Violinist Joan Kwuon

Music Director JoAnn Falletta will be on the podium in Kleinhans Music Hall this Saturday evening, January 26, and again on Sunday afternoon, leading the Buffalo Philharmonic in a program consisting of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in B-flat major, K. 207, with violinist Joan Kwuon as soloist, and Anton Bruckner’s mighty Symphony No. 9 in D minor.

For dyed-in-the-wool lovers of the orchestral symphonic repertoire, the performance of a Bruckner symphony is an occasion not to be missed. This is particularly true when the work being performed is a relative rarity, such as Bruckner’s Ninth. In the 70-plus-year history of the BPO, the Bruckner Ninth has been performed only twice before, in 1966, under the baton of Lukas Foss, and in 1979 with Michael Tilson Thomas as conductor. Falletta will be ending an almost 30-year dry spell when she gives the initial downbeat for Bruckner’s final symphonic masterpiece this Saturday evening.

“It’s always a very big event whenever the orchestra plays a Bruckner symphony,” JoAnn Falletta noted in a recent interview, “and especially so when the work is Bruckner’s Ninth. Time moves at a different pace in his symphonies, creating a vast cathedral in sound, where the listener has to surrender him- or herself, to become a part of Bruckner’s world. The challenge to the conductor is how to pace the flow of the music, knowing when to pause and when to move ahead. A fine balance must be maintained between the overwhelming, sometimes crushing brass, and the often delicate sections for strings.

“To perform a composer’s final symphony,” Falletta observed, “is always a valedictory experience, no more so than in the case of the Bruckner Ninth, which is fraught with mysticism. After all the anguish, there is a transcendent acceptance of death as the inevitable next stage, and the listener cannot help but to be moved by the luminous, radiant conclusion of the symphony.”

Born the son of a village schoolmaster in rural Upper Austria, Bruckner seemed destined to take the same path until he displayed a natural musical aptitude while serving as a choirboy at the nearby monastery of St. Florian, which possessed one of the finest organs in Europe. Hearing and eventually playing this instrument determined the course that his life would take. Discovering a mastery of the organ, Bruckner soon started to compose sacred pieces and took what lessons in theory and counterpoint were available locally. Eventually he sought more advanced lessons, commuting to Vienna bi-weekly for several years, to study with a teacher at the university who forbade him to compose a note of his own while he was completing innumerable exercises in counterpoint.

He became the organist at the cathedral of Linz and started lessons with the conductor of the local opera house, who introduced him to the music of Wagner. Wagner opened the floodgates of creativity for Bruckner, and he composed his first mature works, including his first symphony, at the age of 40. Moving to Vienna and eventually succeeding his old teacher at the university, Bruckner soon became an unwilling participant in the press battle between the supporters of Brahms and the supporters of Wagner. Eduard Hanslick, the most influential critic in Vienna, and perhaps in 19th-century Europe, was a firm supporter of the “absolute” music faction, exemplified by the music of Brahms, and opposed to the “program” music faction, who championed the music of Liszt and Wagner. Hanslick initially supported Bruckner but soon turned against him, much to Bruckner’s dismay.

An unsophisticated soul apart from his music, the poorly clad composer with the country accent was easy prey for the sharp-penned Hanslick and his followers, who viciously attacked his every new composition. Tellingly, upon receiving a decoration from the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph, Bruckner asked the emperor to stop Hanslick from saying such terrible things about him.

Add in the difficulties of programming symphonic works of the length that Bruckner composed, it is no wonder that the composer did not hear many of his works performed in complete form. The shy, diffident composer was also handicapped by the efforts of some of his most dedicated, if not overly talented pupils, who relentlessly urged him to revise his compositions to make them more “Wagnerian” to ensure public success. While Bruckner was usually unable to refuse the demands of his strong-willed students for revisions for immediate performing copies of his symphonies, he did deposit what he considered final drafts of the works with his publishers for eventual publication. Conflicting editions of Bruckner’s symphonies plagued the musical scene for many decades.

Bruckner spent the last two years of his life trying unsuccessfully to write the final movement of his last symphony before his death in 1896. The work was first performed in a posthumous falsification prepared by one of his students, Ferdinand Loewe, in 1903. This was the only version heard until 1932, when the conductor Siegmund von Hausegger performed both Loewe’s version and then Bruckner’s in the same concert, with the result that Loewe’s version rapidly faded from the repertoire.

