Bruckner’s grandeur at the MSO

No one dances and no one sings in Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8. The music is bigger than that. It’s all dawn breaking over the Alps and thunder beyond the horizon and then overhead, as God voices his might and power, and occasionally his sunny benevolence, through nature.

You could hear it all Friday evening, in the performance of guest conductor Lawrence Renes and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. You could hear it in the great blasts of the brasses, in the long rise to nobility of the striving lines of the strings, the sunlit chords and avian calls in the woodwinds, the angelic pluckings of the three harps and the tremblings, rolls and lighting strikes of the timpani. (Timpanist Thomas Wetzel was very busy and played with well-measured force and pointed precision.)

Renes conducted by memory. He not only appeared to have every note in his head, but an opinion about every note. His very specific conducting elicited finely shaded and firmly shaped details from his orchestra. I especially like the way he made space after the extraordinarily long massed string melody in the Adagio. We don’t think of Marcus Center Uihlein Hall as acoustically lively, but the strings had amassed so much sound that the residue rang on like an alpenhorn’s call resounding from glacier to cliff.

Conducting this music is not about shaping melodies. Bruckner’s are so vague and malleable that they barely register. It’s about moving great masses of sound in the right direction, which Renes managed even as he peppered those great masses with nifty details.

I’m on record as less than thrilled by Bruckner’s music, and this excellent performance didn’t change that. I find grandeur piled upon grandeur tedious. Listening to Bruckner is like hanging out with someone who is holy 100% of the time. Yes, you can appreciate it; but after a while, you might really need a glass of scotch. To my ear, Bruckner is Wagner without the smarmy sin. That makes Bruckner a better soul than Wagner, but a less interesting person and composer.

But that’s just me. Lots of people in Friday’s audience could barely wait to jump up and applaud; an over-enthusiastic few jumped the gun. The ovation was still going as I went out the door  and into the streets of flawed, tragic, interesting, lovable Milwaukee.

Renes and the MSO will repeat this program at 8 p.m. Saturday. For tickets, call the Marcus box office, 414 273-7206. Click here to read an interview with the guest conductor. Other Reviews: Elaine Schmidt.

The photo in this story were shot by John Biggar, a mountain guide and ski instructor. You can see more at his web site.