where composer Anton Bruckner was chief organist.
It is also his final resting place. Photo by Greg Kraftschik for Wikipedia.

What's going at Carnegie Hall this week is historic. Not only is this nine concert marathon of Bruckner's published symphonies (in order) the first of its kind at that historic institution, but this is the first so-called Bruckner cycle in the history of the United States. On Tuesday night. Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin reached the midway point of their odyssey with the Symphony No. 5.

Concert Review: Voices in the Wilderness

The Staatskapelle Berlin takes on the Bruckner Second. 

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Leading from the piano: Daniel Barenboim. Photo © 2017 Staatskapelle Berlin.

When he was 14 years old, the conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim made his Carnegie Hall debut on January 20, 1957,  playing the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Symphony of the Air under the baton of the legendary Leopold Stokowski. Last night, Mr. Barenboim, now 74, celebrated the 60th anniversary of that occasion with the Staatskapelle Berlin, bringing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 and Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 2 to that hallowed stage.

Festival Preview: Bruckner Symphony Cycle

Daniel Barenboim and the Berlin Staatskapelle at Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Daniel Barenboim conducts the Berlin Staatskapelle.
Photo © 2016 Accentus Music and the Berlin Staatskapelle.

On January 19, conductor Daniel Barenboim ends a four-year absence from Carnegie Hall with a first for that historic venue. He will lead the Berlin Staatskapelle in a cycle of nine numbered symphonies by Anton Bruckner and major piano concertos by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Famous Composer Found in Bronx

Anton Bruckner discovered near Bruckner Boulevard.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Out on the Boulevard: composer Anton Bruckner.

A small elderly man that has been missing for a month in the South Bronx has been identified as award-winning composer Anton Bruckner. Dr. Bruckner had arrived in New York on a cultural mission with the Vienna Philharmonic. He had disappeared at the beginning of March.

Concert Review: Beginning at the Beginning

The American Symphony Orchestra plays early works by major Romantics.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Conductor and college president Leon Botstein.
Photo © American Symphony Orchestra/Bard College.

The annual concert series by the American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall continued last Thursday with Opus Posthumous, a concert curated by music director (and Bard College president) Leon Botstein and featuring rarities unearthed from the early catalogues of Schubert, Bruckner and Dvořák. Although the works on this program (particularly the Symphony No. 00 by Bruckner and the Symphony No. 1 by Dvořák) have been recorded and are part of each composer's catalogue of work, performances of these pieces are a rare occasion indeed.

Concert Review: The Struggle and the Reward

Alan Gilbert takes on the Bruckner Eighth.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Collaborators: Yefim Bronfman (at keyboard) and conductor Alan Gilbert.
Photo by Chris Lee © 2014 the New York Philharmonic.

The last completed work of a major composer has a special place in the music repertory. Last Friday night at the New York Philharmonic, Alan Gilbert led a program featuring the penultimate utterances of Béla Bartók and Anton Bruckner: the former's Piano Concerto No. 3 and the latter's Symphony No. 8.  If there is a common ground between these works, both came as the composers neared the end of their respective lives, battling illness and a lack of understanding from their respective musical communities.

Concert Review: The Three Other B's

Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts Barber, Bartók and Bruckner.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Photo by Marco Borggreve.

On Friday night, the Philadelphians closed out this year's Carnegie Hall series with a concert featuring music by the "other" three B's: Samuel Barber, Béla Bartók and Anton Bruckner. These three very different compositions formed an effective tryptich, giving indications at the state of the orchestra, as music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin wraps up his second season at the controls.

Concert Review: Wrestling With His Angels

The Philharmonic pairs Vivier and Bruckner.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Manfred Honeck took over this week's Philharmonic program at short notice.
Photo by Felix Broede © 2014 IMG Artists.

The sudden withdrawal of conductor Gustavo Dudamel this week caused consternation for the New York Philharmonic, who were suddenly presenting an ambitious program of music by Claude Vivier and Anton Bruckner without a conductor. However, the orchestra was able to secure the services of Manfred Honeck, the music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the concerts went off as scheduled. To his credit, Mr. Honeck chose to leave the program unaltered. These concerts (heard Friday night at Avery Fisher Hall) paired Vivier's Orion with Anton Bruckner's unfinished Symphony No. 9 in D minor, the unfinished finale of that composer's career. These two big pieces were heard back-to-back, without intermission.

A Visit from Anton Bruckner

A composer comes to New Jersey...sort of.

by Paul Pelkonen

I don't make it much of a secret, but I usually sleep with "music in." 

