Whether by plan or coincidence, October has been, for the Dallas Symphony, a month of symphonies from the late nineteenth century. Symphonies of Mahler and Brahms led the way in the first two weeks of the month’s classical subscription concerts, and the Symphony of Franck will close out the month. This weekend’s offering and efforts, however, are devoted to the most intriguing item on the month’s list of four, Bruckner’s Fifth. With four gigantic movements spread over eighty minutes of performance time, this musical monument rates an entire program to itself, without concertos or overtures.
The challenge facing music director Jaap van Zweden and his musicians, who, on Thursday night, presented the first of three performances of Bruckners’ Fifth scheduled through Sunday afternoon at Meyerson Symphony Center, is formidable on several levels. Each of the four movements is nearly as long as some of the shorter symphonies in the standard repertoire, and the conductor must discover as much reason for interest in each of those movements as in a complete symphonic work. At the same time, the conductor absolutely must create a larger trajectory and convincing overall structure. In a sense, the work is like the great church in which the composer spent much of his career. Balancing detail with the greater architecture is part of the performer’s task in any musical work, but the stakes are even higher when the work in question is intricately crafted and eighty minutes long.
All of which Van Zweden pulled off magnificently, with an orchestra that was equally on top of the barrage of technical demands in this music. There’s a tendency to regard Bruckner as a sort of pathfinder for Mahler, inventing the concept of the mammoth symphony that Mahler pushed even further; but this performance of the Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony, so soon after the performance of the latter’s first earlier this month, reminded that Bruckner’s style is quite distinctive from Mahler’s. Bruckner revels in sequences and masses of sound, and surrenders to gigantic fugues of the sort Mahler would never have attempted; Mahler delves into his own psychoses and sorrows, while Bruckner serves a purer art.
As with Mahler, however, the listener willing to shut out the noise of the modern world and be swept into the aural grandeur of a master of symphonic technique is well-rewarded by a performance of Bruckner’s Fifth such as was delivered Thursday by Van Zweden and the Dallas Symphony. A quiet pizzicato—far to quiet to be captured by even the most sophisticated recording, but entrancing in live performance—opens the work; mountains of sound quickly emerge. The second movement, one of Bruckner’s magical Adagios, is one of the most moving and beautiful moments in the orchestral repertoire; in Van Zweden’s able hands, it became but one element in a live performance of a work that was technically admirable, emotionally thrilling, and a high point of the season so far.