A deeply pious individual, Bruckner dedicated his last symphony “An den lieben Gott”—to the love of God, the first time that he had made such a dedication. The horrors and the mystery of death imbue the atmospheric landscape of the Ninth. At the beginning of the gigantic first movement, marked Feierlich, misterioso (solemn, mysterious), thematic fragments eerily detach themselves from the low hum, as forceful passions are subsequently built and released, with the eight horns, four French horns and four Wagner tubas playing a pivotal part. In the Scherzo: Bewegt, lebhaft (moving, lively) the pizzicato dialogue between the violins and cellos evolves into a shocking brutality of dissonance that evokes a hellish atmosphere only relieved by the ghostly music of the Trio.

The monumental final movement, Adagio: Langsam, feirlich (very slow, solemn), has been aptly described as Bruckner’s farewell to the world. The music builds powerfully to a series of climaxes, centering on a repeated four-note phrase for trumpets, which Bruckner labeled in his manuscript as the “Motive of Fate.” The appearance of a lyrical motive labeled “Farewell to Life” changes the mood, and a reworking of the two motives leads to a crescendo and a re-statement of the “Fate” motive by the full orchestra. After a pause, a second lyrical theme marks the beginning of the creation of a new atmosphere, where, before finally fading into nothingness, the tubas first quote from the Adagio of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8, followed with the horns quoting from the beginning of his Symphony No. 7. Bruckner desired to finish his Ninth until the end of his life, and many attempts have been made to use the sketches he left to try and to do so. The consensus, however, is that Bruckner said all he had to say by the end of the Adagio. Those who attend this weekend concerts will happily be in the ideal position to draw their own conclusions.

The Violin Concerto No. 1 in B-flat major, K. 207 by Mozart opens the program. Full of brilliant passagework with running 16th notes, it is a work of pure delight. Violinist Joan Kwuon made a strong impression when she appeared here last year in a semi-private recital sponsored by the Stradivari Society of Chicago. Kwuon plays the superb Guarneri del Gesu violin made in 1735, known as the “Mary Portman,” which she has the use of on extended loan from Karen and Clement Arrison of Buffalo through the Stradivari Society.

For more information visit: bpo.org or phone 885-5000.

A Musical Feast returns to the Kavinoky

The last time the BPO performed the Bruckner Symphony No. 9, back in 1979, violinist Charles Haupt was the orchestra’s concertmaster. Having retired from the BPO a couple of years back, Haupt is now devoting his efforts to the chamber music ensemble that he founded called “A Musical Feast.” Co-sponsored by the Robert and Carol Morris Center for 21st Century Music at the University at Buffalo, and making its home at the Kavinoky Theater on the D’Youville College Campus, “A Musical Feast” has made a strong impression on the local classical music scene in its short lifetime.

Known for its innovative programming, “A Musical Feast” offers a program on Tuesday, January 29 that features a performance of Igor Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat (The Soldier’s Tale). Based on a Russian folk tale about a soldier who trades his fiddle to the devil in return for a book that predicts the future, the 1918 theatrical work is “to be read, played and danced.” The talented young conductor Christian Baldini will lead the rhythmically challenging piece scored for a septet of violin (Haupt), double bass (Edmund Gnekow), clarinet (Jean Kopperud), bassoon (Martha Malkiewicz), trumpet (Jon Nelson), trombone (John Lombardo) and percussion (Rin Ozaki). Because three different actors usually play the soldier, the devil and the narrator, it might give one pause to learn that one actor is taking on all three parts, but not in this instance, since the actor in question is Paul Todaro, who is perhaps the most versatile young actor on the vibrant Buffalo theatrical scene.

Violinist Charles Castleman will perform the Preludio movement from J.S. Bach’s Partita No. 3 for violin solo. Castleman will also offer the third installment in his traversal of the fiendishly difficult sonatas for violin solo by the great Belgian violinist and composer Eugene Ysaye, playing the Sonata No. 2 in A minor, Obsession. Jean Kopperud will play the Abîme des oiseaux (Abyss of Birds) movement for solo clarinet from Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps. With no written time signature, it is implied that the performer is to play “out of time” but not out of rhythm, with the extremely slow pulse challenging even the most talented clarinetist.

Tickets are $25, seniors $20, students $10. For more information visit amusicalfeast.com or phone 829-7668.