The composer Anton Bruckner at his piano in 1894.
Really, he looked just like this.

As a sleep apnea patient, I use a BiPAP machine (it stands for Bi-directional Positive Air Pressure) which pushes and pulls air in and out of my nose and throat as I sleep. This keeps my airway open and makes sure I get a full night's sleep. I am thus able to stay awake at concerts and work in a normal fashion. 

Each night, I program my iPod and tuck it under my pillow. I block the noise of the "blower" with SkullCandy ear-buds, (yes, that's an endorsement) usually playing Bach or Mozart though I can sleep through Wagner, Bruckner, and even Mahler.

Finding the Cathedral

An approach to the music of Anton Bruckner.

A Viennese silhouette of Anton Bruckner at the organ.

by Paul Pelkonen

Among the major symphonic composers of the 19th century, Anton Bruckner is one of the most popular, the most misunderstood, and for the novice listener, the most forbidding. Bruckner's eleven symphonies (counting the "student" work numbered "00" and the rejected Symphony in D (commonly known as "Die Nulte" or "Number 0") chart a vast evolutionary sweep.

Bruckner is a composer who has been accused by music writers of repeating himself in his symphare many clichés about this composer: "sky-reaching cathedrals of sound," "Bruckner rhythms" and "Block chords played like organ stops" to name the three most popular among critics. (Don't laugh. I've used all three of these, and there are others.)

My first encounter with Bruckner was in Boston when I was an enthusiastic, if callow graduate student pursuing a degree in journalism. At a local record store, I found a used promotional copy of Daniel Barenboim's second recording of the Eighth. I listened, or tried to, and quickly became lost in the vast sonic spans of this penultimate symphony. I didn't understand it. Eventually, that disc, with its pretty cover (a photograph of Saturn, the Seventh (!) planet--apparently Teldec marketers thought Bruckner was actually Holst) went back to the shop.

Re-stocking the Bare Shelves

A look at upcoming classical boxed sets.

"My cans. My precious, antique cans. Look what you've done to 'em."

Every Fall, the classical music industry releases a new flood of boxed sets and reissues into the warehouses of Amazon.com and its competitors. (This line used to read "into the record stores" but since there are very few left age their stock is limited, I decided to update it for this barren decade.)

In times of limited employment and deep economic strife, suggesting which classical/opera boxed sets to collect might be as futile as buying a subscription to the New York City Opera's 2011 fall season. But we're still going to do it anyway, because writing about good music is a light in dark days.

Here's some new and notable box sets. Some are recently released. Others are coming in the next few months:

Rafael Kubelik conducts Great Symphonies
Schumann Symphonies 1-4, Bruckner Symphony No. 3, 4, Mozart Nos. 35, 36, 38-41

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra cond. Rafael Kubelik (RCA, 7 discs)
One of the great underrated conductors gets a reappraisal, thanks to the merger of Sony and RCA and a slew of accompanying reissues. Kubelik always had a unique take on major repertory, and he meshed perfectly with the Munich forces to produce gorgeous results. (Release Date: Sept. 6, 2011)


Schubert: Piano Sonatas and Impromptus, Andras Schiff, Piano (Decca, 9 discs)

This Hungarian pianist made these Schubert recordings in the 1990s. Crisp keyboard diction, beautiful digital sound and a sense of intimacy, especially in the beautifully played Impromptus. (Oct. 18, 2011)

Bruckner: Symphonies 0-9
Chicago Symphony Orchestra cond. Daniel Barenboim. (DG, 10 discs)

This set has been out of print for almost two decades, mostly because Daniel Barenboim decided to record a second Bruckner cycle with the Berlin Philharmonic. That set was released in the '90s on Teldec/Warner Brothers and is also currently available. This older, analog set made in the 1970s offers the conductor's fiery first take on these classic works and allows the listener to hear the early relationship between the young Barenboim and this great American orchestra. (Oct. 18, 2011)


EMI Sergiu Celibidache Edition Boxed Sets
Munich Philharmonic cond. Sergiu Celibidache (EMI Classics, Four boxed sets, 48 discs total.)

Four low-price boxed sets celebrate the "all-bootleg" recorded legacy of this idiosyncratic, but inspired Romanian conductor. Since Celibidache would not make studio recordings and openly disapproved of the process of making live recordings, he had to be recorded quietly, with everything released following his death.

The maverick Celibidache famously eschewed the recording studio, leading mystic, revelatory performances of major symphonic repertory. (Most of these recordings were made between 1982 and 1995, but not intended to be released.) Bruckner is the main attraction here, although this conductor applied his unique touch to Bach choral works, the Verdi Requiem and an astonishing range of repertory from Haydn and Mozart to Debussy, Bartok and Mussorgsky. (Oct. 25, 2011)


The Liszt Legacy: Benno Moisewitch, Alicia De Larrocha, Claudio Arrau, Raymond Lewenthal, Egon Petri, Piano (DG, 11 discs)
This year has seen a slew of Liszt boxed sets, from the scattershot anthologies of EMI and Sony to Hyperion's absolutely complete set of Leslie Howard's recordings, that weighs in at a hefty 99 discs. This ten-disc Liszt-a-thon celebrates the composer's bicentennial with rare and unreleased recordings of the composer's works from five great pianists. Many of these are previously unreleased.

The Chilean Claudio Arrau and the Spanish Alicia de Larrocha are the big names here, but the set is also notable for the inclusion of the underrated Benno Moisewitch as well as the more obscure Dutch-German pianist Egon Petri and the American-born Raymond Lewenthal.  (Nov. 15, 2011)

Concert Review: Revelation Calling

Bruckner's Ninth Brings Cleveland Residency to a Mystic Close.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Anton Bruckner: Master of the Mystic Arts. He composed, too.

The final installment of Bruckner (r)Evolution, the Cleveland Orchestra's four-concert residency at the 2011 Lincoln Center Festival, paired Anton Bruckner's Ninth (and final) Symphony with the Doctor Atomic Symphony by contemporary minimalist composer John Adams. Franz Welser-Möst conducted. His intent: to show Bruckner's influence on modern music.

Concert Review: The Age of Apocalypse

Franz Welser-Möst conducts Bruckner's Eighth Symphony at Lincoln Center.

Cleveland Orchestra music director Franz Welser-Möst.
Photo by Mark Alan Lee © 2011 The Cleveland Orchestra.

On Saturday night, Franz Welser-Möst led the Cleveland Orchestra in the penultimate performance of Bruckner (r)Evolution. This was the penultimate concert of the ensemble's four-night stand at Avery Fisher Hall. The concert featured Bruckner's massive Eighth Symphony, which is simply too long to pair with any minimalist work by John Adams.

The Eighth was the last major work completed by Anton Bruckner, a 90-minute symphony in C minor, presented in four massive movements. Like the composer's other late symphonies, it consists of ever-ascending slow builds, rising spires of sound built from blocks of brass, wind, and strings. The symphony has no programme or nickname (some refer to it as the "Apocalyptic") but its intent is clear: Bruckner is trying to touch the face of God.

With these performances, Mr. Welser-Möst's stated goal is to express a new understanding of the composer he idolizes. To that end, Saturday night featured a rarity: the unrevised "original cut" of the work from 1887. This infrequently performed version is slightly longer and contains some unfamiliar passages in its first two movments. Bruckner revised the work in 1890. But on Saturday night, the earthy power of Bruckner's score stood revealed.

Mr. Welser-Möst took a surprising, fast tempo for the opening movement, creating driving figures in the strings that moved the work forward and opened vast sonic vistas for the listener. This enabled the full 18-piece Cleveland brass section to cut loose with massive, block chords, voiced in stately, organ-like tones by horns, trombones and Wagner tubas. The scherzo was taken at a slower pace, with the rustic peasants' dance steps of the Ländler moving with the tread of giants striding over the mountains of Bruckner's (and Mr. Welser-Möst's) native Austria.


The transcendent moment of this symphony is in its third movement, as Bruckner reveals his intent. It is a simple, descending figure in the horns and Wagner tubas. This theme, which stands at the crux of the whole work, is never repeated, though later variations and progressions allude to its beauty. It is as if the heavens open, and mere mortals listening are allowed a corner-of-the eye glimpse of the perfect design of the heavenly Empyrean.

The Cleveland forces played this important passage with care and beauty, led by the exceptional horn section. The whole Adagio, from its opening strings and horns to the final cymbal clashes, built slowly into a gorgeous structure, rising heavenward in anticipation of the massive finale.

Depending on who you ask, following a movement like that with a 30-minute finale may seem like an afterthought, or overkill. But under Mr. Welser-Möst's sure leadership, this robust finale seemed entirely appropriate to what came before. Here, Bruckner shows unexpected mastery of the art of transition, moving from one thematic block to the next, without the pauses that mark his earlier works. The result: a thrilling celestial journey through Bruckner's own imagination. As the trumpets rang out and the horns rose for the final, unision chords, one thought arose: this could be the soundtrack to a beautiful, serene Apocalypse.

Concert Review: The Total Perspective Vortex

Night Two of Bruckner (r)Evolution with the Cleveland Orchestra.

Bruckner's music puts everything in perspective for the listener.
With thanks to Douglas Adams for the idea.

The second concert in the Cleveland Orchestra's four-evening survey pairing the late Bruckner symphonies with minimalist composer John Adams outstripped the first. Franz Welser-Möst conducted the second in this concert series, pairing the two composers in an effort to show Bruckner's influence on contemporary minimalists.

The main reason for this was the presence of violinist Leila Josefowicz. The Canadian soloist stunned the audience with her fearless, fleet interpretation of Mr. Adams' three-movement violin concerto, a treacherous composition from the pen of the composer of Nixon in China. Placed next to the Bruckner, the influence of one composer on the other was clear, creating the fresh perspective that is Mr. Welser-Möst's intent.

This concerto is written on a large scale, with a long difficult solo part that never seems to yield the stage to the orchestra. Ms. Josefowicz tore eagerly into the opening movement, and produced sweet lyric tone in the long, slow chaconne. Mr. Welser-Möst accompanied the soloist with a sensitivity, keeping the pace of the chaconne smooth and flowing, with a slow circular groove that was almost percussive in its steadiness.

Ms. Josefowicz displayed astounding technique in the final movement, racing over the chugging ostinato rhythms with such force that she shredded the horse-hair on her bow. Without missing a beat, she conducted a swift bow repair and raced to the finish line of the piece. It was a bravura monologue for this talented soloist, the kind of reading that makes a good case for further exploration of Mr. Adams' music by the most conservative music lover.

Bruckner's Seventh Symphony is the composer's most popular work, the piece which "broke" him with the Viennese public and finally earned the grudging respect of critic Eduard Hanslick. The Seventh is written on the same large scale as the other late Bruckner works, with the addition of four Wagner tubas to the brass choir. This is a hybrid of horn and tuba, invented by Wagner for the first performances of his own Der Ring des Nibelungen.

The Seventh builds to a series of slow, relentless climaxes before pausing and building again, rising to a mighty height at the end of its first movement. The coda of the opening Sonata Allegro pays homage to Wagner himself, with the entire 13-strong brass section playing a chorale that sounds like the opening of Das Rheingold played backward. It is an astonishing effect.

Anton Bruckner.

Bruckner dedicated this symphony to Wagner, and quoted from the composer several times in the score. But these quotes (which range from "Lohengrin" to the Ring do not undercut the power of the second movement, a long, worked-out funerary ode to Wagner, who had died in 1883. This slow movement, which gradually rises to its flowering climax is among this composer's greatest achievements. On the podium, Mr. Welser-Möst respected the composer's intentions and maintined the slow surge of power.

The third movement, a bucolic series of Austrian peasant dances, allowed the conductor and orchestra to show their playful sides. Woodwinds and strings whirled and stomped through the trio section, in the form of a Ländler, a kind of Austrian Alpine hoedown. Mr. Welser-Möst displayed mastery of the tricky triple-double "Bruckner rhythm" that dominates this movement.

The finale elevated the listener back to the heights of Bruckner's sonic mountain, with a return of the opening brass chorale and a new theme developed within the woodwinds. At the work's climax, the backward Wagnerian chorale returned, leaving the listener on the windy heights, under the starry vault, marvelling at the scope of Bruckner's creation. It was a stirring end to the second New York concert by this fine orchestra, who were in excellent playing form and inspired by the exceptional material in front of them.

Bruckner (r)Evolution concludes this weekend with the Eighth and Ninth Symphonies. Tickets are available through Lincoln Center Festival.

Concert Review: First Shots Fired

Bruckner (r)Evolution Opens at the Lincoln Center Festival

Anton Bruckner. Portrait by Josef Büche.

Wednesday night at Lincoln Center saw the opening of Bruckner (r)Evolution, the four-night stand at Avery Fisher Hall featuring the Cleveland Orchestra. Cleveland music director Franz Welser-Möst led the program, which paired Bruckner's Fifth Symphony with Guide to Strange Places, a 20-minute orchestral roadmap by minimalist composer John Adams.

This unusual marriage is part of Mr. Welser-Möst's ambition behind the festival, to demonstrate the influence of Bruckner's unusual symphonic style and cement the Austrian composer as a predecessor of modernism. The humble Bruckner would have been suspicious of the idea, preferring his colossal achievements to stand for themselves as abstract works of art.

The Adams work opened, a dense, harmonically rich four-movement structure played as one on the model of Jean Sibelius' Seventh Symphony. Thick orchestral textures, chugging strings and the guttural honk of the contrabass clarinet combined to create eerie landscapes like the cinematic soundtrack to a recent William Gibson novel.

Like that author's recent trilogy of books, Mr. Adams' work exists in the long shadow of September 11th, and was seen as a kind of threnody for the victims of those terrorist attacks. However, the composer explained in the accompanying concert note that his piece was actually conceived before the attacks, and that it was inspired by an annotated map of Provence in France that provided information on the strange and weird history of that remarkable slice of countryside.

Bruckner's Fifth Symphony has labored under similar misconceptions. It was written at a fiscally difficult time in the composer's life, following the fiasco of his Third. That, and its descending main theme have earned it the nickname "Tragic." But this is a misnomer. The Fifth is like a great stretching bridge to some otherworldly dimension, its span held together by great piers of unison brass and guy-wired by a pizzicato theme that opens the first movement and comes to dominate the finale.

Under Mr. Welser-Möst, the Cleveland Orchestra led the audience on a leisurely tour of this remarkable structure. The brass played with stirring power. The strings gave warm voice to the long melodic lines of the opening movement's second theme and the most lyric pages of the Adagio. The woodwinds came to the fore in the scherzo, written as a pair of interlocking Austrian country dances and reflecting Bruckner's country roots.

The finale led to the most magnificent playing of the evening, a 20-minute movement in which the ideas from the previous three are recapitulated in sonata form and then made to run in place with a colossal double fugue. The effect is remarkably like Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, minus the solo voices and the chorus.

Throughout, Bruckner's writing for the orchestra reflects his mastery of counterpoint and his decision to treat a full symphony orchestra as if it were a giant pipe organ. The Cleveland forces responded to this magnificent music with power, enthusiasm and an odd, awkward grace, making this concert a strong opening to this four-night festival.

Bruckner (r)Evolution continues tonight with the Adams Violin Concerto, paired with Bruckner's Symphony No. 7. Symphony No. 8 bows on Saturday, with the 9th at 2pm on Sunday. Watch this space for full and continuing coverage.

The Sheer Weight of Sound

Reflections on Soundgarden and Bruckner Symphonies
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Devastating bass: Ben Shepherd of Soundgarden.
Photo by the Author. © 2011 by me.

"They want me to write differently. Certainly I could, but I must not."
--Anton Bruckner

"We do this basically for ourselves. People appreciate it, which is cool, but I think they appreciate that we're doing it for ourselves. We're doing it our way, and how people like it is not up to us. We like it."
--James Hetfield of Metallica

So last night my friend Rob Pantuliano and I went to Newark, NJ to see the resurrected '90s grunge band Soundgarden play the Prudential Center. For the uninitiated, Soundgarden were the loudest, and one of the heaviest bands to come out of that Seattle scene, combining unusual time signatures, shrieked vocals and a slow, sludgy, heavy sound produced by tuning the guitars and bass down to D or C, and occasionally, all the way down to a low B. They broke up in 1997, but are currently enjoying a renaissance.

DVD Review: A Sneak Peek at the Apocalypse.

Franz Welser-Möst. Note the blue cufflinks.
Photo by Roger Mastrioanni © 2011 The Cleveland Orchestra.

Saturday night's free event at the Rubinstein Atrium offered a sneak peek at a major event from this year's Lincoln Center Festival: the first annual residency of the Cleveland Orchestra. The program featured a the screening of a new DVD of Bruckner's Eighth Symphony, performed by the Orchestra under the baton of music director Franz Welser-Möst.

Anton Bruckner's fame rests on his cycle of symphonies: nine offical ones and two that the composer rejected. Bruckner symphonies massive works that require a veritable army of musicians to perform. The Eighth (nicknamed the 'Apocalyptic') is the last symphony that he completed, a gigantic work requiring a dozen horn players, an arsenal of woodwinds and a good-sized army of strings. Although it starts quietly, the work builds to a series of swelling, thunderous climaxes, and at the close of its fourth movement seems to rip through the vault of heaven to gaze upon the cosmic truths beyond.

Bruckner is a passion and a cause for this Austrian conductor, who was born and raised only a few miles away from the composer's hometown of Ansfelden, now a suburb of Linz. This July, Mr. Welser-Möst will bring that passion to Bruckner (r)Evolution, four concerts featuring major Bruckner symphonies (the Fifth, Seventh, Eighth and the unfinished Ninth) with compositions by American minimalist John Adams. By bringing these two composers together, Mr. Welser-Möst hopes to show that the composer is the godfather of the modern minimalist movement.


This DVD is remarkable for its close-up camera work, allowing the audience an unusual, intimate look at the orchestral members as well as Mr. Welser-Möst's intensity and focus on the podium . He conducts with his eyes as well as his hands, standing well back from the printed score and only flipping the page when needed. He works hard as he conducts, evidenced by the roll of sweat during the slow, superbly controlled third movement.

Want to see how a big orchestra works? This is your DVD. The oboes, bassoons, and more exotic instruments (like the Wagner tubas) are brought into sharp focus through careful, close camera work. The string players are not neglected, with special attention paid to the first violins and the double basses. The best shot is during the climax of the third movement, when the bell of the contrabass tuba catches the light of Severance Hall in an image that recalls Wagner's Rhine-gold glittering in the depths of the river.

The Cleveland Orchestra is one of the "Big Five", and occupies the smallest city of a major American orchestra. This performance was filmed in August, 2010 in their home venue of Severance Hall. The excellent audio engineering captures the phenomenal sound of the band in this great venue, and careful camera placement and editing ensures that the viewers never see the film crew.

Concert Review: Back For the Future

NY Philharmonic Returns, with New Music and rare Bruckner.

Woman in White: Anne-Sophie Mutter and friend.

The New York Philharmonic has returned from its European tour to kick off four weeks of concerts at its home base of Avery Fisher Hall. On Friday afternoon, the orchestra offered an unusual program featuring Time Machines, a new piece by Sebastian Currier, commissioned by artist-in-residence Anne-Sophie Mutter. The new work was flanked by a rare Beethoven trifle, and a Bruckner symphony that the orchestra hadn't performed live in 40 years.

Written in 2007 but shelved until this week, Time Machines is not a memorable piece. It is another installment of Ms. Mutter's ongoing (and commendable) quest, as she seeks to expand the repertory of her instrument. Over seven movements, Mr. Currier establishes a call-and-response between the soloist and orchestra, exploring different rhythmic approaches and concepts of time. Ms. Mutter opened the first movement with growled, staccato chords, a repeated ostinato which was answered by the orchestra strings.

The major themes of the opening were expanded upon and repeated in the movements that followed, giving listeners a sensation of traveling backwards in time, with room to move for Ms. Mutter's instrument against a shifting curtain of strings, wind, and odd percussion. There were slow, soothing minimalist passages (entropic time) alternating with frantic fast sections (compressed time.) The most impressive section: backwards time, with inversions and retrogrades of the original thematic material, adding to the sensation of time running backward.

The concert opened with Beethoven's first Romance for Violin and Orchestra, featuring the talents of Philharmonic artist-in-residence Anne-Sophie Mutter. Clad in a spectacular scarlet sheath and wielding her bow with authority, Ms. Mutter captured the lovely lyricism that one associated with Beethoven's work, illustrating how this admittedly minor piece points the way to the heights of the composer's lone violin concerto.

The Philharmonic waited four decades to bring back Anton Bruckner's underrated Second Symphony, a taut, powerful work that excels and surprises, precisely because it lacks the sheer orchestral overkill associated with this Austrian composer. On the podium, music director Alan Gilbert made Bruckner's characteristic rhythms (one-two, one-two-THREE) snap, showing the crisp architecture and tight structures present in the music of a composer who remains misunderstood today.

The Second falls into Bruckner's early period, and (through some complicated numbering issues) is actually his fourth, possibly fifth effort in the genre that he made his life's work. It stands as a bridge between the symphonies of Beethoven and Schubert and the giant structures of sound that the composer worked on at the end of his life. Known (for lack of a better nickname) as the "Symphony of Pauses," the work frequently stops for a full rest, and then picks up the theme from its beginning, restating it in what is essentially a hybrid between a theme-and-variations and traditional sonata form.

The performance featured some beautiful playing from four of the Philharmonic horns, led by principal Philip Myers. The English horn made an important contribution in the slow movement. The trio of the rousing Scherzo (based on the Ländler, a curious Austrian peasant dance that was a Bruckner favorite) featured a gorgeous solo from violist Cynthia Phelps. And the mighty final movement was the sum total of Mr. Gilbert's abilities at keeping a large structure of music intact, making the work rise consistently to its thrilling, thundering climax.